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Welcome to Midwest Language Schools of Chicago

Midwest Language Schools offer elementary, intermediate, and advanced level courses for small and big classes in addition to communicative competence and cultural awareness in Arabic. We also work closely with beginners to create understanding of the Arab world through the highest-quality teaching of Arabic language and culture.

A particular goal of this school at the elementary level is to help learners reach advanced levels of communicative competence (proficiency) in both spoken and written Arabic.

Arabic is the native language of over 200 million people in 20 different countries as well as the liturgical language for over a billion Muslims. It is a member of the Semitic language family and has a long and distinguished literary and intellectual tradition. It is now a key factor in understanding and negotiating crucial contemporary global issues.

About Arabic

“Arabic - the only Semitic language that has remained the language of a whole civilization - the ideas spring forth from the vein of the sentence as sparks from the flint." Louis Massignon

Arabic is a Semitic language akin to Hebrew, Aramaic, and Amharic, and more distantly related to certain language families of North Africa. It has a vast literary heritage dating back to the pre-Islamic era (5th and 6th centuries, A.D.).

The Arab world shows strong linguistic and cultural continuity. Arabic is the official language of countries from North Africa to the Arabian Gulf (Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen).

Although geography (distances and topographical barriers) has fostered diversity of regional vernaculars, a shared history, cultural and literary background, and (to a considerable extent) religion act to unify Arab society and give it a strong sense of cohesion.