Students entering in January should note that the first semester of each language course is offered only in the fall semester. The basic course in Arabic provides an introduction to modern literary Arabic. It covers most of the morphology and the most important syntactic patterns of the language. The intermediate course is designed to enable students to read, discuss and translate Arabic newspapers and other materials related to the religions, politics and economics of the Middle East. The advanced course is a continuation of the second-year course.
Students acquire the ability to discuss, read and write about simple, everyday topics.
The intermediate courses offer consolidation and improvement upon the foundations of beginning studies. Advanced Chinese and Japanese aim at further development of overall language proficiency through work on reading and listening comprehension exercises, translations and oral presentations, and through discussions of contemporary materials. At the end of two years students are expected to comprehend educated speech and converse freely on political, economic and international topics. In Japanese, students master two syllabaries, kyoiku kanji for both recognition and production and all of the toyo kanji. Writing skills will be lower than the other skills.