Hello there! hope you are well… My name is Sultan, and I have 25 years of experience with Arabic and I have a bachelor’s degree in the Language,
In the start of my journey when I was learning it, I became fluent in the grammatical Accent by practicing it with my University colleagues and I had a big interest in deep Arabic grammar & poetry. I also got a chance to teach Arabic literature for 2 years in the same University from where I graduated.
So, when I thought of coming to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the first time, I believed that I will not encounter any problem in communications and handling situations. But, as soon as I landed here I was surprised, the language which was spoken here was completely different and I was in such a situation where I could not even understand someone’s single sentence and I was not able to convey what I wanted to say because I did not have the knowledge of specific words and accent which was used in spoken Arabic.
All these things happened even though I was fluent in grammatical Arabic. So here you can understand the difference between the spoken and grammatical way.
In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I spent one year to understand the accent of locals and it took five more years for me to become able to deliver it.
And it became possible because a large portion like 12 years of my life was spent with Saudis. All these long years me and my family were living away from the city and we were the only expats there. So, all that time I had to deal & talk with them in their accent because it was my job to teach them.
I picked up all spoken words and sentences from their communication keeping the original shape in mind and every day and night, my grammatical skills were with me. I think you will agree that 12 years is not a short duration to achieve a goal.
Then I started teaching Arabic to expats in 2010 and at that time I was teaching what I had learned in the beginning, means, grammatical Arabic which is also known as Fusha.
But in my first year of teaching Arabic I realized that people need an Arabic which they can speak in the market, on the road with cops & in simple conversations with Arab colleagues. Fusha can help you in reading & writing or understanding the grammatical way but no more than that.
Then I decided to teach spoken Arabic to expats. The problem was, there was no material available supporting the spoken path. But I continued my teaching AND I started developing my own material.
Every few months, during every batch, I observed the need of people, what sentence and word is their requirement in which situation, and what kind of situations they might face. Then I tried to fulfill their needs by choosing that sentence or word from what I had learned in those 12 years.
This process of making an intellectual curriculum kept on going for 7 – 8 years until a time came when I looked back and saw that I am able to make people stand closer to the level which I had achieved in 25 years…
In the end I would say that I don’t claim that my courses will make you able to read & write everything in Arabic. But, it will completely fulfill your spoken needs and still, it can become a base for your grammatical Arabic and help you understand about 35% of the grammatical method after practicing…
