Students will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the Arabic culture with two new classes for the upcoming school year. Arabic 101 will be offered in the fall, and Arabic 102 will be offered spring 2008.
Ball State University has offered Arabic in the past, but Arabic teachers are difficult to find, Chris Shea, chairwoman of the Department of Modern Languages and Classics, said. The number of students who study Arabic has been on the decline nationwide since 2001, she said.
“We have been trying to get a teacher for the class, but there have been difficulties, such as professors not meeting our standards for English,” Shea said.
The difficulties came to an end when the Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program assigned Yemeni teacher Antar Mohammed to Ball State.
“Mohammed has an excellent record and excellent English,” Shea said. “We look forward to welcoming him into the Ball State community.”
The FLTA program gives young teachers the opportunity to travel to the U.S. to teach for one academic year. The program was established by the U.S. Department of State in January 2006 after President Bush expanded the National Security Language Initiative. The NSLI is designed to develop Americans’ knowledge of important foreign languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, and Russian.
Mohammed will teach for two semesters and then return to his home in Yemen.
“After Mohammed leaves, we will keep applying through the FLTA programs because we think it’s important that students are able to learn and live among someone from the Arabic culture,” Shea said.
17 students signed up for Arabic 101 for the 2006-07 academic year, but the class was canceled because Ball State did not find a teacher. Shea said she expects about the same number of students or more to sign up for the class this year.
“We hope some of the original 17 will still be around to take the class,” Shea said.
