JesusLovesYou

I'm looking for summer/semester study abroad programs in the Middle-East. I've taken 4 semesters of MSA. My goal is to improve my Arabic and learn some colloquial. Therefore I'd like to stay away from the Gulf and AUC (I've heard they are quite westernized and are moving their campus out of downtown). If you know of a program besides SIT please let me know and any suggestions would of course be helpful. Thanks.

vayloo

I am a student who will be traveling to Egypt in Spring 2009 and studying at AUC. Most universities are going to be westernized because the people that go to the universities are the wealthier kids. My suggestion is go to Egypt since 1/3 of all Arabic speakers live there and the colloquial dialect is widely understood due the fact that Egypt is the cultural center of the Middle East. Also Egypt is important because of its role in the War on Terror. There are many other programs available to you if you do not want to go to AUC. If you are interested in Jordan, CIEE has a program there which is my backup program and the dialect is closer to MSA. If you are interested in North African dialects then go to Al-Akawayn university in Morocco. A good starting point for programs in the Middle East is The Middle East Center (MEC) :: Middle East Language and Study Abroad Programs . If you have any more questions ask me.

JesusLovesYou

My concern is living with people who are speaking English, and therefore never really learning the language. The SIT programs in Jordan and Morocco both have students with host families, who speak Arabic. My goal is to learn Arabic, so immersion is important. It seems to me that AUC is not the place to go if you'd like to become fluent. I can take classes in Arabic and spend most of my time speaking English in the US. I also heard AUC is moving their campus away from downtown Cairo, which would make it just that much harder to interact with non-English speaking Egyptians.

"Also Egypt is important because of its role in the War on Terror."

I'd think that Jordan and Morocco would be more important in the "war on terror" then Egypt. Certainly Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Saudi Arabia are the key battlegrounds, not Egypt. I'm not sure why you'd want to go to a country that is "important because of its role in the War on Terror" in any case.

vayloo

I know what you mean about learning the language in total immersion. In some ways I would prefer the CIEE program in Jordan because it forces you to only speak Arabic. However, there are limited amounts of homestays for males if you are a male. A great website is Georgetown's study abroad program index. It details study abroad information about such universities like Bir Zeit in Ramallah, West Bank or a program in Yemen. If Lebanon is okay with you their is an intensive summer Arabic program at the American university in Beirut in the CAMES program. I do not know about homestays. Depending on your career, different programs are better than others. No matter what program you go to, if you want to learn Arabic quicker stay away from English speakers and force yourself to only speak Arabic. My reason for going to Egypt is also that I would like to learn more about the fight for democracy and human rights in the country, including why gays are persecuted by the government so much. Hope this helped!