The Academic Resource Center (ARC) recently released data indicating the most popular subjects for tutoring at Tufts. Biology 14 was followed by Chemistry 2 as unsurprising first and second places for the Spring 2010 semester. But Arabic 1, a less obvious contender and the only language among the top 10, was fourth, which some have taken as a sign of the Arabic Department's expansion and increased appeal among undergraduates.
Rana Abdul-Aziz, a lecturer of Arabic at Tufts, has watched the Arabic Department evolve over the last couple of years and explained that its expansion was less a growth spurt than a slow building of student interest in Arabic language and culture over the past decade — specifically since 2001.
"The growth of Arabic is very closely related to the events of 9/11, and the interest in the region is linked to the politics and the desire for American students to be more familiar with the Arabic world — the desire to want to understand the region," she said.
The Department has most recently extended its program with a new Arabic major, which was added just this year.
"The major was only approved last semester, and we announced it as the senior class was graduating. … This semester, students are in the process of declaring last-minute, especially seniors. At least six seniors have declared last-minute, and sophomores and juniors would be another handful," Abdul-Aziz said.
But Arabic's many tutees cannot all be explained by the department's expansion alone. Unlike biology and chemistry, whose popularity sophomore biology tutor Maria Kryatova attributes to the classes' large enrollment, Arabic classes are much smaller. According to Abdul-Aziz, Arabic 1 currently has 78 students, and the upper-level classes are even smaller, with 28 students in the two 121 classes.
"Purely statistically, there are more students that need tutoring [in math and science], either because of inadequate high school preparation or because of poor study skills or an initial lack of effort that has caused them to fall behind," Kryatova said.
But Arabic 1 is nowhere near the fourth-highest enrolled class at Tufts. Rather, there are a host of reasons why Arabic has become a hot topic at the ARC, including its difficulty to absorb for students with Western backgrounds with closer-to-home Romance languages, senior Ryan Hunter, an ARC Arabic tutor, said.
"It's very different from learning any Romance language because you have to learn an entirely new alphabet and set of sounds which do not exist in English," he said.
Furthermore, Hunter explained, the popularity of Arabic tutoring may, in part, be due to the vast resources that the Arabic tutoring program offers. In addition to traditional one-on-one tutoring, Arabic tutors host both an upper-level and lower-level group-tutoring "Table" in Olin each week and organize review sessions for major exams.
"We have a very strong community of dedicated, creative and talented tutors in Arabic," Robin Olinsky, assistant director of the ARC's Undergraduate Peer Tutoring Program, said.
Hunter confirmed Olinsky's praises and explained that most ambitious Arabic students are unusually committed to the study of the language.
"The existence of these review sessions is really just a product of the Arabic tutors' devotion to the subject and to the new students coming in," Hunter said. "In order to stick with Arabic for four years, study abroad in the Middle East and devote time to being an Arabic tutor, you really have to love the language, as well as the politics, history and culture associated with it."
While students of more commonly studied languages like French and Spanish need out-of-class help as well, sophomore tutor Marta Kupfer explained that people who have questions about more common languages often have the opportunity to seek informal tutoring from friends.
"I used to tutor Spanish to my friends outside the ARC last semester," Kupfer said. "I would not be surprised if a lot of people are just too lazy to schedule an ARC appointment when they can easily ask a friend, given the popularity of the language, or go online and get a translator."
And then there's the Arabic Department's most attractive, sure-fire offer of extra credit for students who attend the Arabic Table, Abdul-Aziz said.
"What we have done is work closely with the tutors to make sure we are enriching our program through the ARC program tutors and their services. We offer extra credit to our students who attend the Arabic Table, which [provides] cultural activities [the chance] and to use Arabic. I encourage students who struggle with speaking to use the tutors, who help them," she said. "It's another person to check in with and a resource to help instructors. … We have created this wonderful partnership with ARC so our students can succeed."
