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Arabic Language and Cultures: Beginner - LFA00214L

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• Department: Language and Linguistic Science
• Credit value: 20 credits
• Credit level: F
• Academic year of delivery: 2023-24
  • See module specification for other years: 2024-25

Module summary

This course is aimed at students who have no previous knowledge of Arabic. Over the course of a semester, it will steadily build the knowledge, skills, and strategies necessary to learn Arabic and communicate in basic situations. It will focus on developing a communicative competence from beginner level and provide a foundation for further study.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 1 2023-24
B	Semester 2 2023-24

Module aims

The module aims are:

• to equip students with the key language skills to enable them to communicate in Arabic at a basic level, or to facilitate a trip to the countries where the target language is spoken;

• to facilitate the acquisition of grammatical structures in Arabic which will provide the foundation for further more in-depth study;

• to introduce Arab culture and raise their awareness about its distinctive features.

Students will engage, individually and in groups, in activities and tasks emphasising three core communicative skills:

1. reception activities (oral, audio-video and reading comprehension);

2. production activities (oral and written production);

3. interaction activities (oral, written and online interaction).

The medium of instruction is English and Arabic.

Module learning outcomes

• Ability to understand everyday basic expressions and short, simple informational material and texts (e.g. on sports, music, travel or short, illustrated narratives about everyday activities).

• Ability to produce short simple phrases about people and places and about themselves (e.g. name, address, family, nationality), to describe themselves as well as simple aspects of their everyday life in a series of simple sentences prepared in advance.

• Ability to interact in a simple way and to ask and answer simple questions about themselves and their daily routines.

• Ability to recognise basic cultural differences (e.g. differing ways of numbering, measuring distance, telling the time, etc.) and to establish basic social contact by using the simplest everyday polite forms of greetings, farewells and introductions.

Module content

Topics may include:

• The alphabets.

• Definite and indefinite nouns.

• Greetings and leave-taking.

• Introductions.

• Simple sentences.

• Describing places.

• Pronouns and demonstrative nouns.

• Jobs, work and study.

• Countries and people.

• Colours and numbers.

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Closed/in-person Exam (Centrally scheduled)	60
Oral presentation/seminar/exam	40

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Closed/in-person Exam (Centrally scheduled)	60
Oral presentation/seminar/exam	40

Module feedback

Feedback on exams and essays as per University regulations.

Indicative reading

Course materials and guided readings will be provided by the module convenors via the VLE at the start of the semester.