Aasha Shaik

Aasha Shaik is an alumna of the 2018 CLS Arabic program in Amman, Jordan. She is currently a junior at Rutgers University in the Honors College and women’s Douglass Residential College, and is majoring in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies. She’s been spending the 2018-19 academic year studying abroad at SciencesPo in Menton, France and was just awarded a Truman Scholarship. Aasha is a dancer (Bollywood and, when she was younger, Indian classical), and loves hiking as much as she can, especially while she’s studying abroad in the south of France.

Learning about the Jordanian Dialect

When I first got to my host family’s house, I barely understood a word of what they were saying. I panicked and questioned whether I was qualified to be on the CLS Program, wondering how I would survive the summer. However, my roommate (who was at a higher level of Arabic than I was) quickly explained some of the basic differences between formal Arabic and the Jordanian dialect to me—such as adding a “b” before verbs. In school, we had studied only formal Arabic, so I knew basically nothing of the dialects. Once she highlighted just a few of those key differences, I understood much more of what my host family was saying and regained some of my confidence about being there.

Bringing the CLS Experience Home

Since participating in CLS, one of the biggest things I share when people ask me about Jordan is about the people. For example, taxi drivers would get so excited when we spoke Arabic and were enthusiastic to help us practice or teach us new words (like the word for bridge as we drove by one).

Knowledge of Arabic has already allowed me to better communicate with populations I seek to serve: while studying abroad in France, I have been volunteering at a refugee camp right across the border in Italy. My Arabic language skills have allowed me to communicate with refugees who don’t speak English or French, and have also enabled me to teach English using Arabic.

CLS Alumni Ambassadors are recent CLS participants who take leadership roles as active and positive representatives of the CLS Program by engaging with CLS alumni and representing the program to various audiences. If you would like to get in touch with a CLS Alumni Ambassador, please contact clsalumni@americancouncils.org