Student Testimonials

When my finance’s dad picked up the phone and greeted me with “As-salamu alaykum,” I was quite happily surprised. Anticipating as I was the difficulty of conversing across the language barrier of English-to-Korean, I was really happy to discover this possibility of talking in Arabic. As I found out later, my finance’s dad had traveled to Iraq with the Korean military not too long ago, and was able to speak with me that way. Very cool!

History & Religious Studies
Senior – 5th Year

I am currently taking Arabic 2C with Professor Raheela Maniar. I do not have many opportunities to practice my verbal skills and I have a lack of confidence in conversing in Arabic with native speakers. I recently attended a Graduate School orientation and had the opportunity to meet a professor that I greatly admire who is from Egypt. I decided to have courage and began to speak with her in Arabic. Much to my surprise and delight, I stopped overthinking, went into “automatic pilot,” and managed have a brief and successful conversation with her in Arabic. This was my “Arabic Moment,” and it was terrific!