Student Spends Summer Immersed in Arabic Language and Culture

As a middle schooler, Jessica Zhang fell in love with Arabic poetry, particularly work by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, of whose work she read English translations.

Zhang, now a senior at Northfield Mount Hermon, speaks both English and Chinese fluently.

“Something I’ve found about being bilingual is that you notice very distinctly when translation has obscured something,” Zhang says. “I was like, ‘If there are already inadequacies in Chinese to English translation, then there must be like a hundred more from Arabic to English. … I decided I had to find out for myself.”

Intent on achieving that goal, Zhang spent this past summer in Morocco, living with a host family, taking Arabic classes, and immersing herself in the country’s culture. It was all part of the U.S. Department of State’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program, which Zhang learned about from Sabrina Hernandez, a teaching fellow at NMH.

The program seeks to promote critical language learning for young Americans and advance international dialogue and cross-cultural understanding in Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, Persian, Russian, and Turkish-speaking countries.

Over the course of just six weeks, Zhang went from having a novice-level understanding of Arabic (she could recognize the alphabet and read a little, but she couldn’t actually say anything), to now speaking at an intermediate level. “I’m able to have a pretty easy conversation about daily life,” she says.

That jump in understanding of Arabic happened, in part, thanks to daily classes at the Center for Language and Culture, where she studied Modern Standard Arabic.

“From the first day, the teacher didn’t speak any English to us. It was completely in Arabic,” says Zhang. “It worked so well because the more your brain is forced to acclimate to the language, the faster you gain it.”

She also took a cultural class, which included lessons on topics like calligraphy, traditional music, tea making, and tile designing.

But perhaps even more valuable than the classroom-based education Zhang received while abroad was the time she spent immersed in Moroccan culture with her host family in Marrakech and on weekend trips to other parts of the country.

“I lived with a Muslim family, and for me that was very enriching, very beautiful,” says Zhang. “It was just so intimate to see their lives from the inside, rather than from an outside observer, as you would in America.”

At one point during her stay, Zhang’s host sisters taught her how to make kebabs and, in return, she taught them how to make dumplings.

“It was just fantastic, because now I have something that I can take with me for the rest of my life from them, and they have something they can take with them for the rest of their lives from me,” she says.

When she wasn’t spending time with her host family or in class, Zhang was exploring Morocco, often walking through the “medina,” or city, with her classmates. There, she learned to bargain at shops and trinket stores along the winding streets and paths of Marrakech.

“The more my classmates and I progressed [in our Arabic], the lower our prices got,” she says with a chuckle.

On weekends, Zhang and her classmates traveled outside of Marrakech to Morocco’s capital, Rabat; to Casablanca; to a beachy town called Essaouira; and to the Atlas Mountains, where she hiked.

“I have been irreversibly and irrevocably and deeply changed by such an impactful, rich, and vibrant nation,” Zhang says.

Upon her return home, Zhang took another look at those Arabic poems by Mahmoud Darwish. “I opened the book, and I could understand so much. … I can look at words, conjugations, and sometimes I can even pick out places where I don’t like the English translation.”

As Zhang begins her senior year at NMH, she is keeping up her language skills by conversing with NMH’s Arabic-speaking community, including two Moroccan teachers, a dining hall worker, and students on campus. She also keeps a diary and frequently looks over her textbook — “I’m so desperate to retain the language,” she says.

With ambitions to eventually work in international relations, Zhang plans to study Arabic in college. She says her summer experience in Morocco taught her invaluable intercultural skills, curiosity about others’ lives, independence, and, of course, her language acquisition.

As she moves forward, Zhang says, “I'm taking with me those beautiful, hot nights I spent running around the medina with my friends, bargaining to see who could get the lowest price. I'm taking with me the moments I spent with my sisters, who are not at all blood related to me, but who are sisters to me in the truest sense of the word. I'm taking with me the moments on the street or in the taxi or in the markets or at home, where I struck up a conversation in Arabic and it landed. And I'm taking with me memories of my cohort, my fellow American friends. … I'm taking with me, on a material level, bracelets and books and clothes and tea and food.

“I'm taking with me that beautiful city that will always be in my heart and that beautiful country that I will always want to return to as a kind of home.”

— By Maddie Fabian

All photos courtesy of Jessica Zhang. From top: Jessica and fellow members of her cohort at their airport on the way to Morocco; Jessica with her "host sisters," Tasnime and Ranime; riding camels on the beach in Essaouira; studying with classmates in a cafe; Jessica and classmates wirth their teacher.