Alif Baa with DVDs: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds [With 2 DVDs] [Paperback]

Kristen Brustad (Author), Mahmoud Al-Batal (Author), Abbas Al-Tonsi (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1589011023 | ISBN-13: 978-1589011021 | Publication Date: August 2004 | Edition: 2 Pap/DVD

Newly revised and packaged with two DVDs containing both audio and video exercises, Alif Baa with DVD: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds, is the first part of the Al-Kitaab program. It teaches learners to recognize and produce both letters and sounds accurately through a variety of exercises designed to develop listening, reading, and writing skills. In addition, it introduces about 150 basic vocabulary words in authentic contexts, and it includes video footage of an Arabic calligrapher, a large collection of street signs, social greetings, capsules on Arab culture, and an English-Arabic glossary.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Highly recommend this second edition...The DVDs add considerably to students' mastering of the material -- Modern Language Journal, 2006

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Georgetown University Press; 2 Pap/DVD edition (August 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589011023
• ISBN-13: 978-1589011021
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #57,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Arabic
  • #24 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Arabic > Instruction

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great beginner book, October 6, 2006

By 

Colin (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alif Baa with DVDs: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds [With 2 DVDs] (Paperback)

I used Alif Baa (with DVDs) in Arabic 101 at the University of Maryland (Baltimore County) and it's probably the best beginner book I have encountered. The DVDs are great and add a lot to the text and exercises. It even shows a chart with the letters, and you can click on the appropriate character to hear and show someone pronouncing it in several different voices. Great idea. Lots of exercises to listen to and write down. And, for $5, there's an answer key to Alif Baa which will help an awful lot if you want to teach yourself.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fabulous series, August 28, 2006

By 

Swiss Miss (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alif Baa with DVDs: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds [With 2 DVDs] (Paperback)

This book is such an improvement over what was the previous standard: the Orange Book from Michigan. It is not too technical and comes with nicely done DVDs. This and the companion 'Al-Kitab' are elementary and intermediate courses together. There is also an answer key (separate purchase) which I would recommend.

Some reviewers expressed outrage that this book is not designed to teach yourself Arabic, and that's true. It's not. Arabic is a difficult language and I don't recommend that anyone try to seriously learn it on their own. This series is, however, the current gold standard of Arabic textbooks. If you are taking an Arabic class and are using any other book than this, trash everything else and buy this one. If you're planning a trip to an Arabic-speaking country, you should get a phrasebook or something from the 'teach yourself' series instead. This book does have you speaking fairly early, which is a new, more modern approach to language learning.

The general problem with Arabic texts is that there are not many good options out there. Supplemental books, such as the '201 Verbs', is ok, but it quickly loses the average student who is unfamiliar with what the meaning of the 'jussive' verb form is in English. Avoid all books that were published in the 1980s or earlier. They are needlessly complicated.

The authors of the Alif Baa & Al Kitab series are long-time Arabic instructors. Al Batal and Brustad developed this book based on many years experience teaching at Emory University in Atlanta and Middlebury College in Vermont over the summer. They currently teach at UT Austin.

Having sung the praises of this series, there are some improvements to be made. I wish the 'root system' would be introduced earlier. Grammatical explanations should be written in English more often and with greater detail. All in all, though, these two books are the ones to get if you want to learn Arabic. Period. Don't waste your money on anything else.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars room for improvement, November 9, 2007

By 

Nils Kelly (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alif Baa with DVDs: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds [With 2 DVDs] (Paperback)

According to the comments this workbook is the best one currently published for learning to read and write Arabic. Even so, it could be improved.

Whether you're in a class or not you need the answer key, period. It should be part of the book but since it's not, get it. Especially to check the result of the dictation exercises. It's best to do the dictation and be able to immediately check your efforts, especially with words containing letters that sound similar. If you have to wait until next class to check your work, you've lost focus on the task and have to pick it up again probably days later when you may not even be able to read your own feeble chicken scratching. Also there isn't necessarily time in class to (tediously) review every exercise in the workbook. I didn't have the answer key for the first few weeks because I didn't even know it existed. You can do without it in the early going but starting with about Chapter 4 many of the drills are simply pointless without it.

Although the book's purpose is not to teach you vocabulary, you are of course encountering vocabulary as you go and it seems to me you might as well learn it, or at least have a consistent place to find it, while you're there. This book is practically coy about the vocabulary--presenting it indirectly (Guess their meaning from the pictues. They include near, far...) rather than simply listing their meanings. The pedagogical principle at play here I guess is that of avoiding the crutch of your own language and instead going directly from an image to the target language, but the effect is undermined by the comically ambiguous nature of many of the illustrations. They saved some money perhaps, using free 80's-style clip art. (Remember clip art?) Examples p 65--sunrise, sun, palm trees? Hand signals--okay? p 82--palace? P 101, rooster, chick? Clones, near and far, big and small? P 119, trouble with contact lens?

Also, it means the book is useless without the DVDs--you can't simply take it with you to the library and use it. Without the DVDs you have no way of knowing what the vocabulary is.

On p 50 a word has NEW next to it. Is this a new word, or is it the word meaning "new". Fishing backwards finds the word on p 44 where it is defined, for the first time, as "new". I think it's because they couldn't find an image to convey "new". Meanwhile on the same page is the word for "news", which is also a new word but it doesn't say so, you have to "guess" its meaning. The result is an inconsistent presentation, on a page containing similar words.

Sometimes words are defined, sometimes not, apparently arbitrarily--"it melts", "he brought", "beige", in early chapters.

The glossary as someone noted is useless as it's alphabetical by English. It should be ordered by chapter and in Arabic, with a page reference, so you have a place to look words up in the order you encountered them. I find myself constantly flipping pages thinking I had seen a word earlier. It is also incomplete.

The scattershot presentation of vocabulary makes a hard task harder since in dictation drills you are being asked to pick up the distinction between similar sounds in the absence of the most useful mnemonic hook a sound can have namely, meaning.

The dictation answers in the answer key should be handwritten, since they are not only exercises in letter recognition but also in handwriting.

The "signs" section of the DVD lessons should include audio. Let's hear an Arabic speaker say what the signs say! Likewise Drill 4 in Unit Nine--let's hear the names of the countries!

Tha audio of the cartoons in Unit Nine is horrible.

Language learning materials have certainly come a long way since I was an undergrad many years ago. So much is now available that the limits of any particular book almost don't matter. What's missing from one book can be gotten from another.