Customer Reviews

The Top 1,000 Words for Understanding Media Arabic (Arabic Edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This does have many words that you could find in the dictionary, but it also has many useful expressions that are not found in the dictionary. Every time I look through this I find a new expression that would be helpful for my speaking or writing. However, I wish it was a little better organized (maybe alphabetized) so that it would be easier to reference while reading the news.

Like most resources for those of us learning Arabic, this is disappointing. Others have already pointed out the lack of an alphabetized list of the words (preferably both in English and Arabic), but it's worth repeating since that lack makes the book too hard to use. Also, I noticed that on pp. 41-42, where words for various political situations and problems are listed, the book contains the word "hesitation" but not the word "crisis." That's a strange decision.

Anyone who has spent significant time studying Arabic on their own will know that 90% of the learning materials out there are, for various reasons, not useful. Unfortunately this book ranks among the least useful of them. Its only justifiable use is for the rote memorization of terms. I bought this book as a reference for translating news articles, and foolishly assumed it would be arranged into some sort of logical order. While the forward claims that a thematic order has been imposed within the subjects of the chapters, and asserts that alphabetization "has a negative impact on the learning of vocabulary lists."

Any decent dictionary or comprehensive vocabulary builder could replace this book in terms of content and usefulness, while offering far more to the user besides. I would not recommend purchasing this book, and will not attempt to sell it for the same reason.

This is a useful resource IF you understand the stated purpose.

The book is a collection of glossaries of common media vocab items, collated by subject area. The way to use a book like this is to sit down and attempt to crash memorise as many terms within a chapter, for example economics. Drill and test yourself. Now open an Arabic newspaper to the economics section and have a go at reading an article or two. You might be pleasantly surprised.

While it would have been perhaps additionally useful to provide an alphabetic list (perhaps as an appendix) the book is NOT meant as a tool to discern the meaning of terms with which you are unfamiliar. If you buy this book and think it is an alphabetical listing to aide you in reading the papers, then you are suffering under a misapprehension. Any review on that basis is NOT fair to the intended purpose and explained means of delivery of the author (as clearly stated in the forward). Kendall tells you why the vocab isn't grouped alphabetically - because to do so has been shown to hinder retention.

If you are one of the readers or reviewers who made the error above, I would recommend that you purchase an incredibly useful tool that is very commonly available - indeed you may have seen them in your local bookshop. We call these texts "dictionaries". There are many available in small and large sizes, in modern editions, updated regularly. You might like to try one.

Forgive the sarcasm, but I really think it is unfair to the author to judge an orange on the assumption it is an apple, or chalk on the misapprehension it is cheese.

Ma sallamah.

Disappointing because it is more like a 1000 word dictionary. I was expecting more phrases and terms difficult to look up in a standard dictionary. It has many words like malik(king), malika(queen) which an average person knows already and even if not can easily look up in a dictionary.

It is still however useful for a beginner as a quick reference. The book could have been improved by adding flashcards and listing the words alphabetically. A fair price would have been around $5 to $6.

As a student of Arabic, I consider this book a gem. It helps increase my vocabulary and identify key words in arabic media. Arranged in an easy format for ease of reference. But you do need to have a basic knowledge of Arabic. For a small 90-page book, its a big help.

Finally something really practical - a huge confidence booster and time

saver.

While this book is extremely desirable for the vocabulary alone, it would be much better if it was arranged in alphabetical order, or had an index. I bought this book to help me translate news articles. I had to make my own index in order to use this for translation.

This book has been very useful for learning vocabulary - and a great list from which to make flash cards. I read a couple other reviews complaining about the book not being in alphabetical order, perhaps they didn't (or did!) read the introduction, but it expresses clearly that the randomization of vocabulary is on purpose, for the benefit of learning, effectively and efficiently. This volume does not resemble a reference book, as you're not supposed to keep it at your side when you're reading the paper - as it's clearly not a dictionary. It's a study tool that you're supposed to use to learn vocabulary - e.g. I used it in conjunction with a college course on media Arabic. And lists that are in alphabetical order encourage you to only start at the beginning of the alphabet ... and perhaps stop stop at G today... and never get to the end of whatever section you're on. There is less than 20 words/phrases/expressions on each page, so it hasn't been hard at all to go through each section, of which there are only 8. I decided to read and focus on one section per weekend day and after a month you're done a good amount of studying and have gone through the entire book at least once. As we all know, studying Arabic isn't like studying French or Spanish, so if you don't have the patience, i don't have the sympathy.

This book is pretty much what everyone says it is. It is a big list of words without a ton of intuitive organization beyond general categories like elections, politics and military. The Army has always based its test and language teaching on items culled from the news, so a book like this would be very helpful for military linguists. It's probably also a decent selection of words for any student who wants to learn how to read the news. It would probably be most useful for people who are the types who like to learn a word a day, or memorize lists. It might be more useful if it were organized like a dictionary.