Open Sesame! Arabic Beyond the Basics (false beginners)

Fall 2026

This course has concluded. Visit our current catalog for upcoming offerings.

Course Description

Course Description: You have studied some Arabic before and know the alphabet. You can conjugate a few verbs. You recognize familiar patterns and can make your way through a simple sentence—but you are not quite ready to call yourself an intermediate Arabic speaker. This course is designed to get you there. Taking inspiration from the world of the Arabian Nights, we will build on the foundations of beginning Arabic through stories, conversation, guided reading, and playful language exercises. Rather than starting again from zero, we will recycle familiar structures while rapidly expanding vocabulary and introducing the patterns that make Arabic words and sentences begin to feel predictable. Students will learn to tell simple stories, ask and answer questions, describe people and actions, understand increasingly substantial passages, and speak with greater confidence and flexibility. Come with a little Arabic. Leave with a language you can actually start using. DETAILS Level: The course is ideal for students who have completed our introductory Arabic course, but it is also open to anyone who can read the Arabic script, use basic present-tense conjugations, and recognize some common Arabic word patterns. Textbook: Instructor will provide materials. Sections capped at: 5 students. If the course is sold-out, please fill out this waiting-list form.

Details

Semester: Fall 2026
Day: Thursday
Time: 10:00 AM ET
First class: October 1, 2026
Duration: 60 minutes per session

Tuition

$375 per course

Availability

7 spots remaining out of 7

Cancellation Policy

Telepaideia tuition is non-refundable. However, if you need to cancel your enrollment or withdraw from your class, you may be eligible for a 50% credit to be used toward a future Telepaideia course. In order to be eligible for this credit, you must notify info@paideiainstitute.org of your withdrawal before the second class meeting has taken place.

Instructor

Roberto Salazar

Roberto Salazar is an experienced polyglot language coach and nomadic classicist, with a passion for teaching Latin and Greek as spoken languages, and an impossible desire to speak all tongues imaginable, and to teach them to those who want to learn them. He has taught Latin, Greek, Arabic, German and more in different places around the world, including various Paideia programs, online and on site. A former fellow of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, where he studied Classics and Philosophy, he's currently writing a PhD dissertation on the reception of Greek tragedy in the Arab World, Modern Greece and Latin America. He has also done research on European Classical Reception and Neo-Latin. He has published fiction translations into French and Spanish from various languages including Swedish. In 2017, he was the head literary curator for the French-Colombian Year. That's probably why he's still scrambling to complete his PhD at the University of Versailles. He currently lives between Athens, Cairo and Saint Denis, France.