Al-Kitaab Fii Ta Allum Al- Arabiyya: Pt. 1: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic: Amazon.co.uk: Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al-Batal, Abbas Al-Tonsi: Books

Review

"The student hears, sees and reads Arabic, and learning is kept close to an authentic linguistic and cultural experience." -- ADFL Bulletin "This is an extremely impressive volume, clearly demonstrating the practical and academic value of an outstanding textbook and the enormous amount of effort required in creating such a tool." -- Forum for Modern Language Studies "More drills and activities have been worked into the text, giving students more practice in the skills being presented." -- MESA Bulletin "One of the most complete modern Arabic pedagogy programs available." -- eLanguage.net

Product Description

"Al-Kitaab: Part One" develops skills in standard Arabic while providing additional material in both colloquial and classical Arabic. With new video material and revised and updated text and exercises, the bound-in and revised DVDs supersede both the former CD audio set and video DVD previously available only as separate items - making this singular volume a comprehensive whole for those immersed in the early and intermediate stages of learning Arabic. Providing approximately 150 contact hours of college-level instruction, parts of this revised edition are updated with contemporary selections for reading comprehension. The organization of the chapters has been adapted to reflect the most current pedagogical developments. Audio tracks for vocabulary sections now allow students to hear a new word followed by a sentence using it in context with previously acquired vocabulary and grammatical structures, enabling students to build new vocabulary skills while reviewing old material. The basic texts have been refilmed with a new cast of actors. The DVDs also contain substantially more material that exposes the learner to Egyptian Arabic: students have the options of seeing and hearing the video of each lesson in both Modern standard Arabic and Egyptian colloquial Arabic. In addition, a short dialogue in Egyptian colloquial Arabic appears at the end of each lesson. New video materials also feature interviews with Egyptians (subtitled in English) about various aspects of Arab culture, such as gender issues, fasting in the Muslim and Christian traditions, social clubs and their significance, and more. This title develops all language-related skills including reading, listening, speaking, writing, and cultural knowledge; immediately incorporates extensive use of authentic materials for reading, listening, and grammatical practice, thus relating abstract grammatical concepts to practical skills; presents narrative-based content through audio and video media rather than written text to develop meaning-focused language processing skills, utilizing two main characters and their extended families; develops reading skills through the use of composed texts derived from the main narrative and authentic texts from newspapers and journals; and, introduces grammar using spiraling and inference, challenging students to discover the grammar of the language by means of analogy, problem solving, and educated guessing. It reinforces grammar and vocabulary through extensive classroom and homework exercises that provide constant review and expand to challenge students as their skills develop; introduces students to Egyptian colloquial through scenes based on the main narrative to promote the use of shared vocabulary and structure of the two registers to increase listening comprehension skills; and, contains Arabic-English and English-Arabic glossaries and reference charts as well as a new grammar index.

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57 of 61 people found the following review helpful

Al-Kitaab Fii Ta'allum al-Arabiyya 18 Mar 2005

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I have been wanting to study Arabic for some time and have been looking to find a suitable text book to assist me. I have tried some of the more popular choices i.e. "teach yourself...." and find them not be useful. This is different with its accomponied DVD media it provides and interactive experience which gels well with the excersises in the book.

Although the Book states it is for beginners I would definatly advise new comers to get to grips with the basic alphabet and principles of reading arabic script. This book assumes you know how to read Arabic Script as this follows on from the precursor book Alif Baa.

Once you have got over this hurdle you will find that the tasks are well organised and conterary to some reviews do develop your ability to start generating grammatically correct sentences and questions with relative ease.

I have only got through a few chapters but can feel the benefit :-).

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

Comprehensive, but not teach yourself 9 Nov 2010

By keithddd

I'm doing a second year evening course in Arabic and I bought this book on the recommendation of my tutor. It has excellent coverage of grammar and vocabulary. The material it contains is interesting and relevant for adults. (Many other elementary Arabic text books seem to be aimed at children). The DVDs accompanying the book are also very good - high quality and well presented. Having said all of that, I do think that this would be a very difficult book to use to teach myself Arabic if I were not attending a course. I often need to ask my tutor for clarification of the explanations given in the book and, for someone learning on their own, I think it probably moves on rather too quickly. However, as a text book to accompany an Arabic language course, I would certainly recommend this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

Definitely not good for teaching yourself (and probably not good for much else either) 27 April 2011

By Gemma

This was the required course textbook when I recently began studying Arabic at University, and my goodness, did it make life hard. Arabic is obviously a difficult language to learn from scratch anyway, but Al-Kitaab really does you no favours whatsoever. The structure of the book is mental so you end up learning things in a very bizarre order, and the whole thing is set out in a really unappealing way. And as for the DVDs, they are generally mind-numbingly boring with the most bland characters ever. Even our Arabic tutor complained incessantly about Al-Kitaab saying she would have much rather used another textbook if she'd had the choice.

I'd say the book's only redeeming feature is the lengthy passages of Arabic text it contains which are useful in helping improve your reading skills and seeing vocab and grammar points in context. But apart from that, this book is truly awful. Don't try and use it to teach yourself: it will put you off Arabic for life, and it would be a massive shame to miss out on what is actually (despite the book's efforts to convince you otherwise) a vibrant and interesting language.