<p>I'm (pre)registering for classes currently and I was just wondering if anyone could give me help on how each of the professors are, considering there are so many Arabic sections. Right now, I'm deciding between Potter, Wahba, and Al-Mufti... any previous students want to give me some help? Thanks! (:</p>
<p>How are you preregistering?? We have not received the info packet in the mail yet. Has anyone received that yet?</p>
<p>Oh, I have not received anything from Georgetown either. I wonder why they still use snail mail. Isn’t it more convenient for us if they post information online?</p>
<p>Yay, arabic! I am going to be a freshman there so I don’t have personal experience with the professors, but to be honest, I used ratemyprofessors.com … it’s actually a fairly good resource for these kinds of things. The teachers that stuck out to me were Potter, Zabarah, Bonnah, Khazaal, Ishmael, Nydell, and Wahba. Are you looking at the 011 1st. levl class? For those, I mostly saw Potter and Zabarah, and I think I read that Zabarah focuses a lot on grammar which is usually helpful for the first year students. The website has more reviews on the teachers though 
good luck!</p>
<p>This is an amazing resource - it has the tabulated responses from the professor evaluations and is less biased and includes more general opinions than ratemyprofessors.com - <a href=“https://www18.georgetown.edu/data/evaluations[/url]”>https://www18.georgetown.edu/data/evaluations</a> - and then go to your respective subject.</p>
<p>The SFSers and MSB kids are preregistering I think which freaks me out a bit because I know a lot of SFSers are taking Arabic… I did narrow it down to Zabarah and Potter, and Potter’s classes are filling up so I wanted to get that all figured out as soon as possible… and yes I’m looking at the 011 class! Mihran, are you an Arabic major too? </p>
<p>And ahh, thank you so much for the website… that’s really helpful! I’m a little overwhelmed with choosing classes so any help is great :)</p>
<p>Ah, I stumbled upon that website a long time ago and completely forgot about it!! Definitely a good resource! Thanks!</p>
<p>I just got the pre-registration packet today!! It’s exciting, but I am a little disappointed about some things regarding AP credit…I’m actually a Biology major, but I have always wanted to take Arabic! It’d be cool to do an Arabic minor, but I also don’t want to give up Spanish…So many choices!</p>
<p>I did read in the packet, though, that preregistration is not first-come first-serve. I think if I try to get Arabic in the fall semester, I may put Zabarah as my primary and Potter as the alternative (though from what I’ve read, I feel like you can’t go wrong with either one!)</p>
<p>I’m jealous you got the packet! I’m waiting for it and it stinks! And yeah, the AP credit is annoying… I got a 4 on AP US and will still need to take two history courses because Georgetown does not accept the credit. Ridiculous… </p>
<p>But I’m excited it’s not first-come first-serve, that’s awesome! Good luck with Arabic (I’m starting it first semester so I’ll let you know how it goes! :)</p>
<p>Awesome! Yeah definitely let me know how your professor (whoever it turns out to be) is! The packet is very helpful and really clears things up…but I’m still wondering if I should take Arabic first semester or not. I really would like to! We’ll see depending on if “Academic Writing 200” is beyond the foreign language requirement for Spanish…and depending on all the other gen ed requirements!!</p>
<p>Zabarah is a very popular Arabic professor and a good professor, so putting her first is a good idea.</p>
<p>Also, mihran81, I’m not sure what you meant, but Academic Writing (Spanish 200) is just beyond Oral Review (161 - an SFS-specific class), and is definitely beyond the advanced Spanish classes.</p>
<p>Did you have Zabarah? I’ve been debating on not putting Potter first for a while now… is the homework manageable (as manageable as Intensive Arabic can possibly be?) Is there a lot of testing? How are lectures? Sorry for the questions, I just really want to learn the most about each teacher… (:</p>
<p>I didn’t have Zabarah, but I worked in the Arabic department and she is definitely nice and sees students for help in my experience. A lot of my friends had her and loved her. I guess she isn’t the easiest but everyone who takes her feels that it is well worth it because she is thought of as the best. Arabic consumes everyone’s life when they take it but I feel like it has to be that way. Either way, I’m sure you’ll be in a great class but Zabarah is definitely a favorite (probably about half of my good friends took Arabic and those who had Zabarah all loved her).</p>
<p>I have heard similar things about Arabic being very time-consuming. I’m a pre-med bio major and I have had exposure to Arabic (as in I know the alphabet and can read it already, but that’s it!). Of course it will be difficult, but is it at least manageable?!</p>
<p>And about Academic Writing…Georgetown has a foreign language requirement and for Spanish you have to go up to 022 or 032 to fulfill the requirement. With any AP/IB credit and having been placed into the 200 class, does this mean my foreign language requirement has already been fulfilled?? (All this stuff is very confusing to me!)</p>
<p>sdr, you seem very knowledgeable about all this so maybe you can give me some advice? I have already been preregistered into some bio and chem classes and they suggested that I sign up for one language/gen ed course and then a math course (if I don’t get credit for math 035) If I am interested in trying to be an Arabic minor and if it turns out that I have done enough Spanish already to be done with the foreign language requirement, would you suggest I register for Arabic in the fall or another gen ed course? It would be first Arabic class ever!</p>
<p>I definitely think it’s manageable if you want to do it and you get a good professor (and most of them are good). I took Academic Writing and the AP credit had already fulfilled my language requirement, so if you have AP credit I’d definitely recommend taking Arabic in the fall. It’s good to get started early…and you can always take more Spanish later if you want!</p>
<p>Awesome!! out of curiosity, did you take the literature, culture or linguistics course in academic writing? If you are familiar with all of them, do you have a recommendation?</p>
<p>I took the literature course in Academic Writing (I wanted culture or grammar), and I personally wouldn’t recommend it. It was in part because I had a bad professor who only one person in our class liked (he actually doesn’t teach at Georgetown anymore to my knowledge), but it was a LOT of reading and most of it wasn’t that interesting. People who took the culture class seemed to like it. I haven’t talked to anyone about the linguistics one, but it seemed to be that Culture > Grammar > Literature.</p>
<p>I’m advised to take Intro to Language… and don’t know which teacher is best for that… on top of that, should I really take it? It says that it’s not necessarily required but could be helpful… does anyone have any insight? I plan on talking to my peer advisor once I have my schedule semi-finalized but just wanted to know what was best…</p>
<p>If you’ve had any exposure to linguistics and you like it I’d take it…but if you want to take another class more, I’d skip it. I think the course eval site I posted earlier is pretty good since everyone has to do course evals. Also you should totally talk to your peer advisor (I’m a peer advisor)!</p>
<p>Yeah, I was planning on emailing mine once I had my schedule semi-finalized! Thanks for the help… my mom was a linguistics major so she was really excited that I might take it but I’ve never really done it, and I was thinking of taking Psychology for my social science instead… thanks though! The course eval site has been extremely helpful, by the way! :)</p>