Mastering Arabic 1 with 2 Audio CDs, Third Edition

I have been a fan of Jane's and Mahmoud's books since I found them 3 yrs ago and us polyglots have a lot to thank them for in Arabic resources. Jane and Mahmoud really have a passion for non-Arab speakers learning the language and they have been good enough to put a lot of resources out there and REALLY update them vs. some of the stale books of old (i.e. Teach Yourself) who pretend to update and just put on a new cover. While I love Teach Yourself books, in some respects and I value the Arabic book they offer, it is not the best way for a beginner who wants to get and **stay** interested in Arabic. Its super tedious on grammar and a big snooze fest reading it. The newer edition is heaps better but still a bit bogged down. Mastering Arabic fills the void for serious beginning learners who want to learn the ins and outs of the language; reading and writing it, not just for "tourist season". If you want to learn Arabic for that, don't get this book. I am not new to Arabic but I love both Mastering 1 and 2 books. I have been using TY's Complete Arabic for just about 2 yrs and have learned very little because it is so grammar heavy and boring to get thru that I find myself just throwing it in my closet in frustration and boredom. I dread picking it up some times to the point that I just totally stopped learning Arabic last year period because I couldn't stand to look at another grammar intense chapter. It made my favorite language, unappealing and I grew to dislike trying to learn it. So I began looking for new resources and something that wouldn't be too easy or "touristy". Mastering Arabic is perfect for that; it slowly builds up your knowledge and lets your brain grasp concepts, structure, and some grammar without ramming it down your throat. An early reviewer posted that this book is not for self learners but he is totally incorrect. That is why Jane and Mahmoud created the series (and eventually, the now book publishing company they run together--Hippocrene/Palgrave books); for those people who do not have access to teachers or who want to learn basics on their own. This book teaches the alphabet and pronunciation at a slow pace (well, for some of us, a snail's pace! lol!)so that if you have no experience ever learning, you will be able to learn and retain at a comfortable speed. If you are past hellos, goodbyes and simple pleasantries, then it will annoy you to go thru it again but in between this, there are still some things to learn you may not know. Sometimes when you're past early beginner's stage, you think you "know" all that but you'd be surprised how much you still don't know. I learned a couple of things I had no idea about, in the first 2 units alone. There are over 200 exercises to do in the book; reading, writing, and listening and it is all good to do. Some people hate doing the exercise in language books and in some books they are useless but in this book, I would highly recommend you do most of them because they will catapult your learning and retention to a high degree, like you wouldn't believe. The exercises make your mind think and process the Arabic so you imbed it in your head, not just be a puppet or robot by memorizing dialog, vocabulary and studying like a zombie. I must say though, that the book is lacking in dialogs and conversations but I think that is intentional, because they want to reinforce the language by making you think of and write your own dialogs/sentences vs. repeating parroted phrases to memorize, thus making the language come alive and active. Which is why I think, as the authors say, doing the exercises is important; because while it may seem trivial and insignificant or a waste of time, you may discover, like me, that they really get the language into your head and thinking. Also, when you go on to the next book and study other Arabic materials, things--like grammar and sentence construction, seem to fall into place like pieces of a puzzle being solved. For example, looking at my TY Arabic book no longer seems so unapproachable(although, it is still BORING and grammar wordy but it makes more sense and a bit more palatable, instead of mind boggling; and the extra vocabulary and dialogs are a big plus!)Some reviewer complained that she was disappointed in the book because the word "Master" to her meant that your master it completely and learn it. Well, I couldn't help but think that she is insane because anyone who truly thinks that you can totally master or completely learn a language by reading a couple of books and listening to CD's is absolutely crazy. You learn basics from books/CD courses but you have to USE it in life to learn it and no one ever completely masters a foreign language, I don't care how much you study, read or memorize books, newspapers, etc. It will not happen. These books made Arabic learning fun for me again. They are not too heavy on grammar(something another reviewer was upset about),they are light, user-friendly and interesting. Even with all the exercises, it doesn't make you feel overwhelmed with material to learn; its very easy going and slow paced for very, very beginning learner or those who don't want to whip thru a book before landing in Egypt on vacation but fast enough for those who want to learn at a piece by piece basis. You can take as much time as you need to and still feel like you are learning something. These 2 books will take you from beginning to low intermediate, which is great because from most language courses that is all you need to go to the next level and learn the "meat" of a language and really start speaking to native speakers without feeling stupid and you begin to pick up things in the language faster; the initial hump is what is the hardest. After these books, you will feel more confident to tackle a bit more of the difficult stuff like basic grammar--which I definitely recommend Jane and Mahmoud's Arabic Basic Grammar book, for use after these books and excellent for people who flunked grammar in school, like me and hate wordy big grammar books like the 501 series. Its laid out simple and easy for just about every person to understand and actually "get" it. Bottom line is, its a great series, if you love Arabic and want to learn how to speak it, both books will get you well on your way to achieving your goal, IF you put in the work and follow the lessons and of course, don't be afraid, get out there, speak and let native speakers hear you and get confidence to continue!

