Kallimni Arabi (book & CD): An Intermediate Course in Spoken Egyptian Arabic Review

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Kallimni Arabi (book & CD): An Intermediate Course in Spoken Egyptian Arabic ReviewHaving taught out of this book and reviewed the others for the publisher, I can say that the books in the Kallimni Arabi 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 designed 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.
The praiseworthy features of the book are many; of those, I'll name some of my favourites: intuitive diagrams of stress rules to help students acquire the rhythmic musicality of Egyptian speech; where variants in usage occur in the natural speech of Egyptians, the books reflect it (many Arabic textbooks gloss over such variants for the sake of simplicity); there is consistent, attractive artwork throughout (a real novelty in the Arabic textbook trade); the audio materials, presented on a CD, actually feature people with pleasant voices who know how to act (another novelty - mind you, the Al-Kitaab series, which teaches modern written Arabic, and which is the teaching standard, 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 fulminating 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, neither at the beginning nor the end (I have seen both in other textbooks), nor is the glossary in the end materials comprehensive. This is not a huge flaw, however; nor is it an oversight. The authors have done this of a purpose, intending that students acquire vocabulary in context (not a bad idea in itself). This means that someone teaching out of the book or someone using this book as a self-teaching aid would need to augment the book with a dictionary (also not a bad idea). A good beginners dictionary is also published by the AUC Press: A Pocket Dictionary of the Spoken Arabic of Cairo: English-Arabic, with somewhere above 6000 entries. In it, the Arabic is presented in transliteration, while Kallimini Arabi generally uses the Arabic script throughout - except in the vocabulary lists. In the beginners volume, which has just been published, the Arabic script is taught, and practice drills are presented in transliteration.
If you get really good or really interested in Egyptian Arabic (of if you want to become so), you should also eventually plan to buy A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic: Arabic-English, by Martin Hinds and El-Said Badawi. The best dictionary of colloquial Arabic available, users need to know how to read Arabic in order to use it, because the entries are listed in Arabic (definitions are in English and the examples of usage are in transliteration); familiarity with the citation method used in the The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, the Bible of Arabic students, would also be useful.
Should one learn Egyptian Arabic or another variety? 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).
My contention is that learners should concentrate on learning a spoken vernacular first. If they intend to go in with their engagement with the Arab world, and I hope they do, they will eventually have to learn what is usually called Modern Standard Arabic, or that form used with minor local variations in writing throughout the Arab world (but not spoken as a native tongue by anyone). By starting with a spoken vernacular like that of Cairo learners will acquire many of the somewhat initially challenging grammatical features of Arabic, which are shared by the spoken and written forms - after all, they are two aspects of the same language - in a conceptually less challenging framework, while learning how to talk about ordinary life and immediate needs and interests.
All that said, the Kallimni Arabi series is the best place to begin a study of Arabic.
Kallimni Arabi (book & CD): An Intermediate Course in Spoken Egyptian Arabic OverviewDrawing on her years of experience as an Arabic instructor and course developer, Samia Louis has used a functional approach to create a bright, innovative coursebook for the study of Egyptian colloquial Arabic--the spoken dialect most frequently studied and most widely understood in the Arab world. Designed according to the ACTFL guidelines for teaching Arabic as a foreign language, in ten highly structured lessons Kallimni `Arabi trains students in the crucial skills, with particular emphasis on listening and speaking. The accompanying audio CD carries recordings of the dialogues and exercises in each chapter, made by Egyptian native speakers.From the basics of communicating (asking directions, the language of shopping) to more advanced conversations (future plans, hobbies and free time), Kallimni `Arabi is structured so that students learn Egyptian Arabic using real-life situations and expressions. The key topics covered gradually lead students to understand, use, and speak Arabic, rather than simply memorize fixed phrases. Kallimni `Arabi is aimed at students with some ability to read and write Arabic, who have had the equivalent of 30 hours of a beginner Colloquial Arabic class or 40 hours of a Modern Standard Arabic program.

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