Henry Ford Community College is adding new courses for Arabic and Chinese this fall and winter. These new classes will serve as pre-beginning to the already elementary course in each language.
“This is designed for people who have no prior knowledge of Arabic and Chinese,” said Katherine Grahl, Associate Dean of the English and World Languages Division.
Grahl made the decision to add the preliminary classes by following the guidelines for the American Counsel of Teachers for Foreign Languages. The reason for this was to help students who are completely new to the language get to the same level as students in the elementary courses.
Lori Slaber, the Chair of World Languages Committee, worked very closely with the Chinese and Arabic instructors to develop the right content. The content itself will consist of the basic alphabet, numbers, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and common phrases. The cultures and geography of each language will also be explored.
“Chinese and Arabic are tough languages. These new classes are designed to give a head start to students just beginning to learn a foreign language,” said Slaber.
To further support that these classes as pre-beginning, both of these new courses have a perquisite, meaning they are not open to native speakers of Arabic or Mandarin Chinese or students with ARA 131 or CHN 131 credit or its equivalent.
This perquisite will only help to get students in the right classes based on their knowledge or lack thereof which could essentially strengthen the language program. For those interested, CHN 130 is already being offered this fall and ARA 130 will be offered in the winter of 2013.