Customer Reviews

Al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum al-'Arabiyya: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic, Part One

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I used this book to study first year Arabic at the University of Utah. My teacher, a native Arabic speaker, often stated that this was the best Arabic learning course that he had ever seen. After studying Arabic for three years, and trying some other books, I must agree. We used the audio and video cassettes to enhance the learning process, and these were very helpful. (You could probably get by without the video, but it would very difficult to go without the audio cassettes.) While this course is great for studying Modern Standard Arabic (the formal written text used in the Quran) it isn't very helpful for spoken Arabic. I would suggest this course for classroom, group or tutoring use in which a native Arabic speaker is present. If you are using it for self study, I highly recommend that you find a native speaker to help you out with pronunciation and conversation. THE GOOD: It is set up like other good language learning programs. It incorporates multi-media and all language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) to help students learn vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. While this may not seem incredible, just try some other Arabic learning courses, and you will see that this is a major benefit of this course. THE BAD: 1) This book assumes that you have already gone through Alif Baa' (the first of three books in this series), and therefore learned how to read and write Arabic. It builds on the foundation started in that book. If you haven't gone through that 6-week course yet then I strongly recommend that you do it first. 2) While the "guess the meaning from context" style of learning is helpful, it can be a bit much in this book. If you do not have the answer key, or a native speaker to help you with the answers, you may not be able to figure out the meanings of some items. 3) Looking back on this book now, I think that the absolute worst thing about it was that it teaches too much Modern Standard Arabic. While this is nice if you plan on studying the Quran, it is not very good for conversing with native speakers in everyday colloquial Arabic. As the series progresses I became very frustrated by the fact that I had studied all this Arabic for all these years, yet native speakers had a hard time understanding me, saying that I sounded like the Quran, or an ancient author. If you supplement this course with conversation (and tons of it) with a native speaker you will benefit MUCH more from the system, and you will probably even learn Arabic! OVERALL: If you are going to study Arabic, then this is the course to use - no doubt about it! If you incorporate the audio and video cassettes, and go through all three books in the series, your Arabic will be MUCH better than if you just use this book alone. Yet the book relies on the multi-national "Modern Standard Arabic", and doesn't give enough support for the colloquial language that is used everyday by native speakers. If you have a native speaker to practice with, I think that you will get the full Arabic experience that the authors had in mind when designing this series.

I had been trying to learn Arabic for a few years and not getting far when I finally was pointed toward this book. Wow -- our small study group made amazing progress. We're in the final couple of chapters and already bought Book 2 in anticipation of starting it immediately afterwards.

The textbook is set up like a workbook, so with the exception of essay-type exercises you do the writing in the book itself. There's a good balance of all 4 skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) so it's not just focusing on reading/writing like other Arabic textbooks do. It assumes you already have basic reading/writing skills, plus know a few vocabulary words that are taught in _Alif Baa_. From the beginning they incorporate real-world reading from newspaper & magazine articles. There's a big focus on educated guessing and using context & other clues to get the meaning. This is extremely useful.

You have to get the cassettes if you're serious about studying, but we managed fine without the video. Near the beginning of the book, the speakers on the cassettes stick pretty close to MSA, but near the end you will hear the Egyptian accent much more -- get used to those g's!

The culture sections at the end of the chapters are actually interesting -- Fairuz, Umm Kulthoom, Nizar Qabbani, etc.

The textbook is meant for a classroom, but we are using it in a small study group. Once we got about halfway, we found it useful to have a native speaker tutor join us for our study group to correct our exercises & do the spoken drills with us. Now that we're near the end of the book, it's almost essential to have that kind of support. Without it you'll have no idea whether your answers are correct on the more difficult exercises.

When you get partway, there will be dictionary exercises. It's important to get the right kind of dictionary, because not all of the Arabic dictionaries you find at the bookstore will work for these. I already had 2 sets of dictionaries, neither worked. Get the Hans Wehr dictionary, which has words arranged by roots/patterns.

