Rym Bettaieb

Prof Bettaieb is absolutely AWFUL. Please trust me when I say she is extremely hard, mean, and downright cold. Some of the students in my class had taken her before and told me that she openly called students "stupid" and then continued to demean them throughout the class period. She doesn't give anyone the benefit of the doubt and wont hesitate to put you on the spot. If you're not prepared, be ready to deal with the wrath of Bettaieb. She will skin you alive if you dont know the answer to her questions. She ONLY speaks in Arabic so it can be very hard to understand her instructions. If you ask her to repeat or clarify something she said, she will assume you werent paying attention and then talk down to you the rest of the class. She is a very harsh grader and will take points off for every little mistake. Everyone in the class was absolutely terrified of Prof Bettaieb. No one felt confident or comfortable enough to ask questions- even if they were confused. She creates a cloud of anxiety that looms over the classroom- she will put you on the spot out of nowhere and if you don't know the answer, lets just say...you're in trouble. Its up to you to learn the material (like i said, everything is in Arabic so you have to teach yourself a lot of the lessons). She won't take time to go over things in class you dont understand. Throughout the entire course there was an 'every man fo…

Aanissa Rym was a phenomenal professor, entirely devoted to facilitating your study of the Arabic language. Her Arabic accent is one of the clearest I have ever heard, which is a true blessing, especially for first semester when it's helpful to have each sound so distinct. This probably has to do with her vast knowledge of languages - I think she speaks 5? She expects you to do a lot of work outside of class, but I think every professor does, as the syllabus is quite rigorous, but it's to be expected in a 5 credit course. She was very clear in explaining grammatical concepts, and when she didn't answer questions, at least in my section, it was usually because the questions didn't make sense in an Arabic framework and were a result of people thinking in English and trying to speak Arabic, which she told us not to do from the beginning. Apart from this, she is a wonderful person. She really cares about her students and wants nothing but success for each one, and only employs strict rules about homework, I'm guessing, because it's tough to grade/keep track of that much paper each night and she doesn't want us to get behind. One of the best parts about her is that she speaks in Arabic almost all of the time, which is perfect for learning to hear the language better and getting down some vocabulary.

I would recommend this class if you don't mind spending a lot of time on Arabic, with almost daily classes and homework you will be spending a lot of time. If you view speaking ability as the primary benchmark of language learning you may feel dissatisfied with the class, if you feel this way and take the class I would recommend practicing speaking both inside and outside of class. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Spring 2025 Course: MDESUN2201_001_2025_1-SECONDYEARARABICI : MDESUN2201_001_2025_1 - SECOND YEAR ARABIC I Instructor: Ouijdane Absi

Greatly increased my Arabic language ability

Professor Bettaieb is a wonderful teacher. She seems to really understand the difficulty students' experience with learning the Arabic language with all of its complex grammatical structures and intense workload. She provided great context for all of the chapters, sharing more specific information and materials with us than were in Al-Kitaab. Sometimes this seemed like an overload of work, until I realized that she was only providing this extra information to help us understand, not to overwhelm us. Her homework corrections are constructive, and she makes a great effort to be available during office hours or at separate appointments if students need to discuss something. The written assignments were generally clear and helpful, but Professor Bettaieb and the MEALAC dept in general, it seems, need to work on their video selection. Greater efforts could be made to ensure that high-quality videos and audio clips find their way to the listening exams. Many times, the stress of taking an exam was compounded by the first few seconds of trying to make out Arabic through the garbled, low-quality videos we watched. Though it becomes easier to understand low-quality audio as the video progresses, on an exam where the video is played a limited number of times it would be very helpful to know from the start that the audio is clear.

Fall 2008 was Rym's first semester at Columbia, but she knows how to teach. She's doing her doctorate at Drew University, so I don't know how long she'll be here. If you're willing to put in two to three hours of homework each night and if you're not afraid of speaking in class, Aanisa Rym will be very nice to you. She constantly encourages participation in class, and she will put you on the spot; if you're unprepared or confused, you'll be very embarassed. There were a lot of awkward moments (Rym can be somewhat moody), but also a lot of laughs. She answers questions clearly and patiently, which is important since you go through the material so quickly. She speaks in Arabic most of the time, but her accent is easy to understand (she's Tunisian). The syllabus follows Alif Baa' and al-Kitaab to a tee. As in all Arabic classes, you have to do a lot of work at home. The quizzes and final are difficult, and you have to work pretty quickly to get them done on time. As part of the final we did a ten-minute oral presentation (which you can do with one other person) in class. She grades pretty easily; as long as you do all the homework and participate in class, you'll probably get in the A range. I loved the class. It was a s**t-load of work, but it was all worth it.

N/A 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Spring 2024 Course: MDESUN2201_001_2024_1-SECONDYEARARABICI : MDESUN2201_001_2024_1 - SECOND YEAR ARABIC I Instructor: Ouijdane Absi

Second Year Arabic is a course designed to enhance your fluency and accuracy by increasing your vocabulary and improving your manipulation of grammar. Your listening, speaking, reading and writing will go beyond the range of a simple sentence to that of a complex sentence and a paragraph. The course works with all four skills equally (listening, speaking, reading and writing) and culture. Arabic is the primary language of instruction.

Meh, I agree that Rym exercised a lot of patience, but it seemed as though she was often making a point to SHOW how magnanimous her patience was. And she most definitely has trouble understanding questions. She frequently gave the wrong answer to students' questions even though everybody else in the room knew what was being asked. Awkward. I don't know if it's because she has trouble understanding American English, or she has trouble hearing, or poor comprehension skills, or what. I disagree that she was clearer than the book. The book rules. She did put forth a lot of effort, though. Sometimes too much effort for ten in the morning. She was generally nice and a competent teacher. However, the teacher's individual merits have little bearing on the Arabic experience at Columbia for reasons that I've outlined below: Understand that if you take any Arabic classes at Columbia you will be dealing with the MEALAC Department, which worships at the altar of Soviet-style central planning. Your personal administrative and learning needs will be utterly disregarded for the sake of an amorphous student body. I was moved from one section for which I had already registered to another section, taught by a different teacher, for the sake of keeping an even number of students in every class. The reasoning was that "too many" students in one class makes it difficult for students to get individu…

Taking this course was one of the best things that ever happened to me at Columbia no joke 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2021 Course: MDESUN1210_002_2021_3-FIRSTYEARARABICI : MDESUN1210_002_2021_3 - FIRST YEAR ARABIC I Instructor: Rym Bettaieb