Arabic-L:PEDA:Textbook for new program query responses

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Sat 26 Jan 2008
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1) Subject:Textbook for new program query responses
2) Subject:Textbook for new program query responses
3) Subject:Textbook for new program query responses

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1)
Date: 26 Jan 2008
From:Haroon Shirwani <arabictutor at hotmail.com>
Subject:Textbook for new program query responses

Build Your Arabic Vocabulary is a textook which helps students on all  
types of course consolidate their basic vocabulary, through exercises,  
writing assignments and flashcards:

http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0071478760

Best wishes,
Haroon

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2)
Date: 26 Jan 2008
From:David Wilmsen" <david.wilmsen at gmail.com>
Subject:Textbook for new program query responses

he Kallimni Arabi series of Egyptian Arabic textbooks by Samia Louis
and Iman Soliman, published by the AUC Press are superb textbooks.
Volumes are planned for the beginner (Kallimni Arabi bišwēsh),
Intermediate (Kallimni Arabi) and Advanced (Kallimni Arabi maẓbūt),
with the Intermediate being the only one in print just now (it was
released last March) and the other two to be released soon. Having
taught out of the intermediate textbook and reviewed the manuscripts
for the other two, I can say that the books in the series altogether
present the best Arabic textbooks available (whether for spoken or
written Arabic). The method followed by the books is intended to
enable students to learn from example and practice rather than through
lengthy explanations of structure and usage. The books are structured
in a way that they almost teach themselves; they could actually be
used for self-instruction. That cannot be said for any other Arabic
textbook I know of (not even Al-Kitāb, which comes close).

The praiseworthy features of the book are many; of those, I'll name my
favourites:  where variants in usage occur in the natural speech of
Egyptians, the book reflects it (for example, the book illustrates
through usage how either feminine singular or plural agreement can be
employed with non-human plural nouns); there is consistent, attractive
artwork throughout (a real novelty in the Arabic textbook trade); and
the audio materials, presented on a CD, actually feature people with
pleasant voices who know how to act (another novelty – mind you, the
Al-Kitāb series employs real actors), and the "from real life"
segments at the end of each module are presented with realistic
ambient noise (a party with people talking in the background; a taxi
ride with Quranic recitation on the radio and Cairo traffic kalaxating
outside).  These may seem like trivial considerations, but they place
these books miles ahead of most other Arabic textbooks.

There are some things that I might have done differently, the most
salient of which is the treatment of vocabulary. There is never a
comprehensive list of vocabulary presented anywhere in the lessons,
either at the beginning or the end (I have seen both in other
textbooks), nor is the glossary in the end materials comprehensive.
The authors have done this of a purpose, intending that students
acquire vocabulary in context (not a bad idea in itself), but students
would appreciate complete lists. This means that the teacher is
obliged to construct lists or to compel students to work with a
dictionary (also not a bad idea). A good beginners dictionary is also
published by the AUC Press: The Spoken Arabic of Cairo, with somewhere
above 6000 entries. In it, the Arabic is presented in transliteration,
while Kallimini Arabi uses the Arabic script throughout – except in
the vocabulary lists.

The AUC Press has a distributor in VA, whose contact info I can get
for you if need be.

There are other Egyptian Arabic textbooks.  A very close second to the
Kallimni Arabi series is Mustafa Mughazi's Dardasha (which also adopts
an acquisition-through-context approach) and is very strong on
embedding cultural discussions into its lessons.

Considering that about a quarter of all native speakers of Arabic are
from Egypt (assuming upwards of 75 million people in Egypt and some
300 million in the entire Arab world) we could say that the most
widely spoken vernaculars are the Egyptian vernaculars.  That of Cairo
is generally the one labelled "Egyptian Arabic", but the other
Egyptian varieties can lay equal claim to the appellation.  Even so,
speakers of the Cairene vernacular are understood throughout Egypt and
to some (perhaps a large) degree throughout the Arab world; anyone who
owns a television set in the Arab world will be exposed to the Cairene
vernacular (they could hardly escape it).

(I am, neverthless, finding in my dealings with Lebanese speakers,
mediating through my Egyptian Arabic, that, even so, there remain some
barriers to comprehension.  There are, by the way, regional
differences in written usage between Lebanese and Egyptian fusha too -
and between those two an other regional dialects of fusha - I use the
word deliberately, reclaiming its original Greek meaning, which
referred in part to regional literary dialects of Greek).

The other vernaculars are not nearly as well represented with engaging
teaching materials as is the Egyptian.

That said, an entire course of Syrian vernacular is available online:
http://www.syrianarabic.com/

It is probably safe to assert that the second most recognizable
vernacular is the Lebanese vernacular of Beirut, owing largely to the
dominance of Lebanese announcers on the satellite TV channels.  Syrian
is fairly close to Lebanese, although the Lebanese can immediately
spot the differences in the speech of speakers of other Levantine
vernaculars, and I would venture to guess that the speakers of those
vernaculars are equally as sensitive.

-- 
David Wilmsen, PhD, Arabic language and linguistics
Visiting Associate Professor of Arabic
Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages
American University of Beirut

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3)
Date: 26 Jan 2008
From:"IBCBOOKS.COM" <ibc at ibcbooks.com>
Subject:Textbook for new program query responses

this is in response to text suggestions for various arabic programs
The international Book Centre website offer many textbooks for adult
learners. Please check our website at www.ibcbooks.com
for our listings. Of interest to this inquiry .... Lets learn the Arabic
Newspaper, Advanced Arabic Readers in International Affairs
and more. Claudette for International Book Centre

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End of Arabic-L:  26 Jan 2008