This book is truly fantastic. I have gone through several Arabic texts during my studies, including the Al-kitab series, and this tops everything I have used. I got it primarily as a review to help me get back into the language after a long span of time with no study...anyone who has studied Arabic knows that although it is a beautiful language, the basics can be dry and painful to learn. This text is so fun and is paced perfectly. The chapters are short and wean the users into writing arabic script slowly, providing a much less painful process than the method I learned by in Alif-Ba where they throw all the letters at you in one meaningless clump. The best thing about this book is the pacing, each chapter is short, introduces you to a condensed and concise amount of information, and then uses exercises and indespensible audio to reinforce. Definitely get the practice book too, because it provides that repetition which is crucial to absorbing new information. Plus it is fun and adorable with little crossword puzzles and word searches. The bottom-line is this book is concise, organized, not at all overwhelming, and fun. I have already purchased the intermediate level so i can begin right away as soon as I finish this one. I would beg the author to make another exercise book for the intermediate level since there isn't one right now, but I realize that by the time they published it it would no longer be of use to me :/ Thanks so much for making a great introductory course, they can be hard to come by, particularly for Arabic!

This morning I just completed the final lesson. I thought a review could be useful to someone planning on learning Arabic from this book so here are my thoughts. I have organized my opinions into pros and cons for ease of reading. Pros Relatively simple to follow for those planning on self-studying: The pace of learning from lesson to lesson is appropriate and while there are certain areas that I wish the book had spent more time on (more exposure to the different verb types and more grammar lessons) these are my personal areas of improvement, and they don’t correlate to any lapse in explanation or content within the book. CDs and pictures: There are 2 CDs the come with the book which are extremely useful as you are learning to pronounce the language. They also help to develop your ability to understand the spoken language instead of just reading and writing, which was one of my goals. The pictures break up the text from becoming one grammar lesson after another and provide visual stimulation to those who learn well from visual aids. Varied and interesting lessons: Many of the lessons in this book are actually fun to complete. They cleverly mix memorization and grammar with recordings, comic strips, diary entries, etc. There was a lot of thought put into these lessons and it shows, Provides a solid foundation of beginning to early intermediate level of Arabic: The lessons are fast-paced but easy to follow. You may have to spend longer on one lesson than another to fully memorize and easily apply the information within, but after only 20 lessons you will be able to speak/read/write in present, future and past tense, count, tell time, possessives, negatives, and create plurals. Cons Spelling and grammatical errors: There were a few typos that I was able to find in the exercises as well as in the answers to exercises. This was confusing and frustrating at times because I incorrectly thought I had misunderstood something when in fact, after verifying with a native Arabic speaker, the book was incorrect. If you have someone who can verify these errors for you it may just be a minor inconvenience, but if you do not have access to such a resource, this could be very confusing, “Dictionary Work”: This is a certain type of exercise that is featured in several lessons that involves the use of a dictionary. The aim of this exercise is to help the student learn to use an Arabic dictionary and also learn the plural, conjugation of verbs, meaning of words, etc. by filling in a chart. Firstly, I do not own an Arabic dictionary and I don’t intend to purchase one because of the number of free dictionaries online that look up the word for me, Also, filling in a chart is a very dull and unexciting method of learning the very dull and unexciting subject that is grammar. There are a number of great lessons in this book that can easily replace all of these “dictionary work” ones, and I hope the authors do in future editions. Overall, I would recommend this book if you are a first-time Arabic learner. It is appropriate for self-study, but having an native Arabic speaker would be useful for clarification for some typos. The lessons are well-thought out and varied and the CDs and visual aids help keep things interesting. While, the book is fast-paced and covers a lot of different subjects in a short space of time (I finished this book in 3 months), just make sure to keep up with the lessons at your own pace as some areas will need to more self-study beyond the lessons in the book. No one language book can fit the needs of every individual, so additional study beyond the book is and will be necessary for me to feel 100% comfortable with all of the material that was covered in the book.

