Zachary Backes - TP 7

6/18/12

Over the last couple days Talal has been sending me videos of some of his favorite Arabic singers and by far the best he has sent me is Qusai. Hes an English/Arabic rapper whose art reflects his life growing up in Saudi Arabia. Talal told me that my homework would be to listen to the Arabic portions and try and decipher them from the context of the rest of the song.

So I spent the night re-listening and re-listening with my Arabic book in hand. I got some phrases and some keywords but nowhere near the level i thought i would. It was kind of humbling to have my own teaching tool turned around on me. it made me realize how impressive Talal's performance a week ago was. It taught me that that a good way to test any idea for an activity or lesson plan is to try it while learning my second language.

When we met thi time Talal came with the transcripts in both Arabic and English. In this case Talal was more the tutor and I the tutee but that was actually a nice change of pace for us. I think it helped balance us out. I always felt like the teacher instead of sitting back and taking on the role of the student. We can't really teach if we hav e forgotten how to learn. So I was really happy to let Talal run me through most of what I couldnt undersatnd and even explained how most of the Arabic songs out now are not ever sung in Fuusha, the formal form of Arabic I have been learning. They are instead done in the colloquial of the singers home country. This made complete sense once he said it to me, but up until that point I had been trying to figure out why they were using words I'd never heard to describe verbs I knew Fuusha.

But at least I found out that the listening activiyt works pretty well. I've now got almost all of Qusai's catalog on my Ipod and I'm listening to him almost every day on my bike rides now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFXs0eXIrFk&fb_source=message

Here is pone of his best videos.