"Arabic Active Learning in Amman Jordan" by Danny Vinton
As you are arriving in Jordan, you will be wanting to be sure that you make the most of your time here, and I want to provide some tips for you that allowed me to improve my conversational ability, listening skills, vocabulary, and general language knowledge more than I could’ve imagined before arriving in Amman, Jordan.
Enjoy!
Learn some things before you leave your home country:
From day one or two in your host country, you will have to navigate by taking a taxi or an Uber. You have to navigate things within the home. Depending on the level of proficiency your family has in your native language, things can be either easy or difficult. Learning a few communication words before you leave can be super helpful (even if you can’t use these words in sentences).
For an Uber/taxi: to the right, to the left, straight ahead, circle, stop here. You can learn these in either the local dialect or Fusha (or both). Your driver will understand you either way (and some of the words are the same in both).
For at home:
Verbs: to want, to eat, to drink, to sleep, bathroom, to shower
Nouns: water, food, delicious, salt.
If you are already above the level where you need to learn these words, great! Everyone comes from different levels of proficiency. Keep reading below!
Talking with your host family over dinner:
“Tip: Make plans ahead of time of where you want to go/what you want to do in your free time. That way, you can learn new words ahead of time and have time to practice them. ”
Minimalize English use, no matter how little Arabic you know. For instance, if you want to ask them a question, say as much as you can in Arabic, but fill in the blanks of what you don’t know in English. This might be hard at first, and familiarizing yourself with how much your family can understand will take a little while, and after that, you will be able to effectively communicate, even with minimal Arabic. There is a relatively good chance that your family either speaks English fluently or can understand and speak at intermediate proficiency, The amount of language you can obtain simply from pure engagement in Arabic rather than English will surprise you, even if you don’t see it until the end of your session.
Coffee shops:
As you’re learning, you will probably obtain several words that will help you buy certain things in your host country, especially things that can be obtained at a coffee shop. For instance, words and phrases such as:
Coffee, tea, juice, bread, to buy, sugar, milk, money, to pay, to sell, how much is this, change (money owed in return).
One café that I would recommend for language engagement is called: “Rateel book café, or in Arabic, “مكتبة رتيل”
I spent endless hours here. The people there are super nice, and they want to help you learn Arabic, and love speaking to foreigners (أجانب). They have music nights on the weekends, which is an amazing opportunity to experience genuine Arabic music.
Before you go places:
Learn some words that are associated with the experience you are about to have. For instance, before I went to a restaurant, I learned how to say the following:
friend, grilled, fish, meat, chicken, lamb, etc.
Being precise about knowing words associated with where you are going isn’t necessary, but a lot of learning is about being active, and utilizing vocabulary when you have the opportunity (and early on).
Tip: Make plans ahead of time of where you want to go/what you want to do in your free time. That way, you can learn new words ahead of time and have time to practice them. Don’t just practice vocabulary though, put them in sentences too. I want to buy THIS. I want to do THIS. I want to eat THIS. I see THIS. Where is THIS? Consistently visiting one place, such as in my case, Rateel café, can aid you in improving general conversation, because you will end up making friends, even if it’s not on the night of your first visit.
You’ll find that with this process, eventually you can open a fridge and name almost every item within it. You can walk into a coffee shop and order your coffee with sugar, with milk, light, dark, cold, or hot. You can go to a restaurant and order kebab roasted with pomegranate.
And the biggest thing is this: DONT be upset with yourself when you forget a word that you reviewed over, and over, and over again. Sometimes, when you forget it, it’s that moment that you look back at it that will trigger the exact time it gets placed into your long-term memory. The internal struggle of forgetting something triggers your mind to say, okay, I'm not going to forget this again (and sometimes you still will), but this struggle is part of the process and is how you obtain vocabulary effectively, even if you must be corrected several times. Learning a language is not an overnight process, but if you’re patient, you will see change and improvement.
Be Realistic:
One or two months in Jordan is not going to enable you to become completely fluent in Arabic but can realistically increase your proficiency by a couple of levels, enabling quicker and accelerated learning of the language (even upon return to your home country). How much you take from your time here really depends on how eager you are to put yourself out there, ask questions, and learn. If you find yourself endlessly scrolling through Instagram while you’re here, you might not be approaching your experience the right way. Sure, it’s good to relax. But it’s even better to go interact with people, talk, ask questions, hear the language, and engage with beautiful people.
Be active in class:
If you are learning in class, and suddenly you think of a word that would be useful to know, but you don’t know it, ask your professor! If you can’t ask right at that moment, write the English word and then ask your professor during a break or after class. If you actively target things that you find important and learn them, this will help you acquire the language much faster. These are words you will really use, unlike things like “United Nations.” Every class, I had at least 15 new vocabulary words outside of those necessary for al-kitab memorization.
Take Notes!
No matter where you are, you are going to think of a word that you don’t know, and you’re going to throw it in Google Translate and get a translation. First off, always translate it within a sentence, where you know every word except the new one.
For instance, if you want to say, I want to ride a horse. Assuming you know “I want”, the verb “to ride,” then the only unknown is the horse. In addition, when searching translations for new verbs, I always put them in first person context and then think of other conjugations (and sometimes the masdar) afterward. I always found this to be the easiest, but whatever works best for you is okay. If you are familiar enough with how verbs are conjugated, you can likely search for them in any context.
When I obtain these words, I put them into a table in my notes app, and then every once in a while I will go and review them. Doing this and obtaining vocabulary from active thought and active conversation will help you obtain the language much faster because these will be words that you actually think about and use consistently. By the end of just one session, I could scroll several pages on my notes app, and could actively use all of this vocabulary in sentences.
Don’t stop learning when you leave:
Your time in Jordan has likely given you an excellent boost in language learning that can accelerate your learning several-fold. When you go back to your home country, make sure you are still engaging in opportunities that allow you to continue using the knowledge you have gained/obtained (even if this just means watching media in Arabic). One thing I have found helpful is downloading apps, such as Tandem, which allow you to do language exchange for free over the internet with people from several different countries, with people who actively live in the country that speaks your target language. Especially with how intensive the Arabic sessions are, you are learning a lot in a small period, so you want to make sure that you don’t pick everything up, and then drop it. Keep learning! Make sure to stay active with native speakers.
I hope that these tips will help you, and I wish you the best in your experience in Jordan!
Danny Vinton is a student at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, and participated in the Intensive Summer Arabic Program in Amman, Jordan in summer, 2023.