Review: Alif Baa
Language teaching methods leap from fad to fad with no consideration for empirical evidence supporting the newest assumptions. Alif Baa (first book) and it's companion Al-Kitab, for the most part, follows Steven Krashen's long discredited Input Hypothesis. Although language learning consists of linking sound to meaning, the model assumes that meaning is not required. Learning is actually supposed to happen when meaning is absent, just a little beyond the current state of the learner, that is, when the words and grammar are unknown.
The first volume, Alif Baa, does a fair job of linking sound to letters, with tapes for listening, including dictation, and a bit of discrimination practice. Careful drawings show clearly how the letters are formed. Quite appropriately, meaning, which may distract the learner from the sounds and symbols, is reserved for later. A teacher will need to provide many more listening discrimination drills to teach the contrasts in vowel length and far back and not so back consonants. The book does provide a good start.
Alif Baa and Al-Kitab, like most language texts, are not designed to teach. Instead, they serve as a teacher's reference book and minimal class activity guide that ignore decades of research on teaching, learning, and language.
There are no performance objectives stated, and no sample exams to show what knowledge might be attained. Neither the students nor the teacher have any idea of what is to be learned and how that learning is to be demonstrated. If you don't know where you are headed, you're probably going to end up some place else. With this text, everybody does.
In the second text, Al-Kitab, the major elements of the format of each lesson is as follows: vocabulary list, paragraph with blanks to be filled in from the tape, grammar descriptions with a minimal practice for each element, and, finally, an authentic text for reading.
New vocabulary is liberally sprinkled throughout the drills, including sections where the student is supposed to guess the meaning from the context. More than half of the unknown words do not appear in the glossary. Similarly, new elements of grammar are dropped in without explanation. For example, Al-Kitab (p. 109) presents 5 sentences, and asks the students to "figure out the meaning." There are no translations. Only with the help of a teacher can the students find out if their guesses are correct and that this section deals with comparatives. No explanation and no practice is provided.
The tapes or CDs (with talking head) cover the new vocabulary list at the beginning of each unit, recite the initial paragraph that presents the vocabulary in a context, and pronounce the paradigms for various forms introduced. Usually words are repeated twice with different intonation each time, making minimal pairs when they should not be. The context paragraphs--not conversational dialogs--consist of about 50 words each. The written form has blanks to be filled in by listening alone, with no way to check accuracy unless one has the tape key. Some passages are read a few feet from the microphone, so that some of the words are so muffled they sink into oblivion. The student can save much time and frustration by simply copying from the key and then focusing on puzzling out the meaning.
The grammar descriptions are a hodgepodge of English mixed with Arabic. The key words are left in Arabic. Understanding requires translation. Having a second grammar reference beyond this text is very helpful.
Oral drills amount to answering a few questions, often more appropriate for third year ("Why do you...?"), with answers that are far beyond the vocabulary the students control at this level. The favorite format for drills is written fill-ins. Each grammar point gets 0 (zero) to 15 items for practice no matter how complex the grammar point may be. Rather than serving as learning drills, these exercises provide a very limited set of models for teachers to expand on in their spare time, if they want to insure success. While the vocabulary and grammar is repeated in following lessons, there is no attempt at systematic review.
Another approach to vocabulary in some units is half a page or a full page of pictures with the word or a sentence in Arabic. This assumes that the meaning is clear and that the student will, with only one example, be able to bypass English entirely and plug a new word he/she has seen but never heard into an enormously complex neurological network based on sound and physiological pronunciation processes all linked to native language and cultural meaning, a dynamic, non-Arabic network that took an entire lifetime to develop. Just to begin the pictures need translation.
At the end of each unit, an authentic text provides a flood of unknown and, with this book, unknowable vocabulary in unvoweled form. Authentic pronunciation is impossible. But meaning, according to the theory, emerges automatically, with no effort at all, from sheer exposure to meaningless sounds in a meaningful or meaningless context. We all know this doesn't work.
With Al-Kitab, the enthusiastic student can look forward to long hours of searching for and not finding vocabulary, with mounting frustration. An explanation of how words are organized in Arabic dictionaries finally appears in unit 7, toward the end of the first semester. Only those fanatically dedicated and taking no other classes could be willing to invest in that much puzzlement.
Following the precepts of language learning theories 20 years out of date, this text makes no attempt to teach language learning strategies for the students or teaching strategies for the teacher.
Al-Kitab would probably provide a fair review for someone who already knows lots of Arabic. For a beginning student, there are much better ways to learn.
Raymond Moody, PhD
Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Methods of Language Teaching, and current student of Arabic
University of Hawaii

