CAMES Arabic summer program turns students into ambassadors of Lebanese culture

Students following the Arabic summer program at the American University of Beirut were confident that they had made the right choice.

"Of all the summer programs that teach Arabic, the CAMES program at AUB was among the best, and Beirut has a reputation for being fun and beautiful," said Lebanese-American Jamila Shedid, echoing a view shared by many of her fellow classmates.

The Summer Program in Arabic which is run by the Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) at AUB, offers intensive courses at six different levels, in which students are placed following a language aptitude test. The program emphasizes the instruction of Modern Standard Arabic, and runs for six and a half weeks, offering 186 hours of highly intensive course work in Arabic. Each day, students receive five hours of classroom instruction in modern standard Arabic and one hour of classroom instruction in colloquial Arabic. Classes run daily from Monday to Friday, offering 30 hours of classroom instruction each week. Students may receive nine credit hours for completing the program successfully.

"In six and a half weeks, we cover the equivalent of one year of Arabic at a regular program," said Bilal Orfali, the program coordinator.

Instructors use the Georgetown Arabic language textbooks by Brustad, al-Batal, and al-Tonsi. Textbooks are complemented with movies, discussions, games, and field trips to enrich students' knowledge in the Arabic language and culture.

This year, the program ran at full capacity, with 63 people from more than 15 countries joined the summer course.

Etelle Higonnet, a French-American human rights lawyer, currently based in Iraq where she works on the Iraq History Project which has been documenting human rights violations both under Saddam and American control, found herself under pressure to learn Arabic since she needs it during her interviews with witnesses of human rights violations.

"But the ambient language in Suleimaniyya where I live is Kurdish," she said. "So the best thing for me was to do an intensive course. And of all the programs I checked, AUB was among the top ones."

"Our professors are really what make this program absolutely great," she added. "They are creative, energetic, and really know how to make Arabic easier to learn."

Ellen Baugh, from the United States, was seduced by AUB's reputation and the "excellent" CAMES summer program.

Baugh who had practiced law in the US for 25 years, recently decided to switch to international affairs. "I am fed up with litigation," she said. "I wanted adventure and meaning and the opportunity for analysis. And the Middle East is very complex and it's where the action is. Of course, studying Arabic is essential."

"The teachers here are really good and patient and nice," she added. "They really make it fun to learn Arabic. They use many innovative ways to teach us new vocabulary, through games, charades, pictures and competitions.

Professor David Wilmsen, a veteran professor from the American University of Cairo who recently moved to AUB, said that he loves watching his students overcome the same difficulties of learning Arabic that he had to experience.

"If you want to study a language, you have to go where the language is," he said.

Wilmsen who started his academic career in anthropology before switching to anthropologic linguistics and focusing on Arabic, has been living in the Middle East, mainly Cairo, for the past 15 years.

Seattle-born Spencer James, simply fell in love with the Middle East when he first visited in 2007. "I spent a whole year traveling all over the world, and the Middle East was the highlight of my trip," he said.

James, who plans to become a doctor and practice in an Arabic-speaking country, said that he had no prior knowledge of Arabic when he first arrived. "I'm surprised by how much I have learned," he said.

Besides loving life in Beirut, James also enjoyed meeting a variety of people from different parts of the world at the program.

Pouya Alimagham, an Iranian-American graduate student at Harvard, was pulled to Lebanon both by the program and by greater access to information that would help him in his research on Hizbullah's national and transnational origins—the topic of his graduate thesis.

"The program is very intensive and challenging," he said. "Arabic is a difficult language and requires all the hours we are putting in."
"But being here in Lebanon has allowed me to meet a lot of people who have helped me in my research."

For Ethan Wagner, a trip to Beirut in 2007 and his first experience at the CAMES summer program, caused him to change his plans drastically. Instead of starting his graduate studies at Columbia University where he had been accepted, he decided to follow another course of the Arabic Summer program this year and join the interdisciplinary Master's program at CAMES which focuses on Middle Eastern studies.

"This program is challenging," he said. "It's not a joke," he added in standard Arabic.

For Bilal Orfali, the program is not just about language, though.

"What I love about this program is that often times students come to learn a language and leave having discovered a culture," he said. "Every student here becomes an ambassador of the Lebanese culture, just as they also represent their own cultures here."