Living Arabic: A Comprehensive Introductory Course (Arabic and English Edition) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Living Arabic: A Comprehensive Introductory Course (Arabic and English Edition)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Living Arabic: A Comprehensive Introductory Course (Arabic and English Edition). Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Living Arabic: A Comprehensive Introductory Course (Arabic and English Edition) ReviewThis is the program for you if you want to learn to speak as well as read and write in Arabic, and have a lot of fun along the way. Buy "Alif Baa" or another brief program to learn to read and write the Arabic script and acquire a bit of intro vocabulary, but then continue with Living Arabic. In these materials, Younes deftly avoids the complaints leveled at the primary competitor programs in at least two key ways.
First, he takes seriously the unique "diglossia" of Arabic, with a formal language for reading and writing (Modern Standard Arabic) and another distinct language for daily speech (in Living Arabic, the Jordanian version of the colloquial dialect family called "Levantine," which includes similar sibling variants spoken in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, and which in my own opinion is much more attractive and enjoyable than the Egyptian dialect taught in most other programs). Younes never pretends that most language learners would be interested in the spoken form of what is generally called Modern Standard Arabic, which is the form introduced and drilled in most Arabic programs today. Rather than setting forth completely artificial dialogues with phrases like "wither goest thou, and whence cometh thee," (as in the Transparent Language program) Younes clarifies from the outset the distinction between the formal and informal languages, and he offers extremely engaging practice in both. The spoken language appears in audio recordings of discussions of family, work, study, shopping, etc., exactly the types of things most language learners want to learn to discuss, rather than teaching us how to say things like "the horse is jumping over the table," as in the truly horrible Rosetta Stone program. As the lessons progress, the listening selections become audio recordings of well-known folk tales, making the process all the more enjoyable. This program also includes video recordings of realistic dialogues involving an American visitor to Jordan, helpfully contextualized with body language, different accents and speech patterns, local dress, and the geography and culture of the Levant. On the formal side, the reading selections gradually introduce the learner not only to the specific style and vocabulary of Modern Standard Arabic, but to the geography, ethnography, history, politics, and art of the Arab world (including North Africa), without falling into the common trap of becoming unobjective, proselytizing, or propagandistic. All of Younes's exercises, both listening and reading, brilliantly repeat key words and phrases at timely intervals to reinforce the process of vocabulary acquisition. Never does he subject the learner to the frustrating exercise of "guess what the meaning of the following passage might be" with no guidance (as some other college programs do). Each reading passage is followed by necessary new vocabulary, and the Arabic-English glossary contains definitions for virtually every word in the book. All of this makes the process of learning both extremely effective and hardly noticeable. This course is both a brilliantly designed pedagogical tool and a genuinely enjoyable trip through the Middle East and North Africa.
Second, Younes clearly empathizes with those who dislike grammar drills. Very few pages of Living Arabic are taken up with grammar notes, conjugation exercises, and the like. A bit of such work is included, but only just enough to crystallize the most essential learning and advance the almost imperceptible process of internalizing the complex and unique structure of Arabic. A perfect example is declensions and the case system. Arabic has such a system, and many contemporary Arabic courses continue to spend substantial time on this grammatical peculiarity. Younes deftly brushes aside the monotonous and unproductive aspects of this infatuation with minutiae; instead, he concentrates on explaining clearly the few aspects of this system that one needs to read accurately (as the case system is essentially irrelevant to the spoken language, unlike in heavily declined modern languages like Russian). For those who wish to delve more deeply into these and other grammatical rules, Younes offers an appendix with a grammar summary, as well as a detailed set of tables laying out the conjugations of the various verb forms.
I have already made my way half-way through the intermediate book in this series, and Younes and his colleagues are reportedly in the process of updating the 1999 version of that book, as well. When the updated intermediate book is released as a companion to this fabulous, updated Living Arabic book, Younes's materials will represent the best multi-level Arabic learning program on the market. I spent 4 months studying how best to study Arabic before I undertook this monumental project (self-guided), and Younes's materials stood out as the best (if not the only) example of a modern program that has finally sloughed off the unproductive formalities of older programs used in college courses, as well as the pitfalls of the mass-appeal courses hawked by major bookstores. If you want to learn modern Arabic well, to speak as well as read and write, you can save yourself a lot of heartache and wasted money and effort by beginning with Living Arabic (and continuing with whatever they decide to call the updated intermediate book).Living Arabic: A Comprehensive Introductory Course (Arabic and English Edition) OverviewLIVING ARABIC is a comprehensive introductory Arabic textbook that integrates an Arabic colloquial dialect with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in a way that reflects the use of the language by native speakers. Arabs communicate in the colloquial in everyday situations, and use MSA for reading, writing, and formal speaking.The colloquial variety used is Levantine Arabic, which is the Arabic spoken in Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and Jordan. It is one of the major Arabic dialect groups that most speakers of other Arabic dialects are familiar with through contact with its speakers and through radio and TV programs. The Arabic colloquial dialects share most of their vocabulary and grammatical structures with one another and with MSA. This textbook builds on these shared features and avoids regionalisms and localized expressions whenever possible in favor of the more common and standard spoken forms.Using maps, illustrations and photographs, humorous stories and dialogues, and other culturally rich materials, the book carefully and systematically helps the learner build the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, while introducing him or her to Arab culture and the history and geography of the modern Arab world. The first ten lessons of the book introduce the Arabic writing and number systems together with a working vocabulary of about 150 basic words. Each of the remaining 45 lessons consists of a listening selection, a reading passage and a dialogue, which are accompanied by a variety of activities and exercises aimed at maximizing the acquisition and retention of vocabulary and grammatical structures. Vocabulary-building activities include word-matching, crossword puzzles, Jeopardy-type games, and songs.The book comes as part of a package that also includes audio and video. The audio CD contains the texts of the listening selections and reading passages, while the DVD contains video footage of the dialogues acted out by native speakers on location in Jordan. Although the book and accompanying materials are primarily designed for classroom use, they are easily adaptable for independent study.Originally published as Elementary Arabic; An Integrated Approach by Yale University Press in 1995, this edition has been revised, updated, and improved.

Want to learn more information about Living Arabic: A Comprehensive Introductory Course (Arabic and English Edition)?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now