I have been studying Arabic for a long time. This book does what no other has done for the arabic language...made it clear, concise and real. Many others have attempted but most fail to teach this as anything other than a language to study the Quran, this book made my studies real and usable(real). If you want a clear concise book that you can honestly use to learn, understand and study; buy this book but don't forget to make them sell you the video and cassettes!!!!!

Everyone tends to compare Arabic textbooks to the old EMSA series from Cairo (Elementary Modern Standard Arabic, with the orange cover and typewritten text) or some of the quick courses offered for tourists. The point is, there seem to be only two courses for academic study of Arabic - EMSA and Al-Kitaab - and both have their problems. Another one (Shulz et al) has recently been created, a translation of a German text, and a detailed grammar in the Cambridge sense - fine for some who like the academic approach, but maybe not for others who want more multimedia, etc. Problem is, Al-Kitaab is awful value for the money - study is nearly impossible without the cassettes (over $100 for book one only!) so you wind up spending $150 on your elementary level course (instead of, say, $29 on the Shulz text, which is elementary and intermediate all in one.) The large "workbook" format and plethora of written exercises can be daunting to someone just starting self-study, and the word lists seem as if they will go on and on at points. Those unfamiliar with the script and sounds will need Alif Baa first. The good points are certainly the 'colloquial' mixed with the MSA, and the liberal use of 'real' Arabic culled from magazines, newspapers, etc., which give the student the sense that he or she is really reading 'real' Arabic - although only 'reading for getting the main idea only, forget about all the details' can make the student feel that eventual mastery of the language is very far off. Brustad's grammar teaching is too 'experiential' and not enough pure 'lecture' - too much try-it-out-on-your-own, not enough basics. But, much better than EMSA, which is hard on the eyes and dry as a bone. I would suggest the Shulz book to start (better value) and work from there.

This book is truly a waste of paper. I'm a third year student of Arabic and have used this book and the second book during every year of study, and so by now I am well accustomed to many of the books numerous flaws. We can start with the vocabulary; insufficient, disorganized, and entirely irrelevant. The word choice is laughable, basic words are kept out of the beginning of the book in lieu of "very handy" words like 'United Nations', 'admissions', 'political science', and 'overcrowdedness' (all words given through chapter 5). It is obvious that these words should not come before basic words like 'today', 'to live', 'to want', and of course 'me'.

I think this is because Ms. Brustad thought that the first year student needed to say that 'The recent developments at the United Nations led to and increase in admissions in political science courses, which caused overcrowdedness at the universities' before they could say 'I want to live in Los Angeles'. Does it make sense to you?

The biggest mistake in this book manifests itself around chapter 17. Ms. Brustad ignores the fact that Arabic has a very developed grammar and assumes that the student will just learn grammatic principles without having them explained. Sure, you've seen examples of the Idaafa construct, but need it be explained before the student uses it? Her thinking and her error comes to a head in Chapter 17, when all grammar introduced in the preceding chapters are expected to be both understood and mastered (which of course hasn't happened given that she failed to explain half of it in the first place).

Buyer beware! I hope that your professor can supplement the text with effective explanations of the grammar. Don't even bother if you don't have a teacher. In any case I would definitely recommend the Standard Arabic series by Schulz, it is by far superior, and will cost you half as much.

Looking through the many reviews of this book/series, it's clear that people either love it or hate it; very few see it as "so-so".

I'm in the "hate it" group. I used it for first-semester university Arabic, studied a great deal outside of class, got an A-plus for the first-semester course, and still didn't go on for the second semester despite having wanted to learn Arabic for years. Using this book, with its inane and kindergarten-esque exercises like "see if you can guess what ... means" and "count the instances of .... in this reading selection" was simply too frustrating to even contemplate suffering through another semester. The feelings of my classmates generally seemed to mirror my own, based on the complaints expressed both in and out of class; people dropped out like flies during the course of the semester. (The university went back to the old University of Michigan series the next year, and has reportedly vowed "never again" re Al-Kitaab.)