This book is a solid choice for independent learners. It does not go too fast -- in fact it almost goes to the other extreme. I am learning from it together with my 10-year-old and neither of us feels too challenged. We did use "Write it in Arabic" by the same authors (which I strongly recommend) to learn the alphabet before starting this book. That was not necessary but made us feel more comfortable when we got to the book. We are glad we did. Details: 1) Case endings are mentioned in pulled-out boxes but are not in the general flow of text and are not pronounced in the audio. I found it somewhat difficult to use in combination with Rosetta Stone (which I also highly recommend) because the latter does pronounce case endings. This might be good or bad -- I'm not knowledgable enough to say. 2) Sometimes the questions are boringly open-ended (write some sentences about...). I skip these. 3) The book always has enough room, and usually plenty of room, to write the answers to the exercises in the book itself. Makes it easier to review. 4) The pictures are in such a stomach-churningly "intentionally ugly" style that we hate opening the book. This is a silly, nitinoid thing to review in a textbook, but it's real. They are truly unpleasant and make using the book less pleasant. 5) I appreciated the suggestions for vocabulary flashcard strategies. They were very effective. 6) Sometimes I fail to pick out all the words in the audio, and there is no transcript to help me figure out what I missed. This does not happen often at all. This is mostly a very student-friendly book -- except for the pictures.

If you're unsure, just do it. It's well worth it. For most people, starting off with Modern Standard Arabic is the way to go (even if your Egyptian dialect speaking friend keeps making fun of you for it). You can adapt the dialects after you get a handle on the basics and the grammar structure is largely the same, you'll mostly have to adjust to sounds and vocabulary. This is the book to go to for MSA as a beginner, though. I'm using it for self study along with the companion workbook, which I personally highly recommend, I learned very quickly and most things are so well explained and laid out, it would be hard to get lost. I'm a grammar nut so this book's explanations were perfect. I really liked the reading challenges and the audio accompaniment. There were some times where they held your hand, but there were some times where they knew they could challenge you and they did, and I appreciate that. Almost all of the self-study students of Arabic I've spoken to have used and had success with the texts from these authors. They're practically a standard. When I was first starting to study and looking for books, I looked at many reviews for something to stick out. Trust me, this text sticks out. It's smart, well done, and very helpful. Good studies, all!

This book has been a useful launching pad in my independent study of Arabic. Having already learned the script and some basics, I can't say with precision how well the first few chapters are tailored for absolute fledglings, although from a pronunciation standpoint, very thorough and gradual. The layout has helped me solidify words and concepts through audio and vivid visual means. The content gets progressively more interesting and relevant, introducing a reasonable volume of vocabulary while building upon information from previous chapters for reinforcement, whereas other methods I've approached tend to overwhelm with content prematurely. My favorite aspect of this series are all the supplementary resources the authors have readily available on the website: pdfs, videos, flashcards, powerpoints. Word to the wise: some intensive drilling through flashcards (divided by 3-chapter units) before working through those same units in the book will accelerate your completion of the readings and exercises. This strategy has caused words to stick in my long-term memory and has made my learning experience more enjoyable and rewarding.

