ARAB 2250

If you're taking Arabic and ever want to live in the Middle East, definitely take this class. Knowing dialect is really helpful for communicating when in the M.E., and Professor Sawaie does a good job of providing an overview of slang vocabulary. He expects a lot in terms of out-of-class preparation, but there's never any homework to actually turn in. Instead, there's a huge emphasis on in-class participation and practicing the dialogue, which helps cement the vocab and phrases you learn.

Sawaie is one of the best professors I have ever had. He is VERY intimidating on the outside, but try to build a relationship with him after class and get on his good side early. ie. don't question him in class, follow what he says, and do not look unprepared or like you are not paying attention. The class involves memorizing vocab and phrases he goes over each class period, with the next class period involving going over the things learned in the last class. he picks on you randomly, so go to class prepared. workload involves simply memorizing vocab and phrases and unlike all other arabic classes: no written homework at all. the final involved 6 skits of life situations we learned over the semester. great class, helps make you learn the real arabic spoken on the streets of the Middle East and not fus7a.

Sawaie is a great professor if you're interested in becoming more comfortable in your speaking ability. He's so friendly and is very responsive to your specific speaking level in Arabic. It's really the best opportunity at UVA that you will have to become relatively confident in your speaking ability. The homework is reasonable (unlike other Arabic courses) and at the end of the semester, you literally grade yourself which he takes into strong consideration in your final grade. Don't expect grades throughout the entire semester but he's very fair and just wants his students to enjoy Arabic.

I did not enjoy this course, and the general consensus I got from my classmates was that, while easy, it was not a very helpful course in terms of growth in your Arabic abilities. This is because, at least when I took the course, about half of many classes would be spent watching a series of videos that were incredibly difficult to understand because the audio quality was poor and they were in an obscure dialect of Arabic. There was a wide range of people taking the course in terms of Arabic ability, and even those who had taken four or more years of Arabic (including people who had visited Jordan previously) struggled immensely to understand the videos, or at least that was the impression I got from those that I spoke to. According to a couple of native Arabic speakers, the dialect he was teaching us was from the Jordanian countryside. In other words, if we tried to use the Arabic he taught us in any urban area in or around Jordan, we would be laughed at. I thought the most useful thing this class had to offer was an ample amount of vocab; however, you are expected to memorize a substantial amount every week- the rate of which we were expected to learn new vocab causes me concern about how much of it I will actually retain. And once again, I'm not really sure how much of the vocab/ phrases he taught us will be of use in an urban setting. Overall it was a very dull course and I'm not sure it will really help me when I travel to the Middle East. But he's nice enough, so if you're just looking for the easy A and don't mind wasting your time in a course that will most likely not serve to improve your Arabic significantly, (or you need it for the major) knock yourself out.

Just to clarify/ ensure I'm not talking too much out of my ass: this course claims to teach the Levantine dialect of Arabic. But I think, based on what my classmates told me, that what is actually taught is a sub dialect of Levantine Arabic. I don't really know how much different dialects of Arabic differ within a region. But I was dismayed when I realized that there was a chance that I was not being taught Arabic that would help me the most should I actually travel to Amman, for example.