Nouman Ali Khan – Our 2024 Arabic Intensive Summer Program – Highlights – Bayyinah x ARMER
AI: Summary ©
A student from the Aromar program is impressed with their success in a Arabic program and plans to make a yearly venture. They discuss their past experience in Arabic programs in the UK and their desire to participate in a Arabic program in Istanbul, Turkey. The speaker talks about their investment and satisfaction in Arabic writing, their plans to continue learning in Istanbul, and their experiences in the Bay prep program. They express their excitement about the program's focus on learning the language and hope to continue learning in Arabic.
AI: Summary ©
And what excites me about Aromar and this
campus and the summer program that we're doing
is they actually get to immerse themselves get
and get a first taste of full-on
Arabic immersion with expertise Arabic teachers.
I myself am actually going to be a
student this year.
I'm going to take a test, figure out
what level I'm at and I'm going to
beat myself up in this Arabic program along
with you guys.
I'm in the beautiful city of Istanbul with
the Aromar program organized by Baena Institute.
Myself, I'm a Baena student and I've been
with the Baena, I've been doing Arabic with
the Baena program for almost four years now.
So I'm really grateful to be here that
this experience has been life-changing.
SubhanAllah, it has been so amazing and I
have learned so much and I have acquired
so much information from this program and I
can't wait to take this information back to
my community.
Before I came, we have a WhatsApp community
where we started studying Baena curriculum, different WhatsApp
groups where we even had a group where
we started speaking Arabic but of course it
wasn't like, it's nowhere near this program and
I cannot wait to go back and just
share my experience with my fellow students and
hopefully inspire them to come and join this
program inshallah next year or the following years.
It's probably the only format I can handle.
I can't do light learning, I can only
do high-pressure intense sort of learning.
It's kind of what I do with everything
else so I'm used to that.
I think the more I have a drawn
-out, light, light schedule, the more difficult it
gets for me to keep up and I
just end up falling behind.
So the high productive for me was exactly
what I was looking for.
It was a really great investment.
I mean, I haven't taken a month off
from every activity and just fully dedicated myself
to study ever in this way so this
was a really great investment of time.
I see myself having evolved in a number
of gaps like I mentioned one of them
was poetry, the other one was just my
ability to communicate in Arabic.
I wanted to improve it and I saw
a dramatic improvement in that too but there
are other areas of Arabic and Islamic studies
I want to improve on so I'm probably
going to make this a yearly venture for
myself.
As-salamu alaykum, my name is Saad.
I came to the Romer program from London
in the UK and I'm currently studying.
I almost finished the level four in level
four course here in the Romer program.
I came here, I think, I didn't know
what to expect but I had some ideas
since Saad mentioned that it's going to be
more of an immersion program, more focused on
us producing Arabic like writing and reading.
So when I came here, I was quite
happy to find that the focus here was
not just about understanding stuff but it was
about producing stuff and in the beginning it
was quite tough to kind of adjust to
the, you know, being immersed in Arabic because
we never ever had the experience but, you
know, as time went on and there was
like a lot of things that these programs
tried to do so that we could have
that immersion experience.
I'll just give you one example.
One of the things that we have to
do is to have to sign a promise
that we're going to only speak Arabic from
9am to 2.40pm Monday to Thursday.
So I think that's just one of the
things that really helped us, you know, keep
on embarrassing ourselves with like bad Arabic and
just keep on getting better and everybody was,
actually a lot of people was doing that.
So I think that helped one of the
things and up at this point I think
I would definitely, I can definitely feel a
difference than when I started.
Like we just had our presentation in Arabic.
I've never ever presented in any other language
other than Urdu and sorry English and then
I was just able to very, I was
able to speak and actually surprise myself that,
you know, that happens.
As-salamu alaykum.
I'm Amir Sheikh.
I live in Dubai.
I'm a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan
and from my childhood I've been meaning to
learn Arabic.
So this is my third attempt in learning
Arabic.
We've invested 100 hours over a month long
period to the Aroma Intensive Arabic Program and
what I can say is that I'm really
happy that we're here in Istanbul, Turkey and
putting in this time and effort because from
where I was at the beginning of the
program to where I am today, a week
short of exiting, I really have learned a
lot of Arabic, more comfortable speaking.
Certainly my writing has improved, my understanding has
improved and not being able to speak a
single sentence.
Three weeks ago, we're now making three, four,
five minute presentation in Arabic on various subjects,
your family, what you do during the day,
you know, where do you work and so
on.
As-salamu alaykum.
My name is Hamza.
I came from America.
My age is 23 right now, alhamdulillah.
I came here to learn Arabic to connect
with the Tafsirs from Ibn Kathir and all
the Ibn Taymiyya and I just wanted to
learn more with the scholars but you can't
really do that unless you know Arabic, especially
Fusaha and over here they're teaching you fully
Fusaha Arabic and when I came here I
didn't even know a little bit.
When I did the prerequisite exam, I couldn't
even read the or understand the questions.
Alhamdulillah, now I can understand the questions and
somewhat answer them and completely when people are
talking at basic level, I can completely understand.
Before, I wouldn't be able to understand how
to say my name or anything like that.
Alhamdulillah, it's very nice.
Aroma, I think, I've done previous Arabic programs
in the UK before but Aroma is one
where I think I'm never going to forget
a lot of what I learned here because
the intensive format is something unlike any other.
You really dive into it and you learn
so much just within the first few days
and just being forced into that environment of
not being able to speak English allows you
to really rewire your brain to be able
to instinctively draw on Arabic terms and phrases
very quickly so I think that's something that
to me was the most beneficial coming here.
I think if you want to study Aroma,
go for it.
Dr Ibrahim is amazing here.
He has an amazing ethos that comes with
the whole university and if you're thinking about
it, just make the leap and do it.
You're not going to regret it.
This experience will benefit me heaps in the
future because, first of all, it's improved my
Arabic in terms of understanding and the understanding
of Suhara Arabic but it's also improved my
talking in the sense that now when I
speak in everyday language it's also improved.
I have more vocab to use.
I can talk about more complex conversations.
Before, I could speak Arabic but mostly basic
stuff but now I can like speak about
maybe politics or economics because I have the
vocab now to talk about those things.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
I'm Abid.
I'm from Sri Lanka and I'm here to
study Arabic and the main reason as to
why I came here to study Arabic was
so that I could understand the Quran and
a big part of being a Muslim is
understanding the Quran so to take my Arabic
a bit further I decided to join the
Bayyinah program and alhamdulillah it's turned out to
be very beneficial to me as opposed to
when I first came here week one was
very difficult in the sense where there was
a lot of new content and eventually I
found my footing and alhamdulillah because of the
immersive setting almost all the students here are
involved in Arabic and because of that immersive
setting and everyone kept talking in Arabic and
so on and so forth it really built
up my Arabic vocabulary, my speaking skills and
especially my listening skills so as opposed to
when I first started right now I would
say I'm at a very good spot I
can and I would say this program in
itself is a very good way to start
your Arabic language and personally that's what I
feel because I started in level one and
inshallah I can I will be able to
take my Arabic studies to a further level.
Inshallah.