Time commitment for ShariahProgram

[Jadeed]

I registered for SP last year and was going to start with the march 2012 class, but withdrew due to financial constraints. I have been granted the possibility of not having said constraints; however, my responsibilities have increased in a multitudinous fashion and I am now wondering whether it would even be possible for me to stick with the Program (no pun intended) considering these newfound responsibilities?

I will be teaching 7th and 9th grade students history starting in September, and I need to seek a master's degree as soon as possible... is it even possible for a person to work and seek a master's degree at night while staying current with ShariahProgram? What kind of hourly commitment weekly, including the two-hours a week of live sessions, is necessary to succeed?

I appreciate your insights. May Allah reward whomever answers.

[Sunni_Student786]

. is it even possible for a person to work and seek a master's degree at night while staying current with ShariahProgram?

Short answer (in my opinion, based on my own experiences with the program): NO.

What kind of hourly commitment weekly, including the two-hours a week of live sessions, is necessary to succeed?

...

During the first semester (i.e. first 26 weeks of the program), I would say, for most people, 9-12 hours a week (7-10 on your own, 2 more for the live sessions).

My advice to you would be to put ShariahProgram on hold for now. Study book 1 (and preferably Book 2) of the Madinah series with the aid of the videos here: www.lqtoronto.com You can also simultaneously study and memorize the tables in the book "Fundamentals of Classical Arabic" (available for free download). Book 1 is completed in 18 sessions! This means that if you do 4 lessons a week, you'll be done in almost exactly one month. This is easily doable before September rolls around.

Bear in mind that my standard advice for anybody wishing to sign up for the Shariah program is to at least do Book 1 of the Madinah series anyway (although these days I also strongly suggest doing Book 2 as well). This advice comes from my own experience with Shariah Program (I signed up twice) where the first time everything overwhelmed me very quickly but once I did Madinah Book 1 and memorized the tables in "Fundamentals of Classical Arabic", things made much more sense the second time around and I was able to go through the material (especially the first 9 weeks or so) rather quickly.

I hope that this helped insha'allah.

[Jadeed]

:Jazak: for your input, valuable as always. Would your opinion change if I had three hours of commute daily to study in? Or is it really just not possible at all with those considerations involved?⅞

[mr. kit kat]

The commute will help if you are willing to listen to the lectures in your car. Some lectures don't require a book, but others either require that you have the book in front of you or at least it is helpful. But I wouldn't recommend it given your schedule if you haven't previously studied Arabic. Then you would probably have to study 12 hours instead of nine and listen to the recordings two or more times to understand everything.

You might consider taking a class at Qibla since it requires less hours. You can also go back to SP after you finish your masters degree if that's what you want to do. I think that there is no problem with doing multiple programs as long as one commits to it for a significant amount of time. The only problem arises when its SP for one week, Qibla for the next, then lessons in masjid for a month, then the Madina books for a little while, then classes at the university without finishing any of the courses. As long as one sees the course through, it doesn't matter if one tries another later on.

[Sunni_Student786]

:Jazak: for your input, valuable as always. Would your opinion change if I had three hours of commute daily to study in?

No, my opinion with respect to the Shariah Program would not change. The most beneficial part of the Shariah Program, i.e. the guided readings, are impossible to do while driving and near impossible to do if you are riding on a train (trust me, I tried and it didn't work out like it should have in theory).

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that you can't study Arabic during that three hour daily commute (take it from someone who has commuted 90 minutes each way three days a week for about 3 years). THE MOST BENEFICIAL way to spend that time studying Arabic is to memorize your verb tables (something that the Shariah Program requires you to do anyway so if you do it now, once you get to the Shariah Program, you can skip things like that and get right to the most beneficial part of it, namely the guided readings and grammatical analyses).

Another thing you can do during your commutes is listen to the audio of the dialogues in the Madinah Books (after you've completed a given lesson with the aid of the www.lqtoronto.com videos). That way, since you will have covered the grammar and vocabulary necessary to make sense of the audio recitation of the dialogue, nothing but your listening skills will hamper you from benefiting from it.

Having said all that, my best advice to you (given the considerations you outlined in your initial post), would be to do the following:

1) Complete the study of Madinah Book 1 (with the aid of the videos at http://www.lqtoronto.com/videos.html) [this can be done EASILY in a month, well before September begins]. Spend a week reviewing its content by going through and understanding the handouts for the book (also available on the same website) and going through the tests and lessons on Book 1 at www.madinarabic.com

2) Study Madinah Book 2 (again, with the aid of the videos at http://www.lqtoronto.com/videos.html). However, given that this book is covered in 32 lessons and I do not advise doing more than 4 lessons a week, you will not finish this before September. As such, once school begins, rather than doing 4 lessons a week, do only 2 lessons a week, but spread them out over 4 days (preferably consecutive days). So basically do only half of one of the videos on a given day, 4 days a week. In each video, there is a moment where the brother says "Let's take a break to recharge out batteries" and that is basically your cut off point for the lesson, i.e. if you are beginning the video, end your lesson for the day there, or if you are resuming it, start it from there. Even if you study the whole of Book 2 at this rate, you will finish it in 16 weeks, but most likely you'll finish about half of book 2 before September (if you begin Book 1 right now) and so somewhere in November you'll be done with Book 2.

