UCL CENTRE FOR LANGUAGES
& INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
Course Units 2015‐2016 Arabic Syllabus A Prerequisite for entry For complete beginners or those who have had only very little contact with the language. Course duration 20 x 2‐hour classes. Self‐Study 80 hours in total. Course codes LCAR6001, LCARG001, LCARM001, LCAR6012 (together with Arabic syllabus B). Aims and Objectives The aim of the course is to enable student to function at a basic every day survival level (basic vocabulary, grammar, morphology, syntax and phonetics). On completion of the course students should be able to communicate in and understand Arabic on a number of practical every day matters. Cultural awareness will be developed. Language learning skills, including autonomous learning and how to approach authentic materials will be developed. Some transferable skills will also be developed. Functions 
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Basic conversation (Greeting); Being able to talk about Jobs; Introducing family’s members; Asking about weather and climate; Counting numbers (1‐10); Being able to talk and ask about directions (on, in, above, between ... etc); Talking about countries and nationalities and geographical position; Talking about what happened (Past Tense); Describing things (nouns & adjectives); Days of the week; Using a dictionary/Introduction (root & stem); Talking about daily routine (Present Tense); Arab countries and some basic concepts of Arabic culture. Course Content Main topics/themes to be covered 
Personal Introduction (name, nationality and job); 
Introduction of close people family and friends (names, jobs); 
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Describing things around; Jobs and places of work; Time, days of the week and seasons; Dining out, variety of Arabic foods & drinks; At the grocery (shopping); Hobbies & Interests; Basic daily life routine. Skills Reading 
reading for gist and scanning for specific descriptive information; 
reading basic narrations; 
short articles; Writing 
personal presentation; 
portrait of themselves and others / people and places; 
telling stories; 
practising different formats: touristic brochure, interview, film review…). Linguistic Structures Grammar 
Introduction to the Modern Standard Arabic; 
The Alphabet Calligraphy; 
Letters of the alphabet; 
Long & Short Vowels; 
Interrogatives (yes /no questions); 
Gender and number; 
The verb to have (I you/male, you/female); 
Sun & Moon Letters; 
Nouns & adjectives; 
Numbers (1‐10); then in term 2: Ordinal Numbers; 
Asking about time; 
Preposition articles (on, in, above, between ... etc); 
Possessive articles (my, your m‐f, his, her …etc); 
Introduction to the past tense; 
Basic verbs (to go, come back, drink, eat, read and write); 
Basic food and drinks; 
Past tense forms (I, you (m‐f), he, she , we, you and they; 
Dual and plural (sound masculine and feminine plural); 
Present Tense; 
Basic verbs (to go, come back, drink, eat, read and write); 
Present tense forms ( I, you (m‐f), he, she , we, you and they; 
Additional verbs in both past and present tenses; 
Introduction to the future tense; basic verbs; 
Ordinal numbers: an introduction. Learning Resources There will be no specific textbook, however various materials from different books and sources will be distributed to all students. Compulsory material:
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Mastering Arabic, Jane Wighwick and Mahmood Jaafar (Macmillan), New edition – ISBN: 9780230013100 Additional material: 
Al‐Kitabb fi Ta'llum Al‐Arabiyya, Mahmood Al‐Batal & others, (Georgetown University Press) 1995 – ISBN: 9781589011045 
Ahlan wa Sahlan Letters and Sounds of the Arabic Language, Mahdi Alosh; Revised with Allen Clark – ISBN: 9780300214468 A selection of authentic material will also be used. In addition there is a wide range of language learning materials available for self‐study in the Self‐Access Centre.