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Date Posted: 14:28:55 10/06/01 Sat
Author: Abdullah Al-Fagih
Subject: �� , ��
In reply to: �� 's message, "�� , �� ..." on 12:26:59 09/29/01 Sat

<a rel=nofollow target=_blank href="http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/fyi/teachers.ednews/10/05/arabic.wanted.ap/index.html">http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/fyi/teachers.ednews/10/05/arabic.wanted.ap/index.html</a>

Arabic-language studies booming

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- In a groundswell since the terrorist attacks, students are signing up to study Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages, but some government trainers say they fear there won't be enough to satisfy immediate national needs.

Demand for such languages is coming from government agencies including the FBI and the intelligence services. Even those organizing the new Office for Homeland Security have says Arabic speakers will be sought. Some teachers and students foresee more commercial need too, as defense contractors supply newfound allies and United States airports heighten security.

"I cannot even stop answering the telephone," says Shukri Abed, chairman of languages at the Middle East Institute in Washington. "The minute I go for coffee for five minutes, there are five or six messages. It's unbelievable."

He says that he expects enrollment in the research and teaching institute's Arabic classes to rise as much as 25 percent, to around 80 students, for the term beginning Monday. He says enrollment in Farsi, a language widely spoken in Iran and Afghanistan, would double to about 12 or more. He says he was worried about finding enough qualified teachers.

Although fall enrollments were already mostly set at the time of the attacks, some colleges are now gearing up for next semester. R. Kirk Belnap, who teaches Arabic at Brigham Young University, says the campus likely will add more classes. "There are major jumps in enrollment every time the Middle East figures significantly in the news," he says.

Hoda Behnam, a staffer at the Boston Language Institute, says the private school's next cycle of Arabic is pulling in about twice as many students as usual. She says some were even asking for classes where only Arabic is spoken -- a request she had never heard before. She remembered one applicant asking if it was possible to be fluent in a month or so.

The answer, of course, is "no." Teachers say it takes most English speakers two years or more to gain proficiency in Arabic and other languages distant from English. Few Americans are familiar at all with these languages.

"We live in a culture that has been pretty much content to be monolingual," says Siri Karm Singh Khalsa, president of the Boston Language Institute. "We haven't treated language teaching as seriously as ... needed."

David Anderson, who works in a military job that he chooses not to describe for security reasons, says he made inquiries at a Florida language school after the attacks. He has studied Spanish and Portuguese but expects it will take him maybe two years to master the Arabic he needs.

"It's work. It's commitment," he says, but the attacks added to his sense of urgency. "Obviously there's a little bit more drive behind you," he says.

The immediate corps of fluent job candidates is largely made up of Arab-Americans and others of Middle Eastern descent. Some are balking, though, because they won't renounce their dual foreign citizenship to gain U.S. security clearance, according to Essam Elmahgoop, an Egyptian-American who works as an Arabic interpreter in the California courts.

He also says the FBI, which put out a public plea for Arabic speakers, is offering relatively low pay -- $27 to $38 an hour for contractors. "I don't think they will get quality interpreters," he says.

The shortage of Arabic speakers is already being felt. Boston residents were worried last weekend by news that authorities were checking on a potential terrorist threat in the city. In the end, the scare reportedly stemmed from a mistaken interpretation of an Arabic conversation.

James Williamson, a former special operations planner for the Army, blames the military cuts of recent years for aggravating the shortage. "The need far outstrips the pool of qualified individuals," says Williamson, now an executive at Worldwide Language Resources in Andover, Maine.

"Now our vulnerabilities are coming to light. You can't learn a language overnight. It takes time. It takes money."

His company contracts with the FBI and National Security Agency, among others, and Williamson has been asked to step up recruitment efforts for speakers of Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Dari, Russian and other languages.

Some language students simply hope to bridge the cultural divide between the United States and the Middle East. Cori Ryan enrolled in an Arabic class in Boston before September 11 to get ready for a vacation in Morocco.

"Now," she says, "it feels more important."

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