At that point my brother, you will have a far better understanding of what is required of you when studying Arabic, what strengths and weaknesses you have as an Arabic language student, to what degree you can balance Arabic studies and work, etc. which would then be a more appropriate time to come back here and ask how to proceed. For right now, I say you should put the Shariah Program on the backburner.

I hope that this helped (insha'allah). If you have any other follow up question, post them (insha'allah) and hopefully someone more knowledgeable than I will respond.

Wa'salaam.

[Jadeed]

Your advice pretty much rings true, no point in signing up for what can't be done, after all. for commutes; you get the most done on them, heh heh.

[faisal ahmad]

salaam brother Jadeed,

I would echo brother Sunni_Student786's comments almost completely.

ShariahProgram is very high quality but it is very intensive and consequently the drop out rate (which includes myself from the past) is very high. I would say as a minimum you would need 10-12hours of desk study per week (i.e. not whilst commuting, running, cooking etc)

From your comments brother Jadeed it seems you are trying to figure out whether you can fit in some serious and consistent Arabic study in to your hectic timetable, not really a question of which course is best. For that reason, before you part with thousands of dollars for mostly recorded lessons, I would strongly recommend you follow the brother's advice above. LQToronto is also very high quality in terms of their arabic teaching. The teacher on LQ Toronto is brother Asif Mehrali who is an excellent teacher. By all accounts Mufti Yusuf is also an excellent teacher, but they have different styles, with brother Asif Mehrali's approach being a very patient one. Remember whether you do Madina Books or Qasas (used by SP) you are learning the same material i.e. classical Arabic. If you were enrolled on some spoken egyptian dialect course with the aim of understanding classical arabic obviously we would advise you differently, but both courses are excellent and both works towards the same goal. Also, on some of the more advanced courses on LQToronto the lessons are taught by perhaps the greatest arabic teacher alive today, Shaykh Abdur Rahim, again all fee sabilillah.

My advice - do the 3 Madina books with LQToronto and even their advanced 'Selections from the Glorious Qur'an' course taught by Dr Abdur Rahim. Given your timetable it may take you up to or slightly more than a year to complete by which time you can by all means enrol for the October 2013 SP classes, joining them perhaps in the second semester to do Hidayatu Nahw. At least by then you will have a very good idea of how much Arabic you can realistically fit into your timetable without potentially having wasted thousands of dollars. SP does or did have a refund policy but realistically how many people ever apply for a refund on any product they buy, it just doesnt happen. Also, their 'lifetime' offer is only for one year's worth of live lessons, with the lifetime aspect referring to recorded lessons only (their course becomes heavily dependant on live lessons from 6 months onwards), and to be honest these recorded lessons you can obtain them if you really look around, a lot of people already have them including from br Sunni_Student's friend's forum:

http://learnarabiconyourown.forumotion.com/*

If they offered lifetime access to live lessons it would be worth considering perhaps.*

Also, recently Sibaway Institute (LearnQuranicArabic on youtube) who also have experienced teachers have started to teach Hidayatu Nahw with videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu0gF...em-subs_digest*

They are charging $10 per month. Again though, before parting with any money I would strongly recommend to do the LQToronto videos instead and see whether you can realistically fit arabic study into your timetable. Like with anything else in life, its not about how much money you part with, but about how much effort, time and consistency you dedicate towards your goal of learning Arabic.

May Allah grant you and all of us success inshallah.

[Jadeed]

Actually, I ended up joining SP anyway since I realized that I would want to join them eventually regardless and since I received assurance from the team that I could put myself on hold and come back later to restart the first semester without additional charges if my schedule was too hectic to keep up. What's more, I ascertained that I would be able to make the live sessions in at least the first three months .

The AAR was quite convincing, and the video thereof as well... I think if I manage to stick with this until the classes start, I should have less of a problem since I can prepare well over two months of work in advance.

...I've also been training myself to sleep less. Will need your du'as, brothers. for the advice even though I did not end up taking it, because it was certainly heartfelt...

[mr. kit kat]

I hope insha'allah that you will still get a lot of benefit from the course. Obviously, you will want to do your best to keep up with it the first time around, but even if you end up getting overwhelmed by it, you will have the recordings to do at your own pace and that will be helpful preparation if you start the course a second time. My only advice is to get a study schedule that you can realistically do and stick to it.

I would agree with the others that the car ride is not the best way to study. But personally, I find it helpful to listen to lectures while driving or exercising. You can see if it works for you, but it might be more helpful for lectures that you have already listened to a couple times and then want to listen again for review. Allahu a'lam.

[Jadeed]

I hope insha'allah that you will still get a lot of benefit from the course. Obviously, you will want to do your best to keep up with it the first time around, but even if you end up getting overwhelmed by it, you will have the recordings to do at your own pace and that will be helpful preparation if you start the course a second time. My only advice is to get a study schedule that you can realistically do and stick to it.

I would agree with the others that the car ride is not the best way to study. But personally, I find it helpful to listen to lectures while driving or exercising. You can see if it works for you, but it might be more helpful for lectures that you have already listened to a couple times and then want to listen again for review. Allahu a'lam.

. I've figured out that I'll be able to devote upwards of 20 hours a week prior to beginning the job, so that should give me some results . to all for their help and suggestions.