The Connectors in Modern Standard Arabic

Rating:
Summary: A good review text for someone who has studied Arabic before
Review: This book is organized into 27 lessons, each covering some 3-8 connectors. By connectors, the authors mean the various particles that serve to conjoin two or more verbs, nouns, phrases, clauses, sentences, etc. Some simple examples in English would be "and", "but", and "or". Some more complex examples are "as for", "in order to", "provided that", and "in connection with". The premise of this book is that such constructions aren't covered adequately in most Arabic-language textbooks. I agree, but I would point out that this is also true of other languages besides Arabic. In fact, I believe a similar book for the English language would be quite a useful reference for students and writers.

This book is an excellent review text for someone who has studied Arabic before whether their level is advanced or intermediate. If you've ever had the frustrating experience of understanding almost every word in a paragraph yet still not comprehending the overall meaning, this book will do wonders for your reading comprehension.

Beginners could also benefit from a book of this type if the examples were translated, which they are not. This is unfortunate and should perhaps be remedied in a future edition.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent review of intermediate/advanced grammar
Review: This is an excellent textbook for those students of Modern Standard Arabic who have studied a year or two of the language and would like to improve upon their writing skills. It is particularly useful in a traditional university classroom setting and in fact was the textbook that I used during my third year of Arabic study in graduate school. Organized into 27 short lessons that focus on specific connectors, each lesson includes the following: a presentation of the connectors and their meanings; a selection from an Arabic text (often authentic) that includes the connectors that the lesson focuses on; a translation of the text into English; additional grammatical lessons and linguistic remarks to further clarify the lesson; and numerous drills to challenge the reader. Although this book is very useful for students of Arabic grammar, it is not well suited for those interested in improving their reading skills and/or increasing their vocabulary.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond the grammar book...
Review: Ths is the most useful book I've found yet for the intermediate or advanced student of Arabic. While a grammar book teaches you all about morphology and is usually sparse on details of syntax, this book will lead you towards the goal of writing idiomatic modern standard Arabic. But to the real beginner, it will seem daunting and over-specialized - it did to me a year ago.