When Katia signed up to study Arabic in Tunis, she didn’t just find herself in a classroom—she found herself immersed in a new community and way of thinking. Last month, she embarked on a journey in Arabic at WALI, studying Modern Standard Arabic alongside the Tunisian dialect. For some, this sounds like a big workload—but for Katia, it was just right.
“It was enough to keep my brain working and not overwork,” she says. “If you do one hour a day, you will learn, but it’s definitely much slower, and you’ll get less of an immersion. So, I feel like four hours was just right.”
One of the main reasons Katia chose to study at WALI is that the director, Wissem, was easy to reach and responded to her messages promptly. She also chose WALI because it offered a flexible class-life balance—lots of instruction hours, but not an overbearing structure outside of class. As someone who loves trying new things, Katia didn’t want her hand held throughout her whole experience in Tunis.
“Some other schools I looked at in Tunis were immersive, but with pre-organized activities and extracurriculars and everything,” Katia says. “For me, I wanted to have just language class, and then have my own time to decide what I’m going to do.”
Indeed, Katia’s free time did not go to waste. From day trips to weekend camp-outs on the beach, Katia got to know Tunis far and wide just by following her sense of adventure.
“Meeting locals definitely helped me travel, because I learned how to navigate the city without constantly taking cabs,” she says. “I don’t think I was bored for a single day.”
Furthermore, because she was in Tunsi classes, Katia’s journeys were also learning experiences. For her, learning Tunsi isn’t only about having the right professors, it’s also about making connections outside of class. She feels WALI helped her achieve this by giving her a community of fellow Tunsi learners to chat and explore with.
“I loved being able to do all the things around town while also learning,” she says. “You can apply your skills that you’ve learned immediately.”
Ironically, Katia’s proudest moment using Arabic to use actually wasn’t in Tunis at all. It was the London tube, where she thought she overheard a family speaking Arabic.
“It was like a day after I got back, so I was physically in London but mentally very much still in Tunis,” Katia explains. “And I heard some words that sounded like Tunisian, but not quite—I couldn’t tell if I was imagining things.”
After twenty minutes of questioning her own sanity, Katia asked them where they were from.
“They turned out to be Moroccan!” she laughs. “Of course, the words I actually understood are the same in both dialects.”
Afterwards, Katia and the family spoke about different Arabic dialects and life in London. Katia felt proud that she had been able to make friends with a Moroccan couple, and that she was even able to distinguish their dialect from Tunsi.
For Katia, one of the biggest difficulties of the Arabic language is trying to read words at restaurants or in the street, since Arabic words in “real life” often aren’t spelled with all of their vowels. Fortunately, however, all the learning materials at WALI are written with harakat, or the short vowels of words, so students can read with confidence. Eventually, Katia became familiar enough with key words that she could recognize and pronounce them without harakat.
Additionally, Katia’s instructor, Hassine, often drew comparisons between Tunsi and Fusha Arabic. This helped her understand the origins of the word and helped her overcome her challenges with reading and pronunciation.
“Understanding the roots of the word really helped me understand how the word is read and pronounced,” Katia says. “I think that was the most beneficial aspect for me—understanding the logic behind why a word is formed the way that it is.”
Overall, Katia was happy to take on the challenges of Arabic alongside a committed and energetic teacher.
“Hassine would always find ways to teach us through real-world examples,” she says. “It was just great because when you have fun lessons, you also learn faster.”