General Information about ALIF
ALIF Facilities
Classes at ALIF are conducted in a large Moorish-style villa surrounded by an oasis-like setting of date palms, olive trees and rosemary shrubs. The tranquil residential neighborhood is away from the hubbub of downtown but within easy walking distance of a variety of restaurants and cafes. The ALIF Riad, located in the Batha area of the Fes medina, is a beautiful traditional courtyard house and garden. The Riad is a student study center and a setting for ALIF cultural activities.
Classes at ALIF are conducted in a large Moorish-style villa surrounded by an oasis-like setting of date palms, olive trees and rosemary shrubs. The tranquil residential neighborhood is away from the hubbub of downtown but within easy walking distance of a variety of restaurants and cafes. The ALIF Riad, located in the Batha area of the Fes medina, is a beautiful traditional courtyard house and garden. The Riad is a student study center and a setting for ALIF cultural activities.
ALIF Riad courtyard
ALIF has a specialized library focusing on Arabic, North African, and Islamic studies, as well as a large collection of DVDs in Arabic, Darija, and English. Z Cafe offers inexpensive meals and various refreshments, such as bissara, famine, and traditional Moroccan mint tea.
ALIF shares its classrooms and grounds with a large, well-established English language school, the American Language Center (ALC Fes). This provides an ideal environment for interacting with Moroccan university students. ALIF's facilities include a computer lab equipped with Arabic word-processing software, and a satellite television that receives over fifteen Arabic stations from across the Arab World. The ALIF garden, student residence hall, and Riad have high-speed Wi-Fi internet access for students to use.
Instructors
The Moroccan faculty at ALIF teach both Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Moroccan Arabic (CMA). ALIF's MSA instructors hail from prestigious modern state universities in Morocco, such as Mohammed V in Rabat, and traditional institutions such as the Qarawiyyin University, an Islamic institution of higher learning in Fes which ranks with Al-Azhar in Cairo as one of the oldest universities in the world. The rigorous grammatical training imparted at the Qarawiyyin University produces MSA instructors of exceptional calibre, whose grasp of the structure and vocabulary of the Arabic language would be hard to duplicate even in the foremost western universities.
In teaching CMA, ALIF's instructors have developed a highly interactive teaching approach designed to get students conversing almost immediately with native speakers in a variety of increasingly challenging topics of discussion. An integral part of ALIF's CMA instruction is an experiential approach, using the old medina of Fes as a classroom.
Cultural Activities
In addition to language courses, ALIF offers a range of optional outside activities to enhance the experience of learning Arabic in Morocco. Throughout the year, students may attend weekly showings of films in both Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Moroccan Arabic (CMA). Once or twice a month, students are invited to attend lectures on various aspects of Moroccan or Arab culture. Please see our Facebook page and instagram account (@alif.fes) for more information about our clubs and activities.
Students undertaking specific research projects in Morocco are also welcome to give presentations on their own work to other ALIF students and their Moroccan peers as a means of gaining response and input from others who may have similar interests. Also, throughout the year, ALIF offers a series of tours and cultural excursions (in the past these have included trips to the desert and tours of Fes and nearby sites, such as the Taza caves and the carpet souks of Khenifra). The cultural activities calendar regularly includes extracurricular courses in Oriental Dancing, Arabic calligraphy, Moroccan cooking and traditional music.
ALIF offers two organized academic excursions every term: one to Meknes and Volubilis and the other to the desert region of the southeast (Rissani and Merzouga). For more information about the academic excursions, click here.
ALIF shares its classrooms and grounds with a large, well-established English language school, the American Language Center (ALC Fes). This provides an ideal environment for interacting with Moroccan university students. ALIF's facilities include a computer lab equipped with Arabic word-processing software, and a satellite television that receives over fifteen Arabic stations from across the Arab World. The ALIF garden, student residence hall, and Riad have high-speed Wi-Fi internet access for students to use.
Instructors
The Moroccan faculty at ALIF teach both Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Moroccan Arabic (CMA). ALIF's MSA instructors hail from prestigious modern state universities in Morocco, such as Mohammed V in Rabat, and traditional institutions such as the Qarawiyyin University, an Islamic institution of higher learning in Fes which ranks with Al-Azhar in Cairo as one of the oldest universities in the world. The rigorous grammatical training imparted at the Qarawiyyin University produces MSA instructors of exceptional calibre, whose grasp of the structure and vocabulary of the Arabic language would be hard to duplicate even in the foremost western universities.
In teaching CMA, ALIF's instructors have developed a highly interactive teaching approach designed to get students conversing almost immediately with native speakers in a variety of increasingly challenging topics of discussion. An integral part of ALIF's CMA instruction is an experiential approach, using the old medina of Fes as a classroom.
Cultural Activities
In addition to language courses, ALIF offers a range of optional outside activities to enhance the experience of learning Arabic in Morocco. Throughout the year, students may attend weekly showings of films in both Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Moroccan Arabic (CMA). Once or twice a month, students are invited to attend lectures on various aspects of Moroccan or Arab culture. Please see our Facebook page and instagram account (@alif.fes) for more information about our clubs and activities.
Students undertaking specific research projects in Morocco are also welcome to give presentations on their own work to other ALIF students and their Moroccan peers as a means of gaining response and input from others who may have similar interests. Also, throughout the year, ALIF offers a series of tours and cultural excursions (in the past these have included trips to the desert and tours of Fes and nearby sites, such as the Taza caves and the carpet souks of Khenifra). The cultural activities calendar regularly includes extracurricular courses in Oriental Dancing, Arabic calligraphy, Moroccan cooking and traditional music.
ALIF offers two organized academic excursions every term: one to Meknes and Volubilis and the other to the desert region of the southeast (Rissani and Merzouga). For more information about the academic excursions, click here.
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Arriving in Morocco
Please visit our "Arriving Students" page for detailed information about how to get to ALIF.
Where is ALIF?
Please visit our "Arriving Students" page for detailed information about how to get to ALIF.
Where is ALIF?