Arabic is a very difficult, if fascinating, language, and given its cultural and geopolitical importance, it cries out for a good set of initial learning materials. This series (except for the initial book that teaches the sounds and alphabet) isn't it.

I have studied Arabic at a variety of schools (graduate, undergrauate, professional programs) with different text books, and I found this book the be the most help. Most Arabic text books are preoccupied with wasting chapters on describiing school life and leaving very little time to develop vocabulary for adult/non-student situations, such as talking about personal lives, jobs, political and eocnomic situations, and comprehending news stories.

In this series you follow people through daily lives, not only students, but people who speak about immigrations and failed relationships and fellowships and jobs and moving and being lonely. It's an awesome scope of context for vocabulary development, and the stories are linked in a way that provides a good basis for retaining the vocubulary accumulated.

This is also an easy book to follow on its own, in the absence of an Arabic teacher; if a course is not avaiulable near your or too expensive at the momment. The audio cassettes/cd are vital but the video cassetes are not, and the stories told on video tapes are the same used for the oral comprehension exercises form the video tapes.

Other Arabic series I tried (or were forced to use in classes) were Ahlan wa Salaam, which had an abyssmal vocabulary, focused entirely on student's perspecitves and gave almost no information about the gramtical structure; and the Cambridge (orange book) textbook for Elmentary Arabic, which lacked oral exercises. Both books provided answers, but due to poor editing, many erors were in the provided answers, which caused much confusion for students until a teacher was available for a dialogue(the Cambridge book was much worse in that apsect, but covered more grammatical details).

This book is the best I have found so far in learning Arabic. The cassettes are also very good and the video helped me a lot to see what they are talking about in the dialogues. I have used other books and studied Arabic with other materials, but this is the most organized system I have found. I speak several other languages, and I recommend this book highly.

-- this book is useless unless you also buy the previous introduction "alif baa" and all the video and audio tapes -- another $150 or so. it's also useless [imho] unless you buy an intro arabic grammar book, and mostly useless if you're not in a classroom setting. even then, it's incredibly confusing:

-- it does *everything* in arabic script from the very beginning. nothing is *ever* transliterated. they even do this with grammatical terms! e.g. terms such as "masculine", "feminine", "plural", and [even worse] arabic-specific things such as the "construct" or "idaafa" are written *only* in arabic script. [similarly, the verb tables in the back are *entirely* in arabic script -- and arabic verbs are extremely complicated and essentially unlearnable without clear explanations.] all of this is an utter nightmare if you're not familiar with the script. the "remedy" is the separate intro, "alif baa" -- they somehow expect that students with no knowledge of either arabic or the script can learn the script perfectly, with no knowledge of arabic, no context, and no transliteration [alif baa never transliterates, either] then use it with total fluency and no review.

-- in an attempt to introduce extended passages from the very beginning, they fill the vocabulary with useless words. e.g. the second vocabulary list begins with these words: translator, specializing in, translation, to, language, admissions, registration, also, busy with, work, evening, etc.

-- the organization is rather confusing. e.g. if you want to look through and find all the grammar sections, or all the culture sections, it's hard to do so, because everything is all mixed up with everything else [not to mention the section titles and numbers written only in arabic script!].

if you have a good teacher who's really enamored of this book and has put lots of effort into structuring a course around it, you may be able to succeed with this book -- but in that case, you already had to buy the book, so you won't be reading this!

in all other situations, *DO NOT* buy this book, *especially* if you're trying to learn on your own! instead, buy yourself "teach yourself arabic" [the best i've seen so far when it comes to intro arabic books, although it's far, far from perfect!], and find a native speaker who will practice speaking with you on a regular basis. [don't be discouraged by reviewers who have defended this book by saying "you can't learn arabic on your own, anyway". i'm doing it, and i can assure you it's quite possible -- with proper materials!]