Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I met with a partner daily for an hour each day for 6-8 weeks, and we learned a great deal from this book. It is definitely good enough for self-study. The one problem is that for the vocabulary and cultural activities, it assumes you have a teacher to fill in the details, so we didn't get much out of those. We did learn to read, write, and pronounce all the sounds, and it's terrifically neat that I can now read basic Arabic signs which are in pictures in the newspaper.

I've taken Spanish and Russian, so I'm no stranger to learning a new language. I have had some rudimentary Arabic that was based on phonetics, so I never really learned the letters. This book drills in each letter with repetition, so you write each letter multiple times, and utilize it in words so you know the initial, medial, and final positions. The book isn't perfect, and without a solution manual you are in the dark as to whether you are getting the dictation down right. I would recommend either taking an Arabic class (as I am doing) that uses this book or buying the solutions manual to go it alone. As my instructor states, this book and Al Kitaab #1 are the foundation, if you can make it through these books you are on your way, but it isn't easy. If I had to do this on my own, I would be taking longer, but the intense schedule of the class is keeping the words and letters fresh in my brain. Bottom line, if you are buying this for school, it's good to go. If you are buying it to go it alone, get the solution manual.

To is by far the best package for learning the arabic script/alphabet. If you can only afford one thing, I would definitely buy this. You may find other books more helpful but the addition of the DVD makes this indispensable.

There are a few reasons why this book is superior to other Arabic books that attempt to teach the script. However there is one that stands out in my mind.

The teaching of arabic letters as unique sounds apart from the English alphabet and the exact position of the tongue in the mouth, throat constriction, level of aspiration, and great tips for practicing foreign sounds and exercises.

When speaking a language, I pride myself on the accurate pronunciation of it. Once past the conversation level, pronunciation of the language is my priority and I believe that Alif Baa does an excellent, superb job of this. Especially clearing up the tricky difference between Thaa and Dhaa. I knew of the difference, but could not separate it in speech. Now I do it with much greater accuracy.

I recommend this book whole heartedly.

Addendum: I was reading the reviews and someone said it assumed that you had a teacher. This is true and not true at the same time. MAKE SURE YOU BUY THE ANSWER KEY, WHICH IS ONLY $5 EVEN BEFORE YOU BUY THIS BOOK. When you buy this answer key, this becomes the best way to teaching yourself Arabic script.

I got this book a couple of months ago to try and learn to read a little Arabic before I left for a second trip to Cairo. I got through with about half of the alphabet, but I was still able to read signs and packages while in Egypt. I took the book with me so I could look up the letters I had not learned and it was great. It started from square one so I didn't have to know anything about the language. Since I had already learned to speak some Arabic, it was neat to see how the words were written. I can't wait to finish all of the lessons and build my written Arabic vocabulary.

The DVDs are priceless with helping you to sound out the letters and words while you are learning. The visual parts of the DVDs are great too. They show you the movements of the mouth when making the various sounds in the Arabic alphabet. This is very important since several letters are slightly different in sound and you need to see how it is mouthed. The other visuals showing how to write the characters are also fantastic. This has to be the fastest, easiest way to learn to read a foreign language with a completely different alphabet.

If you are serious about learning Arabic - this is the place to start. It is full of exercises that delight the academic mind. The calligraphy is beautiful, and the vocalizations of the sounds are very clear. Because of this coursebook, my other arabic materials are beginning to make sense.

I think this is the best book on the market for beginners. The DVDs are very helpful and an innovative approach to teaching the writing system. The only thing I didn't like was at the end of units when there is vocabulary I often found that the pictures were not at all clear as to the meaning of the word. In other words what you thought the picture was representing was not actual what the word meant.

If you'll notice the book comes with 2 DVDs which have the videos on them; They came with mine as well. People should post a review on the proper item instead of ruining the reputation of something that you have not even tried out. In addition, the answer key only cost me $4 extra when ordering from Amazon which is hardly an inconvenience.

This book had me reading, writing, and prounouncing Arabic properly within one month, so I would have to say that it is an excellent book. If you follow the exercises and make sure to get the pronunciation down pat then you will be fooling Arab people into thinking that you speak their language like I did!

This book series is so good that UC Berkeley uses it for all of their beginning and intermediate Arabic classes; check it out for yourself and go to their online textbook ordering site and search for the books for Arabic 1A, 1B, etc...

Lastly, this book is not intended to be a COMPLETE self-guided course on Arabic, as Arabic is a very deep and rich language that takes many years to fully master and understand but that is why they released the three volumes of Al-Kitaab which build upon what you have learned in this book and teach you grammar, morphology, and much vocabulary; again people, do a little research first and make sure you are reviewing the proper item instead of ruining the reputation of something unrelated.