Ooh, another update

I thought, being short of ideas, that I might type a little about what I’m actually doing on this course in Alexandria.

In one sense, I have no idea. I could be in nice, small, quiet Durham, enjoying the last few days before term starts, eating ham sandwiches and having a drink in the evenings in the Undie.

In the other sense – the one I actually meant – the course takes up four mornings a week. Yes, it really is a terribly heavy workload. Monday to Thursday, 9 o’clock to 1.30. The working day is divided into four sessions, each lasting an hour, with a half hour break at 11. In fact, most of the classes we have are doubles, so two hours, with a short break after an hour.

The focus of the course is, obviously, Arabic. That’s Modern Standard Arabic, sort of like Received Pronunciation, which is the base of the language spoken from Morocco to Iraq. We have seven hours a week of grammar and vocabulary (thrilling, I know), and three hours of translation between English and Arabic. Add to that two hours of Media (reading the newspaper) every Tuesday, and we have 12 hours a week of learning standard Arabic. Which is considerably more than I have ever spent dedicated to learning a single language.

The remaining four hours are Egyptian Colloquial Arabic – the Arabic actually spoken in Egypt. As Egypt is the centre of the Arab film and television industry, it’s fair to say that it is understood pretty much everywhere in the Middle East.

The course is incredibly good. So much better than Durham’s Arabic, but I’m not sure that’s saying much. We are in a dedicated building (the “TAFL Centre”), and our teachers are on the staff of the Faculty of Arts, teaching us as an extra, which makes them very good teachers. The materials we’re using have been written specially (not some crummy American textbook) and are very, very good. If Alexandria can get this right, why can’t Durham?

Anyway – there you go. A brief guide to my studies at the moment.