In addition to English, languages taught at SAIS include Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, all of which are used in the literature of politics and have been designated by the field directors as essential to subjects taught in the fields. Arabic The Basic Course in Arabic provides an introduction to modern literary Arabic. Most of the morphology and the most important syntactic patterns of the language are covered. 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 which students have begun to build in their previous studies. Advanced Chinese and Japanese aim at further development of overall language proficiency through work on reading and listening comprehension exercises, translations, 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. English The English Program at SAIS concentrates on developing writing and research skills at the intermediate and advanced levels.