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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| nebojats Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5006 days ago 89 posts - 120 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Italian | Message 1 of 3 20 November 2010 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I will be going to Morocco this April and intend to study Moroccan Arabic at a language institute for about three months.
Before I dive into that crazy, unintelligible dialect which everyone thinks is a mistake to study, I would like to boost my MSA knowledge. I studied MSA for one year (2007-2008) and have recently started to work through an amazing grammar book: Arabic - An Essential Grammar (highly recommended). It seems to me that I should focus on reading, writing, and listening to MSA, since I will rarely, if ever, be speaking it in the real world. I'm envisioning MSA as a means to access mass media across the Arab world (TV, Internet, newspaper, books, radio, etc.). When I get to the actual dialect, however, the focus will probably be much more on speaking and listening... aka: conversation in the real world. I'd love to hear what books or programs other students of MSA suggest I use, and what they think of my general plan and understanding of the "learning Arabic conundrum." Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6825 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 3 20 November 2010 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
I liked Linguaphone and the Al-Kitaab series.
Arabic is not an easy language (understatement of the year!) but spending three months in an Arabic-speaking country will definitely be worthwhile. Just make sure that you don't make too many English-speaking friends. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Préposition Diglot Senior Member France aspectualpairs.wordp Joined 4924 days ago 186 posts - 283 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC1 Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 3 of 3 27 November 2010 at 10:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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My university made us use Al-Kitaab 1 and 2, and I absolutely loathe the series. I really dislike the structure and how everything is all over the place. If the vocabulary was manageable in the first one, the second one offers a list of vocabulary that's 3-pages long at the beginning of the chapter, and you're pretty much stuck with trying to learn the vocabulary before being able to fully complete the exercices in the very chapter.
"Ahlan wa Sahlan", produced by Yale University Press seems a lot more user-friendly with its nice coloured pages and its separate workbook, although it doesn't seem to be the best to start completely from scratch, as in already knowing words and verbs can help. Regarding grammar books, I'm a sucker for very detailed explanations of how things work, and I haven't found better than Karen Ryding's "A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic". I don't really like Abu Chacra's grammar book, but it's so popular amongst my coursemates that I guess I can't really say anything :P. "Arabic Verbs and Essentials of Grammar" is very small and not very detailed, but it's brilliant when you just want to know basic stuff about verbs. It's not very expensive either, and it's definitely a worthwile investment, imo. I also recently discovered Daniel Newman's "Arabic-English Thematic Lexicon", and I find it absolutely brilliant, and more thorough than "Build Your Arabic Vocabulary" and its set of flashcards. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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