Students found Arabic language club

Arabic is spoken by over 300 million people in the world — including the members of Penn’s newest language club.

Founded this semester by College freshmen Emily Goshey and James Sawyer, the aim of the Penn Arabic Language Club — a part of Gregory College House’s Modern Languages program — is to have its participants improve their language proficiency in modern Arabic, as well as learn about Arabic culture.

The program has not yet been approved by the Near Eastern Languages department, according to Goshey. Participation, therefore, does not count for academic credit.

If the club does demonstrate success over the next two semesters, however, it can apply for curriculum approval and have participation count for half an academic credit, as most of the other language programs in Gregory do already, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Dennis DeTurck said.

The other five language programs in Gregory are French, Spanish, Italian, German and Chinese.

Goshey, who is the club’s student manager, approached the Gregory Dean Christopher Donovan last semester to begin an Arabic program in the house.

She proposed to coordinate with the Arabic-teaching faculty to bring in graduate students every week to their meetings.

A previous Penn Arabic Language Club existed two years ago, but ended because it was difficult to find a program director — typically a graduate student who is either a native or fluent speaker of the language — to run the Arabic program, according to Donovan.

“This isn’t the usual way we do things,” Donovan said. “Emily, however, was able to bring a successful model for a program that fit within our budget, and so I was very happy to roll with it.”

Because participation does not yet count for credit, attendance at weekly meetings is not mandatory.

However, there are at least 25 to 30 students who do attend on a semi-regular basis, Goshey said.

The group meets every Monday for dinner and conversational Arabic practice; Thursday for a study session with advanced students and native speakers; and every other Sunday night to watch an Arabic movie.

In addition, the Arabic Club program is divided into four three-week sessions that will each focus on a different variety of spoken Arabic, so that participants can practice and learn multiple dialects within the language.

Goshey has had two years of experience learning Arabic, but this is Sawyer’s first year of learning the language.

Sawyer, who is the Club’s associate director, said that while the program “definitely helps on a linguistic level, the most valuable aspect by far is how it brings people with a common interest in the Arabic language together” in a less formal environment than the classroom.

“I believe there are more students studying Arabic than French at Penn,” DeTurck said. “It’s great, there’s a place for them now in the Modern Languages Program.”

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