Source: imgarcade.com
It was a usual day of PBL (problem based learning) for the Obstetrics and Gynaecology round in my fifth year of medical school; where my group and I were to have a discussion with our group tutor regarding what we have learnt throughout the week. My tutor, Dr. Alaa Mosbah who is well known for his jokes and teasing brought up the name of a famous Egyptian actor as a part of his joke – which obviously received no response by my groupmates and I as we do not recognize who was the actor. was a shocking news to him, the fact that we have not watch any Egyptian movie at all.
Well, I was formally exposed to arabic language during Standard 1 when I was enrolled in an Islamic school alongside the compulsory ‘sekolah kebangsaan’ and I fell in love with it straight away. Some words are pretty similar to Malay language and I find it easier for me to understand certain words in the Holy book. However, unfortunately over the years of my secondary school, my arabic has become a tad bit rusty.
The discussion ended at the end of the day with our tutor still could not comprehend as to why we were not eager enough to watch arabic movies although we have lived in Egypt for five years. None of us could give him a definite answer except for the fact that the vast majority of us Malaysians only mingle around with each other and hardly with any other Egyptians and if we do, the conversations usually took place in English. That is the clear cut flaw right there.
“Involving in medicine for a long run need constant adaptations and by now– by being a medical student in Egypt, adapting to our language should be the priority as it will ease you during clinical training, taking patient history or just to converse with the locals”, said my group tutor.
At times, it was embarassing when we had to google translate or asking help from our Egyptian or Saudian colleague to translate a word into arabic just because we did not know the correct word to use or due to mispronunciations our patients were unable to understand us. It frustrates us more as the history taking did not go smooth as planned, and we could not get much informations on what the patient had to say or complain about.
I remembered watching a Korean variety program involving foreigners whom could fluently speak in Korean language even though they had only been in Korea for about one and a half years. This guy, Fabien said that he does not need a Korean girlfriend for him to be able to speak fluently, but his own effort to learn and constantly having conversations with the locals made him able to do so. This has made me realized that daily communications with Arabs are vital for me to sharpen my language.
In his effort to help us, our group tutor finally gave an instruction: “Frow now on, I want you to make 10 arabic sentences on a piece of paper and hand it to me by the end of every week. This is my homework to you.” We were a bit flustered to receive such ‘homework’ but could not refuse it as it was our flaws at the first place. Every single week without fail, he will ask us time and again, “Where is your arabic homework?”
Nuha Muneerah is a 5th year medical student in Mansoura – Manchester Medical Program, Mansoura University, Egypt. Learn about her and other YCP members under the Team page.