Formal Spoken Arabic: Basic Course

Rating:
Summary: Nice book, but not at all intended for self-teaching
Review: This is another in the series of Arabic texts from Georgetown University Press. However this one is a little different. It is REALLY intended to be used with a teacher (e.g., it contains drills specifying that a teacher will lead certain conversations or correct responses) and it is REALLY intended to be used with tapes (at least one drill directs you to listen to a dialog and then the book asks questions about it). The tapes and teacher are an integral part of the drills, not just supplementary.

The text itself consists of sixteen lessons of about 20 pages or so apiece. The very (occasionally extremely) open typesetting yields a pleasing page with a lot of whitespace, but the book is a lot less substantial that the 229 pages might make you think.

There are English-Arabic and Arabic-English glossaries. The Arabic is pointed (has short vowels marked) in the glossaries and in word lists in the lessons.

The book has no information on writing or pronunciation, except for a section on stressed syllables. As far as I can tell that is the only point in the book where Arabic is written in the Latin alphabet.

This is the real problem with trying to use this as a self-teaching book. You must already be able to read untransliterated Arabic to use this book. If you are at that level, the book is too simple: Ryding explicitly assumes in the introduction that the student knows no Arabic.

If the book is not being used in a class you're taking, think twice before buying!

For the person sitting at home, teacher-free, I think the best alternative is probably Berlitz or Foreign Service Institute tapes.

Rating:
Summary: Great blend of conversational and literary styles.
Review: This rare volume presents conversational usage via Arabic orthography. It is very useful; in fact, it is the only book I've seen which uses primarily Arabic medium (rather than English) to give the reader easy, accessible, engaging subject material. Admittedly, the boring blue cover and complete absence of illustrations gives it a rather dry appearance, but it was a pleasure to use, and I heartily recommend it. Best with tapes.

Rating:
Summary: waste of time?
Review: You need the tapes, to be able to work with this book. However, it is nearly impossible to find the tapes. I bought this book at the university bookstore and took a university college class, and the professor only had the tapes for the first 8 lessons, which were re-recorded. He couldn't even find the tapes himself. So don't waste your money.