You need to be able to spend 4-5 hours per week practicing the language on your own and attend a weekly 60-minute conversation session. Daily practice is more effective than cramming your practice into one or two sessions.
Language study is a serious commitment. You need to think of language study as similar to athletic training, musical training, or practice in dance or theater. It takes sustained practice and study every day in order to make noticable progress. Simply completing a set of exercises will not produce tangible results. You need to prepare and practice communicating regularly.
You need to practice where you can comfortably repeat and imitate the speakers in audio and video materials. You also need to spend time improvising out loud, thinking through the various types of scenarios and speaking tasks you will do in your conversation sessions. You need to pretend you are part of a role play or real situation in which you need to address and respond to people. Imagine how you would handle certain situations and practice the speech involved out loud.
Language courses are cumulative. It is easy to forget the vocabulary and forms learned in earlier weeks if you do not continually review. It is also easy to find yourself feeling lost and overwhelmed half-way through the semester, if you have not been systematically reviewing as you go. Include time for review every day.
Self-assessment reports are an important part of your course and 10% of your final grade. The reports are designed to help you think about the effectiveness of your language learning strategies and to let program staff members know how things are going. Self-assessments are graded based on the timeliness of submission. You do not need to write a lot. Short, simple responses are fine. The key is that you have taken a few minutes to think about your progress and to pay attention to key factors that may affect the success of your learning. Having multiple missing or late self-assessments will result in a lower final grade, while a strong record of on-time self-assessments makes a significant positive contribution to the final grade assigned.
Organizing a language program based on small group and individual sessions is a complex process. You will be one of 100-150 students in 60 different courses working with over 30 different mentors and conversation partners. Conversation partners help you with learning the language; the FCCWL staff helps you deal with logistical issues related to your course. Each language has a staff member who serves as the course organizer for all courses in that language. Theo Hull is the course organizer for all Spoken Arabic courses. You can reach them at fcmlp2@umass.edu or 413-542-5264. Your course organizer is your first contact about logistical issues. If for some reason, your course organizer is not available, another staff member will help you. You will be introduced via email to your course organizer at the start of the course.
In this context, your success in the course requires you to take the initiative in communicating with your course organizer and in responding promptly to e-mail queries. Here are some situations that require PROMPT e-mails or calls to your course organizer:
In order to successfully manage the logistical side of this course, you need to practice proactive communication skills similar to those required in a professional internship or work enviroment. To do this successfully, you need to: