Ahlan wa Sahlan: Functional Modern Standard Arabic for Beginners

by Professor Mahdi Alosh (Author)

96 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0300058543

ISBN-10: 0300058543

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This textbook is intended to teach Modern Standard Arabic at the university level to speakers of English. The text presents Modern Standard Arabic functionally, but also instructs the student by way of an engaging storyline that presents Arabic culture in a contemporary setting. Designed for use in the classroom, the text would also work very well for the self-learner. Alosh uses state of the art language acquisition theory.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“In addition to language skills, this book introduces an excellent and very important wealth of information on Arab culture as well as on colloquial Arabic. . . . The material is very good in terms of variety and relevance of topics, appropriateness of level, and accuracy of structure and pedagogical method.”— Majd Y. Al-Mallah, Journal of Arabic Literature (Majd Y. Al-Mallah Journal of Arabic Literature 20090406)

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press (February 9, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 614 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0300058543
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300058543
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.62 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 1.5 x 11.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,519,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,230 in Foreign Language Instruction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
96 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		65%
4 star		13%
3 star		10%
2 star		6%
1 star		7%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Ehab Shoubaki

for a solid understanding of Arabic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 2, 2007

Verified Purchase

I have been tutoring Arabic for 5 years (thearabictutor@gmail.com) & this is the best book I found to be the text book for my students. My students love my lessons & this book is a big part of the good experience.

it does not run over the material, it goes with you step by step, I do not know how Arabic would be learnt without a teacher, it is not like studying French if you know English..the difference starts in the Alphabet (writing & pronunciation) & grows more in grammar. So if you are looking for a gimmick book that will teach you to say parrot's "good morning" & "good night" & "have a nice day" then this is not the book...this is a serious, carefully planned, aiming at well-educated level of understanding & ability to handle this beautiful poetic language.

for those who says it won't help you learn on your own: Arabic is one of the hardest languages to learn, & it is an Afro-Asiatic language so if your 1st language is Indu-European then do not blame the book, & the book is not full of misspelling, probably you were not understanding the language enough to know what you are reading!

for those who do not like the book because of politics: the book is not political, it is a language book, but of course it will call Palestine by its native people given name & by the name Arab call it because it is teaching you Arabic in context! in this book you will follow some Arab students correspondances with their family & friends, & it will give you a background of the culture.

22 people found this helpful

Helpful

David Sassen

Fairly good

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 3, 2000

Verified Purchase

As an aspiring Arabic minor, I found several problems with this book that just miss making it 4 stars.
First, this book is in many ways only a supplemental to the audio cassettes, meaning that any study of the book alone will be unproductive.
Next, the book is bound right to left, like an Arabic book. While this is a touch of authenticity, the fact that the book is not written in Arabic makes this extremely irritating. There is, as it turns out, a REASON why all countries that read left to right bind one way and all countries that read right to left bind it in the opposite way.
These are not severe problems, but they do drop this book from 4 to 3 stars. The contents are vanilla Arabic teaching, no different from any other Arabic book on the market. If you don't have the money to buy the tapes, I highly recommend Teach Yourself Arabic instead.

12 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

almost killed Arabic for me

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 15, 2011

Verified Purchase

I took Arabic for three semesters, using this book. With the consideration that Arabic is difficult, this book seemed to try to thwart any attempt of learning the language. The typesetting is horrendous, some of the accent marks are cut off so it's indiscernible. The grammar explanations can be clarified through a simple Google search, yet it's astounding how the book can be ambiguous in explanation, almost like the author wants you to have a mental breakdown. The glossary is a joke; I used Google translate to aid me in finding words I couldn't find a definition for in the book. Yes, some of the words are not in the glossary because if you read later on in the chapter, you understand why the words change form...which leads me to wonder why the readings are at THE BEGINNING of the chapter instead of the end. It's not that you cannot work with the book, but it jumps all over the place. I can see that the author was probably trying to slowly build up on certain topics by readdressing them throughout the book, but it just adds to confusion at times because when a topic is first introduced, they leave holes only to be addressed 3 chapter later. It's a complete waste of time. I ended up just giving the book away. If you are trying to learn MSA to read articles, or to help with reading the Quran, fine. But it's still a waste of time, really.

2 people found this helpful

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Enrique

Good beginners

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 25, 2011

Verified Purchase

Despite all the somewhat bad reviews I've read towards this textbook I do find it good. And in respect to the audio I found it very good as well. I bought this textbook because is the one I need for my Arabic class and so far it has been working fantastic. I did not give it 5 stars just because its all in black and white. But if it wasn't for that I would have given it 5 stars.

Helpful

Yngve D. Roennike

My kind of tutor.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 16, 2021

Verified Purchase

Lots of reading passages and easy on the grammar. Good voice talent.

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Michele Atallah

AhlanWa Sahlan

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 26, 2013

Verified Purchase

The book can be more organized by having the list of words list all the words for students to be able to do the exercises otherwise it is challenging for beginners to do the exercises on their own without a teacher help.

One person found this helpful

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Courtney Kitt

Great to learn from!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 7, 2012

Verified Purchase

Definitely start with the Ahlan wa Sahlan workbook. Otherwise you'll have no idea what you're doing. But once you have the alphabet and words down, you'll be able to cruise through this text with no problems. An amazing book to start learning an incredible language!

Helpful

Aracely

review from a student

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 3, 2008

Verified Purchase

My professor (who happens to be from the Middle East) uses this book with us, it is very good actually. She does not use the CDs but teaches us by showing us different articles/videos (some of which she has been a part of.) and I like the structure of the book. It's very good to read. starting with the grammar is good because it helps us (in my opinion) develop the structure necessary to do well in this course.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

lianghh

Unappealing, complicated

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 24, 2011

Verified Purchase

I had the misfortune of having to work with this book for a whole year as the basis of my "Arabic 100" course at the highly renowned School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, London).
I feel sorry for every student having to study Arabic with this book. It's utterly unappealing. Stories are random and boring, few illustrations, it's not vivid at all, very dry. It's all about grammar and months into investing so much study time, I still don't feel like I can hold a conversation but merely know hundreds of grammar rules. This is how language learning is no fun!

Grammar should be taught alongside learning to speak to make sense of why things are said in a certain way. However in this book, a daunting volume of rules have to be learned and the student will, at this stage, have almost no reference points. Having worked a year with this book, I am vaguely aware of a lot of grammar rules and structures but can hardly have a useful conversation.

Other points are:
- The design of this book is off--turning, graphics, if existent, laughable and not helpful to help the student imagine played situations
- There are a lot of omitted explanations and unexplained vocabulary and terms confusing students throughout
- The audio often does not correspond with the text book making it hard to follow what's being said.
- Some of the script is unreadable.
- The key to exercises is difficult to understand and incomplete (not for self-learning!)
- The order at which things are taught is illogical.
- I feel a lot of vocabulary is unsuitable for beginners. Again, I hardly can have basic conversations but I am expected to learn terms such as "Calculus" and "Faculty of sciences"

One person found this helpful

Had. A

Simply Excellent!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 4, 2015

Verified Purchase

This is the ultimate reference for teaching and learning Arabic for non-native speakers. I am a teacher of Arabic as a second language and have been struggling to find a convenient book. Other books either open from left to right, which is completely absurd, or have explicit mistakes in grammar and conversation. Ahlan wa Sahlan is THE ULTIMATE book to teach Arabic properly!

The second edition divides the process of learning Arabic into two steps. First, in the workbook it covers the alphabet along with simple everyday conversations (name, wellbeing, nationality) then the textbook moves to substantial texts covering the Arabic sentence structure through interesting topics derived from the context of the life of the academic student.

Every little grammar detail I wonder about how to transmit to students is clearly and fully explained. Excellent for those whose first language, or have a knowledge of, English because, when suitable, it contains comparisons and contrasts between the way the two languages deal with a certain sentence structure.

I would recommend the workbook for self-study, but not the textbook. In fact, the textbook cannot be fully covered in a frequency of one session a week. I have to be selective about what to give the students each week. The audio and video bits are accurate, well pronounced and well acted, something which is rare to find in other books. The print is extra clear. Ahlan wa Sahlan made me believe that it is not only possible, but also thrilling, to teach the grammar of the modern standard Arabic to non-native speakers. I am so happy to have found this book!

Zoe

bad choice..

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 6, 2014

Verified Purchase

this book was recommended by my Arabic professor as a beginners book.. Definitely not a beginners book!! very difficult book to get the gist of, and very very heavy to carry! a bit better though than the first version which is indeed awful.

Angela Melanie Axe

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 17, 2016

Verified Purchase

Good grammar

Edward Kamel

a good help for the teacher

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 8, 2014

Verified Purchase

it is a good help for someone teacher the course. It helps to prepare the class. It complements the student book

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