Challenge Reflection

Throughout this school year, I have encountered many challenges and have dealt with

them in different ways. Some were only fears while others were simply new concepts to me.

Among all of them, one that stands out is speaking my fifth language, Arabic. As I have

mentioned, through my childhood, I had only learned how to read and write Arabic but never

how to speak and understand it. When I moved to the United States and became a part of

Manara Leadership Academy, I saw Arabic as my new second language in my new country.

Almost every other student at my school communicates in it, and it was also available as a

foreign language class. I decided to attend the class to learn how to speak and understand Arabic.

I am going to use a video I made for the class. The learning target was “I can make/produce q

video to talk about myself, my family, and my future goals, using simple Arabic sentences.

During my first year of learning Arabic, I perceived the class as all over the place.

Students had different types of Arabic knowledge, speaking dialects to advance modern standard

Arabic, and teaching all of them as one class was not an easy task. Despite that, we continued

with different learning targets and assignments. My familiarity with the language was vastly

different from all other students in the class. I was excellent at reading Arabic and pretty decent

at writing it, but my understanding and speaking skills of the language were still that of a

beginner. We began lessons such as “Jobs in Arabic” and “Foods in Arabic”. I really did not

appreciate learning about them because I still needed to learn the basic pronouns. I asked myself

how I could use this vocabulary if I do not know the basics. I talked to my teacher about it, and

she advised me to use Rosetta Stone to learn independently. I started following her advice but

was very indifferent about the teaching method of the software. It was introducing me to the
basic Arabic vocabulary including greetings, counting but something was still did not feel right. I

ended that year with the opinion I had not grown enough in my knowledge and ability neither to

understand, nor to speak Arabic.

In my senior year, I was thinking of opting out of a foreign language class, but in order to

receive an Arts and Humanities endorsement, I was required to take the class. Therefore, I

decided to give Arabic another chance. My teacher showed me a book that was specifically

designed for beginners and had all the basic topics: Arabic for Beginners,Gaafar, M. &

Wightwick, J. I started learning from the book and really liked it. I felt that this was the way I had

learned other languages and it could also help me learn Arabic. My final project was to make a

short video talking about myself, my family, and my future plans. If that was my project last

year, I would have panicked and would have left it incomplete, but I was very confident this

time. With the help of my teacher and some peers, I made the video. I met the learning targets by

talking about myself, my family, and by future goals in Arabic. For the first time, I felt that I

could comprehend what I was saying, and I could learn Arabic easily if I tried my best. I felt that

I overcame the challenge of speaking the language and also understanding it.

That video was one of the highlights of my senior year. I have a sense of accomplishment

because I know more Arabic than ever. Currently, I am learning Arabic from another book

(Mastering Arabic 1,Wightwick, J. & Gaafar) and I am feeling very good about it. I am planning

on taking Arabic in college, and my goal is to become a fluent Arabic speaker.