Day 2!

For our the second day, we started off with a lecture from Dr. Wasim Dar about Arabic Poetry and it's development. Before starting the lecture, we also reviewed a little bit of the information that we learned about Arabic Literature yesterday, including the NPR interview that I listened to for homework. The interview was Professor Roger Allen, of University of Pennsylvania. Specifically, he talked about Naguib Mahfouz and his stories in Arabic Literature. 

Afterwards, we started our lecture on Arabic Poetry. This was something that I knew a little bit about beforehand, but it was still interesting to learn more in-depth about how Arabic Poetry was, as well as how it further developed in comparison to Arabic Literature. Specifically, we first talked about Arabic Poetry in general. In comparison to Arabic Literature, poetry was more restrictive, however, both of them went through the same phases of development. A majority of the lecture was focused on the form of Arabic Poetry, which is called "Qasidiah." Dr. Dar explained this form as the basis for Arabic Poetry, as well as Arab Civilization. In terms of poetry, Qasidiah was the main form for Arabic Poetry until about the 1940s, however, during the Modernist Movement, society broke away from the more traditional ways. Specifically, two forms of Arabic Poetry were made during this movement, which were Free-Verse Poetry and Prose Poetry. 

Afterwards, I asked some questions and Dr. Dar ended the lecture! I took a little break, and then ate lunch! In the afternoon, I continued with my Arabic Lesson with Ms. Samira!

 Pictures of my Arabic Notes from today!

Today, Ms. Samira and I worked on learning different verbs, and practicing making sentences orally. We mainly just worked on making sentences with different vocabulary and various verbs, such as: I eat, I want, I drink, I want, and many more. For the majority of our lesson, we just worked on practicing making sentences, and becoming more comfortable with talking orally. This was definitely a little bit difficult for me, but I also feel like this lesson definitely helped me practice more out loud, as well as work more on my conversational skills in Arabic! We also worked on translating various sentences from English to Arabic, and practicing them out
loud. Afterwards, we ended our lesson for the day!