“…are you going to the Middle East now or something?”
I haven’t had the question yet this year, but last summer I did have some pretty strange looks when people who knew I was going to Colombia found out I was learning Hindi, one of the national languages of India.
This summer, as a teaching assistant for “Learner Directed Second Language Acquisition,” I’ve had an opportunity to encounter a whole new world: the world of Iraqi Arabic. I don’t have any plans to travel to Iraq. However, I have the chance to coach a group of 7 wonderful young ladies in the process how to learn a new language. By the end of the summer, each of them will have the tools and knowledge they need to learn a language without a classroom or trained “teacher.” They’ll be able to work with a native speaker of any language and learn by a comprehension-focused method we refer to as the “Growing Participator Approach.”
This summer, I meet with two small “lab groups,” consisting of 3-4 students, for an hour (per group) each day. We are learning from a dear lady, Wafaa, who we’ve all enjoyed getting to know the past few weeks. She, her husband, and their five children have been in the US for four years and they own and operate an Iraqi restaurant, Babylon, in downtown Grand Forks. The other day we met there for our lab sessions then enjoyed a meal together! (Wafaa, an amazing hostess, provided us with tea and baklava during our session and baked special Iraqi bread for us to sample with our lunch!)
I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to learn in this setting and give others the tools they need for the future.
…and that is why I’m learning Arabic.