Hebrew/Arabic/Russian at BGU-MSIH

[TerminusR]

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Hi,

This is halfway an introductory post and halfway a question about learning languages while at the MSIH.

I'm planning on attending medical school next year—I just got invited to interviews for MSIH at the Columbia campus in New York, and MSIH is my second choice (after Harvard, simply because Harvard affords a vast array of connections from name-recognition alone).

I'm decent at learning languages. For example, I got a pretty functional grasp of Vietnamese after spending a month there with no other resources than a pirated copy of a Lonely Planet phrasebook. So, I'm not too worried about learning Hebrew. (It will take work, but immersion helps a ton!)

I've read in other topics that some students go ahead and learn Arabic at the same time that they're learning Hebrew and going to the MSIH. I'd love to hear a little more about that, because I would love to get conversational in Arabic and Russian while at the MSIH.

How hard is it to balance language studies with medical school studies? How much contact do you have, as students, with people speaking Arabic and Russian?

 

[doctaroo]

There are no formal classes to learn Russian or arabic at the medical school, but some students have tutors or are learning on their own.

The real focus is Hebrew here. I think it's taught pretty well. You'll have a 3 week ulpan (3.5 hrs per day) during the orientation and then hebrew 2 times per week (1.5 hours each day) during the first 2 years.

I find that it's not very easy to be immersed simply because I'm surrounded by people who speak English. It really depends on motivation. Some students are already conversational because they spend maybe 1/2 hr every night listening to tapes.

This year, students have started a Spanish class to learn clinical Spanish which will be useful when practicing in the US.

Hope this helps! 😀


Dr.oo