Keeping my New Years Resolutions – part 2.

Learning Arabic

Last summer (13.07.2006), on the spur of the moment, I bought a CD-ROM “Arabic In Action”, which was introduced as “a new and compelling way to learn Arabic”. The content of this self-study computer based language course seemed to be very interesting and useful.

At home, I played with it for a bit, but soon I gave up. I couldn’t make out how to read in Arabic and couldn’t find the way to get the hang of it. So, I went in search of a course that would open the secrets of reading Arabic script.

There’s not so many courses on Arabic in bookshops and only a few of them could be used for self-studying, but I found one pack (a book and 2 CDs) that looked quite promising. It’s devoted to reading, vocabulary and an introduction to Arabic Grammar. However, soon I realised that I would like to have more lessons focused on how to read and write in Arabic and more audio to go with them. I’m not sure that six lessons is enough to get a good grasp of the shapes of Arabic letters which depend on their position in a word. There is a companion book for this one – “A Guide to Handwriting”, but I couldn’t find it in the shops. Since I didn’t want to buy a pig in a poke and I had other things on my mind at that moment, I stopped learning Arabic.

My next meeting with Arabic happened by chance during an NCT class. One of the girls had a few Arabic coursebooks in her bag and she used one of them to rest her notes on. I noticed this book and ask her about it. I had a quick look at it and wrote down some details. At home I surfed on the Net and found the course website. After reading up on this website I came to the conclusion that this set of six books would be a good addition to the stuff I’d bought. So, I gave a hint that I would like to get them for Christmas.

I’ve got this set of six books and two CDs and I like them very much. However, I’m not sure that this set, on its own, is good enough if you would like to master Arabic, but it gives you a good start in mastering Arabic script. Now I’m ready to carry on with my Arabic adventure.

Set of Learning Materials:

1. Arabic In Action V2 by Linguaphone
2. Mastering Arabic by Jane Wightwick & Mahmoud Gaafar (Palgrave Macmillan Master Series ISBN 0-333-49037-X)
3. Gateway to Arabic by Dr. Imran Hamza Alawiye (Anglo-Arabic Graphics Ltd)