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Arabic language classes gain new popularity
As colleges offer more instruction to meet burgeoning demand, they scramble to find enough qualified teachers
  
By MARC PARRY, Staff writer
First published: Monday, October 15, 2007

SCHENECTADY -- Ariel Sincoff-Yedid studies politics and religion at Union College. She has family roots in the Middle East. She is considering a career in development with the U.S. government.
The 20-year-old from San Diego is the kind of person President Bush had in mind last year when he pushed to expand the teaching of Arabic and other languages key to national security.

  
At Union, though, she couldn't get that education. Until this year.

Union is formally offering Arabic for the first time in its 212-year history. The Schenectady college planned just one fall class, but interest was so high it added a second. Both are full.

"It's just sort of the language to know these days," Sincoff-Yedid said.

Statistics back up that assessment. More than 20,000 students signed up for college-level Arabic classes around the country in 2006, according to a USA Today report that cited not-yet-released projections from the Modern Language Association.

That's twice the number enrolled between 1998 and 2002, the newspaper reported. Demand is so high there aren't enough capable teachers to meet it.

Union's Arabic instructor knows that firsthand.

May Saffar got her early education in Catholic schools run by Arab nuns in her native Iraq before coming to the Capital Region via Dublin and Baltimore. The Clifton Park resident has had offers to teach Arabic from The College of Saint Rose, Hudson Valley Community College, Union College and the University at Albany.

She taught Saint Rose's first Arabic class last year before jumping to Union. She also teaches at HVCC "for those students who can't afford Union tuition." That's all on top of her full-time job as an elementary ESL teacher for the Albany city school district.

Saffar, 42, speaks English with a clarity that many professors could only dream of hearing from their American college students. It will probably be a long time before any of her students can match that fluency in Arabic.

Consider what learning it demands from the uninitiated: Writing from right to left. A new alphabet. Letters that change forms depending on where they fall in each word. Sounds that don't exist in English.

"My job is to create a new cell in those students' brains," Saffar said before class in her office in Union's ivy-covered Humanities Building. "The expectations in return are not that high for those who are taking this class for the first time."

In class a few minutes later, those students were laughing through a scripted practice conversation that would be familiar to anyone who has ever taken a beginner's language course.

"Good evening," it began.

"How are you?"

"I'm well."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to the market."

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going home."

"Goodbye."

At HVCC, Saffar's students include soldiers who have been to Iraq or are on their way. At Union, one phrase students use repeatedly to describe themselves is "language junky."

One is a Muslim with Indian-Pakistani roots who can read some Arabic from her religious education but doesn't understand it. Another, John Costello, aspires to teach high school history.

"I wanted to be able to teach people about the Middle East," said the 21-year-old from Long Island. "And one of the primary ways I can do that is to also know about the language and be able to study primary sources in Arabic."

Older students are also interested in Arabic. One member of the Union class is a 70-year-old lawyer who practices Arabic by talking to himself while jogging.
Don Cashman, rabbi at Albany's B'nai Sholom Reform Congregation, took Arabic with his wife at UAlbany last year. They wanted to be able to use the language in Israel, among other things.

"My wife and I have been waiting 20 years to study Arabic," he said, adding later, "Unlike most of the undergraduates in the class, we actually showed up every day, and we did our homework."

Parry can be reached at 454-5057 or by e-mail at mparry@timesunion.com.

Other Arabic language instructionUAlbany has offered Arabic for three years. Space permitting, nonstudent New York residents can informally audit most undergraduate credit classes, with the permission of the instructor. For advanced Arabic, students may study in Morocco at Al Akhawayn University (a SUNY program). Skidmore College has offered Arabic language study for more than two decades through its Self-Instructional Language Program. Classes are limited to six students. The students meet once a week for two hours with the instructor, who holds a Ph.D. degree in Arabic linguistics. Skidmore has had 60 students studying Arabic over the past three years. Siena has offered Arabic before, taught by a religious studies professor who specializes in Islam. There is a course this semester. The College of Saint Rose started Arabic classes last year. The language is offered this year with the help of a Fulbright program, where a teacher comes for one year and teaches two courses. They can also take two courses. The current instructor is a professor from Morocco who is studying Spanish and Italian at Saint Rose.