A self-instrutional language program, as you have learned, puts the responsibility for learning the material and preparing for the exam on you and not on your tutor. Your tutor is not responsible for evaluating your performance or making sure that you are keeping up with the work. You are the one doing the work, and you should be constantly evaluating your progress and your readiness for the exam. The exam is like a music recital or a sports match. You train yourself to be ready for the big day at the end of the semester and then perform. There is a great deal of pressure on you, buy if you work steadily, practice and stick to your program you can do very well.

The nature of the exam will, of course, affect how you prepare for it. The oral exam will be similar to the experience of meeting a native speaker for the first time. A native speaker would want to know first who you are, what you do, and what you are like. Therefore, you will need to understand interrogatives (question words) very well, and you will need to be able to talk about yourself and your background. Where are you from? Where do you live? What is your home town like? Are you married? Muslim? Christian? Are you working? Where? What do you do at your job? What are you studying? (Don't just say Arabic! I'm sure you are studying something else besides.) Who are the members of your family?What do they do? What do you do in your free time? What are your hobbies,likes, dislikes? What is your favorite book, movie, song?

As you advance in your studies, you need to be able to describe things in detail, to talk about your experiences and to talk about your plans. In order to do this, you need to have control of the tenses of the verb: past, present, and future. What do you want to do tomorrow/next week/next summer/after you graduate? What is your daily schedule? Can you narrate what you did last summer, last year, on your trip to Mexico,and so on?

The next level involves moving beyond you and your immediate context. Can you talk about current events, the history of the Middle East, sociology? Can you argue for a particular view? Can you bargain,complain, criticize, flatter, tell jokes? These are advanced skills that you might not reach until your third year of study, but you should keep them in mind as goals to work toward.

This page was authored by our Arabic Examiner:
Devin Stewart, Chair
Department of Middle Eastern Studies
Emory University
Atlanta, Ga 30322
Phone: (404) 727-4625 ; Fax: (404) 727-2133