This book has a wide variety of exercises, but I discovered some confusing aspects that shake my confidence somewhat. For example: 1) It is explained in the beginning that although there will be vowel markings to help you learn, these are not used very much in actual practice. Because of this, it states they will take them away at some point in the lessons -- leaving you to think that won't happen until after you've been thoroughly exposed to a lot of vocabulary. It turns out it's WAY sooner. By the second "unit" you will see them start to disappear. By unit three most of them are gone, leaving the beginner to guess what the vowels are to words we aren't even introduced to just yet. In fact, they actually place the list of vocabulary words (with vowel markings) for each unit at the *end* of the sections for some reason. 2) You will also notice that some of the exercise questions will not have vowel markings, but the answers will. Then you'll sometimes see vowel markings in the question, but not the answers. 3) I spotted a few errors before I even got through the 3rd chapter. For example, they confused ه with م. (pp. 29 & 290, Exercise 3, #4.) As a beginner this is very unsettling. (What ELSE did they miss?) Very frustrating. A decent book, but I'm becoming more cautious with this one. I'd rather they had a few more sets of eyes proof-reading through this before publishing any more of them.

Well arranged with excellent CDs which are absolutely essential to use. Answer Key to all exercises in the back is a great help. It also has a good introduction to the written language, though you would benefit by having a book like "The Arabic Alphabet" by Awde & Samano, which goes into great detail about how to write Arabic. "Mastering Arabic" also does a good job in presenting the emphatic consonants, one of the trickier aspects of pronunciation. But I highly recommend going online to YouTube for more pronunciation practice. There are some excellent presentations there for practice with tough sounds like ع , probably the hardest sound (for me) in Arabic. There is a companion website which is pretty good, too, though it would be nice to include more video and audio components. Still, when all is said and done, this is a great self-study course.

アラビア語独学者です。挨拶程度の日常会話を口語でのみ習得し、アラビア語に魅了されました。アルファベットから学習を始め、文法についての知識はゼロでしたが、初学者にとってもとっつきやすい本です。他のレビュワーの方も言われている通り、日本のテキストよりも理解しやすいように感じました。解説不十分に感じるところは日本のテキストで補うつもりです。

Excelente livro, porém precisa dominar o inglês para utilizá-lo. Tem quase nada sobre conjugação verbal no Nr 1, apenas alguma coisa sobre o passado. Acredito que o Nr 2 deva focar mais nessa parte.

For anyone who wants to learn to understand, speak and/or write Arabic, I would happily say this Book+CD pack is the best package you could buy. Brilliantly explained in simple style with the goal to get you to express simple ideas, needs and wants without compromising on understanding the grammar. The exercise are so well embedded with the text that you will actually enjoy doing them. The CDs supplied will augment the learning process. They contain, the vocals to the conversations in the book and pronunciations to words - the narrators are really good and bring the scenarios to life. Ofcourse, to succeed one will need to have the commitment as with anything. But this book is probably the best way to start - it will give you the confidence to build on your Arabic skills. After finishing the book, if you want to be able to understand Arabic writing properly, or watch Arabic television you will definitely need advanced Arabic text books together with plenty of practice in reading and understanding (buying children's Arabic books are a good idea), those in an Arabic speaking country or among Arabic speakers will have an extra advantage of practicing speaking. Using children's Arabic TV channels will help. Some people, especially non-Arab Muslims can read Arabic (but not understand it) as they learned to recite the Qur'an when young...this book is a good starting point for them to learn to understand the Arabic language if they are interested in understanding the Qur'an in the Arabic language. And for those with absolutely zero knowledge of Arabic, who wish to start learning it for the first time for whatever reasons, its great for them as it assumes zero knowledge and starts right from the Arabic letters and pronunciations. To conclude, this book is a great starting point that will take you from zero knowledge to a modest beginner stage at which you can be confident to move on to develop your Arabic comprehension skills, including reading, writing and speaking to an Intermediate stage. 5/5 stars definitely.

Die CDs sind sehr nützlich. - Man braucht ein wenig Zeit, um sich damit einzuarbeiten, aber man muss nur gut auf die Angaben neben dem Lautsprechersymbol achten, und dann kann man die einzelnen Abschnitte aus der Abspielsoftware gut herauskllcken.

Je suis très contant de l'avoir acheter.Ce livre c'est fait pour apprendre en classe mais aussi soi même.Si vous avez pas la possibilité d'apprendre en classe avec ce livre surtout pour la prononciation des mots vous avez les CD's.