Staff writer
“I’ll give you a choice: A. Tezzecalum, B. Jezzecalum, or C. Chezzecalum,” Khalil Mekkaoui told his three Arabic 1 students during Mekkaoui’s lesson.
This is an example of the difficulty of learning Arabic; subtle differences in pronunciation can change the meaning of a word completely.
“There is no verb for ‘to be’; adjectives always come after nouns,” Mekkaoui said, “Arabic is four times more difficult than Spanish.”
Although this is what Mekkaoui and most of the English speaking world believes, all three members of the Arabic 2 class at Marion think the class is easier than Spanish.
“We’ve tried to tell other people in the school,” Heather Gorloch said of her attempts to inform her fellow classmates that Arabic is easier than Spanish, “but no one believes us.”
The next thing that Gorloch, Lindsey Maytum, and Miller Hendrix said about Arabic is that it is fun to learn. They said that Mekkaoui makes his classes entertaining by introducing pieces of culture like music — Mekkaoui plays the Oud, a Middle Eastern string instrument, and he also showed his Arabic 2 class a rap video from Egypt — and having lessons that are a little unorthodox.
“We just learned how to order at a McDonalds,” Gorloch said.
Gorloch and Maytum also appreciate the uniqueness of the language. They will converse in Arabic and will often say hello and goodbye in Arabic.
“It’s more fun to go around high school speaking Arabic to each other than Spanish. You can pick up a few words in Spanish,” Gorloch said. “We can have a big old conversation for hours on end.”
Jack Crayton, a member of Marion’s Arabic 1 class, also wanted to learn something unique.
“I wanted to learn a different language,” Crayton said. “I didn’t want to speak Spanish.”
Arabic is spoken in more than 20 countries including Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Mekkaoui’s native Morocco.
Marion freshmen Lance Knolla, John Tacha, and Crayton are thriving as the only three students in Marion’s Arabic 1 class. Mekkaoui said that Knolla, Tacha, and Crayton are ahead of all his other Arabic 1 classes. He said that they are at a level most Arabic 1 students achieve at the end of the year, not the end of the first semester.
“They are unbelievable. They know all the vocabulary; they just switched from masculine to feminine,” Mekkaoui said. “Some classes struggle to memorize things, let alone conjugate verbs.”
Mekkaoui said that Knolla, Tacha, and Crayton are special students who are intelligent and possess the ability to be silly and have fun with the class. For example, when they read a story in Arabic, the students put a crazy high-pitched inflection at the end of Youssef whenever they said the name.
Mekkaoui teaches three languages — Spanish, French, and Arabic — remotely from the Greenbush Service Center in Girard. He uses Interactive Distance Learning to stream projections of himself into classrooms across Kansas to teach seven classes a day.
Knolla, Tacha, and Crayton sat in the front row of a classroom that has television monitors in front of them and behind them, and a large projector screen in front of them in the corner of the room. Wanda Williams, who helps coordinate the language programs at Marion, calls Mekkaoui and he electronically appears on the large screen.
Mekkaoui addressed his students in Arabic to start the class and then he gave them a series of instructions in Arabic. The students turned, slapped the table, and gently hit each other at Mekkaoui’s whim.
“When you meet someone you have to listen to what they say,” Mekkaoui said. “You can respond in broken Arabic and be understood, but if you don’t understand what they are saying, communication breaks down.”
Mekkaoui has Knolla, Tacha, and Crayton conjugate a few words, which they do without hesitation and then they played a game. Mekkaoui had the students, whom he can see through a camera, close their eyes while he wrote down a number on the projector. The students need to clap first and then recite the number in Arabic.
“We have a few games that they do,” Mekkaoui said. “If you are a teacher and you succeed in making it fun, they learn without trying.”
Next, Mekkaoui showed the students pictures of a conversation without any text and the students wrote and acted out a simple script of the conversation.
After reading aloud a small section of Arabic, the students then practiced their writing in Arabic script. Arabic is written right to left, all in cursive, and some letters connect and others do not. Mekkaoui said that the writing is the most foreign thing about the language for most students.
“Writing Arabic script is not the easiest thing in the world,” he said. “The second year, you wouldn’t believe how beautifully they write.”
The students each wrote a few Arabic words on a projector that Mekkaoui sees in Girard. He then showed the students the different ways that the letters can be connected using different fonts in a word-processing computer program.
With the success that Knolla, Tacha, and Crayton have shown, Marion is looking at expanding to an Arabic 3 next year.
Since 2007 when Arabic was first offered to Marion students, Mekkaoui has seen improvements with nearly all of the Marion students who have taken the class.
“The majority of students have made great improvements,” Mekkaoui said. “In general, students in Marion are very motivated (to do well).”
Marion’s Arabic 2 students have all considered using the language in a career. People who know Arabic are in high demand for the U.S. military and other government agencies. Maytum and Gorloch also expressed continuing their Arabic education in college.
Maytum wants to continue learning Arabic because she truly enjoys the class experience.
“I consider my (school) day over at 1:40 when I take this class,” she said. “It’s fun to learn.”