AB 301 - Modern Standard Arabic Language in Context: Emerging Independent Abroad

MSA Emerging Independent Abroad is a course designed to help students develop skills in speaking, reading, listening comprehension, and writing in Arabic, and apply these skills in a real context with native speakers. Research has demonstrated that study abroad can enhance every aspect of language ability. One of the most important general findings of this research is, however, that study abroad is most beneficial for the development of abilities related to social interaction.

Students who go abroad can learn to do things with words, such as requesting, apologizing, or offering compliments, and they may also learn to interpret situations calling on such speech acts in ways that local people do. In short, and logically, study abroad has been shown to enhance the aspects of communicative competence that are most difficult to foster in classroom settings (IES Abroad MAP for Language and Intercultural Communication, p. 6).