The Lycée’s World Languages Department is thrilled to announce that starting this fall, we will be offering Arabic as a second language—alongside Spanish, German, Chinese and Italian.
Arabic is a language of amazing cultural and strategic importance. It is one of the UN’s six official languages, with 350 million speakers living across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Fluency in Arabic will provide students a vital bridge to travel, do business, study international relations, international law, diplomacy; and enjoy art and food from the Islamic world.
The Lycée will offer Modern Standard Arabic, also known as Modern Written Arabic or Literary Arabic (العربية الفصحى). This is the standard for written Arabic across the Arab world, used by the press, in literature, in correspondence, and for signage. In some cases, it is also a spoken language (some radio and television programs, graduate-level classes, conferences and political speeches).
In adding Arabic as a course option, we will be joining such top schools in France as Sciences Po, Polytechnique, CentraleSupélec, Les Mines, and HEC in recognizing the growing importance of Arabic language in the global world of tomorrow. Students who graduate with fluency in Arabic on their CV’s will carry this advantage into whichever professional field they choose.
Most Arabic speakers use a spoken form or dialect of Modern Standard Arabic, which provides a strong gateway to Modern Standard Arabic, once it has been learned. In this way, Modern Standard Arabic and its dialects do not just co-exist, but actually build on one another. Arabic is also useful for branching out into Farsi, Urdu, Turkish, and even Hebrew. Its elegant grammar structures will appeal to language lovers of all types.
At the Lycée, we will actively bring dialects into the classroom to enhance the overall experience of learning Arabic. We aim to expose students to dialects through short conversation, basic interactions and through songs, giving our students an opportunity to understand the similarities and differences between these dialects and Modern Standard Arabic (phonetics, grammar, spelling).
We will enrich our curriculum with cultural outings to museums and concerts, and we will also put on a theatrical production that touches on realities that are pertinent to the Arabic-speaking world today. In the future, we also hope to launch an exchange program with a middle school in Cairo, Egypt.
Here at the Lycée, we have the great gift of teaching students who speak many different Arabic dialects. Our new teacher, who has more than 20 years experience, will naturally tap the experience of our own students in class, which will further enhance the depth and diversity of dialects shared in class.
And now, without further ado: We are pleased to present our new specialized teacher, Rime Abdel Nabi!
What are the next steps to enroll?
First, please fill out this short form by March 31st.
March 26: there will be a small presentation for curious/interested students during Dialogue Hour (3:05pm) in room S308. Add your name to the list!
For all students interested for 4ème-Y8, 3ème-Y9 and 2nde-Y10 (current Y7 to Y9 students):
- The written/listening test will take place on April 22 during Dialog Hour (3:05-4:00pm) Targeted levels for each test are indicated in the summary table above.
- Oral expression and conversational interviews will also take place during the week of April 22 and organized remotely by the school. These interviews will last 10-15 minutes and will be done using video-conference, with a certified Arabic teacher who is based in Paris.
For further details on the program, please click here.
About the Author :
Vaitea Grand was raised in French Polynesia in a multilingual environment. He went to college in Toulouse, France and completed his master’s degree in Iberian Studies at the French institute of Madrid. He then passed the French National Education competitive exams, and taught Spanish in high school, middle school, as well as Spanish literature at the Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne-Nouvelle. In 2013, Vaitea joined the Awty International School of Houston where he taught Spanish and French and also became certified as a soccer coach. He joined the Lycée in 2016 as a Spanish teacher, head of the World Languages Department and he is now coaching the Varsity boys soccer team.