LN702     
Arabic: Level One (Fast Track for Learners Familiar with Arabic Script)

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

• Students must have familiarity with Arabic script. Admission into the course upon tutor’s approval during the information sessions.
• Students should demonstrate commitment to regular attendance, completion of homework, completion of the dossier and all assessments.
• Students should dedicate at least two hours per week for coursework in addition to classes.

Course aims

• To develop the use of Arabic at survival level.
• To raise awareness about the two Arabic varieties (formal and colloquial).
• To further develop students´ ability to use the Arabic writing system.
• To establish the skills, language and attitudes required to promote and facilitate further study of Arabic.
• To bring the students to level A1 of the Common European Framework.

Communicative content

• Greetings
• Asking for and giving personal information, directions and opinions
• Talking about family
• Talking about your country
• Describing people, places and objects
• Talking about past events and experiences
• Using the dictionary (basic)
• Asking and giving the time
• Talking about present events
• Talking about future events (basic)
• Ordering in a restaurant
• Asking for and giving directions

Structural content

• Roots
• The definitive article
• Independent pronouns and pronoun suffixes.
• Nouns-adjective phrases
• Numbers
• Feminine and masculine words
• Adjective-noun agreements
• Word order
• Verb-subject agreement
• Demonstratives (singular)
• Possessive pronouns
• Interrogatives (where, when, what, how many,etc)
• Prepositions: in, between
• Nisba (nationality)
• Idafa  (genitive construction)
• Past tense
• Linking words (Firstly, after, lately, etc.)
• Present tense
• Future tense (basic)
• Plural (sound, masc./fem.)
• Negative phrases (past, present, future)
• Prepositions with pronoun suffixes
• Persons of the verb (sing./pl.)

22 hours of classes in the Winter Term.
16 hours of classes in the Autumn Term.

Please refer to the LSE timetable for course teaching arrangements.

16 hours of classes in the AT. 22 hours of classes in the WT. 2 hours of group tutorial time, as arranged by the teacher during the AT, WT, ST. 

• Textbook: Test your Arabic. Part. I, Luay Hasan, Lightining Source, 2015 (there are some samples in the LSE library)
• Students will be also provided with a study pack.

Other materials useful for this level

• Mastering Arabic 1, Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007
• Mastering Arabic Grammar, Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
• Al-Kitaab fii Ta‘llum al-‘Arabiyya  Al-Kitaab Fii Ta Allum Al- Arabiyya: Pt. 1: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic by Brustad et al, Georgetown Univ.Press, 2011
• Speed up your Arabic. Strategies to avoid common errors, Sebastian Maisel, Routledge, 2015

Oral examination (30%)

Continuous assessment (70%)