The Carrot vs. the Stick
Tuesday, March 9
I got my quiz back from last week, and I scored a 14.5/16! We went over it in class, and I feel like I have a pretty strong grasp of the material. After reviewing the quiz, we went over the homework that was assigned. A lot of us in the group chat held the same opinion that the homework was difficult, and we didn’t have a good understanding of the new concepts we had learned. But, our professor went over it with us… and I still don’t know what I’m doing (oops). Turning singular nouns into plurals, and then making sure the adjective has the correct corresponding ending is no joke. I know it’ll take some time for everything to sink in.
She again berated us for not knowing our vocab, and now she’s threatening us with a vocab quiz on Thursday or the following Tuesday. I’m too scared to call her bluff, so I will be studying my vocab today and tomorrow and doing the homework that has been assigned.
Thursday, March 11
There was no quiz. I’m kinda mad about it, LOL. I’d rather be told that there will be a quiz, and then take a quiz. I hate the wishy-washy “I may give you a quiz, I may not, so be prepared” and then not take one. Normally I wouldn’t be so annoyed, but I’m literally up to my eyeballs in homework and preparing for midterms, not to mention some freelance graphic design work that’s too good to pass up. But anyways.
We went over the homework, and it didn’t take us as long as before. Next, we did an exercise that I actually thought was pretty fun. On a page were twenty-one names of centers and institutions that focus on the Middle East. On the left were the names in English, on the right, in Arabic. We were split into groups and the list was cut in half. Our group finished fairly quickly. Since the Arabic language is purely phonetic, it’s easy to sound out words.
While my group was waiting for our professor to call us back together, me and another girl talked a little bit. She studied in Palestine for three years prior, and she gave me a really great language-learning tip: watch English shows with Arabic subtitles to learn how to read Arabic. I struggle the most with reading, so I’m going to try that out sometime in the near future. I’ll let you know how that goes.
After going over the exercise, my professor moved onto an auditory exercise. I can pick up Arabic fairly well when people are speaking, but most of the time, people are speaking too fast! I can’t really complain though, because I know I talk so fast in English that my mom can barely understand me sometimes.
Class finally ended, but not before my professor assigned us a couple pages of homework. I better laminate the pages, because I can’t have my tears staining the paper. Midterm season is rough, y’all.
Arabic Word of the Week
country / balad / بلد