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Arabic in university

I'm planning to send an application to study arabic in some scottish universities, as that's the subject I'm most interested on. However, my previous knowledge of arabic is not huge, because I'm eu student and my country doesn't offer arabic courses at schools (I took IB). I took an university course of arabic this summer and I'm planning to take some other arabic courses too.

Is the previous learning of arabic usually required by unis? Do I have a chance to go to study arabic, even though I didn't have it as my IB subject?

Reply 1

Snufkin

Universities Forum Helper

Hardly any students studying Arabic at university in the UK will have prior knowledge of the language, and even less will have studied it at school. You can study Arabic as a beginner, yes.

Reply 2

Fernweh47

I'm doing Arabic at Manchester and they started with teaching the alphabet, so with the very basics - I would worry more about reading around the subject and getting an awareness about the Middle East/Arabic Literature/Islam.

An A-Level in another language (not your mother tongue and usually not English either!) might show that you have the ability to learn another language. Back in the days when I applied I got rejected by Edinburgh as I applied for a joint honours languages degree without a language a-level (but providing evidence of my proficiency in three languages - they wanted an a level or equivalent exam which my country does not offer), so be really careful about this.

Be warned though, Arabic is tough and you will need to put in a lot of work, and it is frustrating to see that three years down the line (first class grades and a year abroad under my belt), i still cannot hold a proper conversation/understand a film. Read a bit about the situation with the dialects :wink:

, this podcast is a good start: http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-17/learn-arabic-just-25-years

Reply 3

221Breezeblocks

Does anyone currently studying Arabic have any literature suggestions (that can be books, poems, short stories, anything) that I can read (obviously in translation) as I am wanting to study arabic next year at uni and would like to start exploring it!!
Thanks :smile: