Arabic and Business MA (Hons) personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

Many of the tins of chickpeas and fava beans that arrive in our stockroom carry two labels: English on the front, Arabic on the back. When I started my Saturday job at a discount retailer, the back labels were just shapes to me. I can now sound out the importer's name. I have also noticed that the Arabic and English ingredient lists are not always in the same order, which made me ask who decides how a product is presented in each market, and why. That question sits where language and business meet, and it is why I want to study them together. Arabic appeals to me because its structure rewards patience. Once I understood that many words grow from a three-letter root, kataba, kitab and maktab stopped being separate items to memorise and became a family. Business appeals for a similar reason: I enjoy finding the logic beneath a decision, whether a firm cuts prices or chooses to enter a new market. I want a degree that treats Arabic seriously as a language with its own literature and history, alongside the study of the organisations that trade in it.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My A-levels are Business, French and Maths. French has taught me how I learn a language. I keep verb tables on index cards and test myself on the bus, and translating short news articles showed me that a sentence can be accurate word by word and still sound wrong. My Business coursework has covered market research and international expansion. I found case studies of firms adapting products for different countries especially interesting, because they depend on understanding customers as well as costs. Maths, particularly statistics, has made me more careful about what a single figure can and cannot show. For my Extended Project I asked how far Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 plan has used tourism to reduce the economy's reliance on oil. Working from official plan documents, news reports and tourism data, I learned to separate stated targets from measured outcomes. I concluded that tourism has grown, but that its overall contribution is hard to judge while many projects remain unfinished. Alongside school I am teaching myself Arabic with Mastering Arabic 1, spending about thirty minutes before school most days. I can read and write the script, handle basic introductions, and follow simple dialogues, and I know that university will mean a great deal more work.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

I have worked Saturdays in the stockroom for eighteen months. The job is mostly unloading deliveries, rotating stock and keeping the handheld scanner records accurate. After a year my manager asked me to show new starters how to use the scanner and how to record damaged goods. Explaining a process clearly to someone on their first nervous shift turned out to be a skill in itself. Watching which lines sell out after a promotion and which sit on the shelf has also made my Business lessons feel less abstract. Once a month I marshal at our local parkrun. It means standing at a muddy corner at eight in the morning, cheering on people I have never met, and I enjoy how a free event depends entirely on volunteers turning up. I play badminton for a club on Thursday evenings and I am working on my backhand, which is still my weakest shot. Because my dad works late shifts, I cook for my younger sister on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I have built up a small set of dinners she will actually eat, and I have learned to plan a week's food on a budget. None of this is glamorous, but it has made me reliable and organised. I would bring those habits to the demanding daily practice that learning Arabic from the start requires.