Every year we offer a 5-month semester from mid-January to mid-June.
During the Intensive Arabic Semester, you will take part in a variety of courses both inside and outside the classroom.
Classes take place five days a week, with a morning session and an afternoon session every day. Our program includes courses in four subjects: Arabic Language, Hebrew Language, Jewish Studies, and Middle East History/Current Events. The Arabic courses cover both Modern Standard Arabic (100 hours) and Palestinian colloquial Arabic (400 hours), which makes our program unique among those in the region. We choose to focus on colloquial Arabic because we believe that today one cannot communicate or even understand the Arabic media without knowing spoken Arabic in at least one dialect.
Students are free to choose a combination of courses to create their own study track that aligns with their individual goals. There is an option to do a personal project in an Arab or Jewish community instead of one of the courses.
In addition to our classroom courses, our students go on field trips throughout the region to understand on a firsthand basis the issues facing local communities here in Israel.
Our students also visit the local Arab community [http://www.intensivearabicsemester.org/arab-community--host-family.html] every week. Each student has a host family, providing them with an opportunity to interact with the Arab community, practice their Arabic and learn firsthand about the Arab culture.
We conclude our semester with a 5 day trip to Jordan guided in Arabic (at an additional fee). Our students are able to put their conversational skills to use whilst enjoying the beautiful sites Jordan has to offer.
A typical course has 14-16 students. Through our intensive program, we become a family of students and teachers coming from a large diversity of religions and origins, from all over the world.
We believe that our program offers a holistic and hands-on approach to language learning, which is unparalleled in comparison to other programs. We believe that when studying abroad it is important to experience the local culture as much as possible. Through learning both inside and outside the classroom, our students get a firsthand and personal understanding of the many cultures that make up Israeli society.