Arabic-L:PEDA:New Book for Intermediate and Advanced Arabic

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 04 Apr 2001
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1) Subject: New Book for Intermediate and Advanced Arabic

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1)
Date: 04 Apr 2001
From: Munther A. Younes" <may2 at cornell.edu>
Subject: New Book for Intermediate and Advanced Arabic

Spoken Language Services, Inc. announces the publication of Tales
from Kalila wa Dimna for Students of Arabic by Munther A. Younes.
This is an expanded version of  Tales from Kalila wa Dimna: An Arabic
Reader, published by Yale University Press in 1989.Kalila wa Dimna, a
well-known Arabic literary classic, on which the present volume is
based, is an eighth-century translation of a collection of fables
about people and animals that has long been enjoyed by Arab children
and adults alike. In this illustrated rendition, Younes retells these
fables in simplified language for intermediate and advanced students
of Arabic.  Each story is accompanied by an illustration and  a set
of activities geared towards enhancing students' reading and
listening comprehension as well as their speaking and writing skills.
The book can be used in a classroom or for independent study.  The
three CD's that accompany it include the texts of the stories read by
the author.  A comprehensive glossary at the end of the book includes
all the words that were judged to be difficult or new for the
intermediate-level student.
The book can be particularly effective as a vocabulary building tool.
For the most part, the stories in it focus on a limited number of
themes and a limited set of characters or character types.
Consequently, much of the vocabulary is recycled from one story to
another, which facilitates acquisition and active use.
The material is also an effective confidence-building tool. From the
point of view of comprehension, stories are easier to understand than
groups of isolated sentences or a descriptive passage, because of the
presence of a context and a story line. In a story, the reader or
listener can predict or guess the meaning of unfamiliar words and
structures.  In terms of speaking, telling a story with a clear
structure, both thematically (a beginning, an end,  and a defined
plot), and grammatically (in which mainly the simpler perfect form of
Arabic verbs is used) is easier than other types of speaking
exercises, particularly at the intermediate or lower intermediate
level, when students' command of the language is still limited.
Five of the forty-six stories in the book are given in their original
form as they appear in unedited versions of Kalila wa Dimna in order
to give advanced students a feel for Classical Arabic and the ways in
which it differs from Modern Standard Arabic.  In two of the five
stories,  a simplified version appears along with the unedited
version for purposes of  comparison.
Although this edition is aimed primarily at students of high school
age and above, who will appreciate the allegorical sense of the
stories, younger readers may enjoy them for their literal value.
Munther Younes is a senior lecturer in Arabic language and
linguistics at Cornell University. His other publications include
Elementary Arabic: An Integrated Approach and Intermediate Arabic: An
Integrated Approach, both published by Yale University Press.
For more information (prices, desk copies, orders, etc.), please
contact Bob Kreutter by e-mail at  bob at spokenlanguage.com  or by
phone at (607) 256-0500.


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End of Arabic-L: 04 Apr 2001