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    Al-Kitaab Fii Taallum Al-Arabiyya Part o

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    Alexandre Dourado
    This document provides reviews of two books: 1) Al-Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya (part one), a textbook for beginning Arabic now in its third edition. It teaches Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian and Syrian dialects. 2) The World through the Eyes of Angels, a novel by Iraqi author Mahmoud Saeed translated to English. Though fiction, it has autobiographical elements and tells the story of a boy growing up in Mosul, Iraq in the 1960s-1970s. It provides insights into life in Iraq during that time period.

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    Al-Kitaab Fii Taallum Al-Arabiyya Part o

    Uploaded by

    Alexandre Dourado
    691 views3 pages
    This document provides reviews of two books: 1) Al-Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya (part one), a textbook for beginning Arabic now in its third edition. It teaches Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian and Syrian dialects. 2) The World through the Eyes of Angels, a novel by Iraqi author Mahmoud Saeed translated to English. Though fiction, it has autobiographical elements and tells the story of a boy growing up in Mosul, Iraq in the 1960s-1970s. It provides insights into life in Iraq during that time period.

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    al kitaab arabik alfabet

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    This document provides reviews of two books: 1) Al-Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya (part one), a textbook for beginning Arabic now in its third edition. It teaches Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian and Syrian dialects. 2) The World through the Eyes of Angels, a novel by Iraqi author Mahmoud Saeed translated to English. Though fiction, it has autobiographical elements and tells the story of a boy growing up in Mosul, Iraq in the 1960s-1970s. It provides insights into life in Iraq during that time period.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    691 views3 pages

    Al-Kitaab Fii Taallum Al-Arabiyya Part o

    Uploaded by

    Alexandre Dourado
    This document provides reviews of two books: 1) Al-Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya (part one), a textbook for beginning Arabic now in its third edition. It teaches Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian and Syrian dialects. 2) The World through the Eyes of Angels, a novel by Iraqi author Mahmoud Saeed translated to English. Though fiction, it has autobiographical elements and tells the story of a boy growing up in Mosul, Iraq in the 1960s-1970s. It provides insights into life in Iraq during that time period.

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    You are on page 1of 3

    REVIEWS

    Al-Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya (part one): A te tbook for


    beginning Arabic. By Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud al-Batal, and
    Abbas al-Tonsi. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
    2011. Pp. xxx, 351. $32 (paperback). ISBN: 9781589017474.

    Al-Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya (part one) is the extensively


    revised third edition of the existing manual. Like the former editions,
    it intends to teach two varieties of Arabic at once: written formal
    Arabic (Fusha) and colloquial Arabic (Egyptian and Syrian). It does,
    however, mark the beginning of “a new phase in the evolution of this
    material both technologically and pedagogically.” To introduce the
    authors, who have been collaborating on this project since 1995,
    Kristen Brustad and Mahmoud al-Batal are both associate professors
    of Arabic at the University of Austin, Texas, and Abbas al-Tonsi is
    senior lecturer at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service
    in Qatar.
    “Al-Kitaab Arabic Language Program” includes four textbooks:
    Alif baa: Introduction to letters and sounds, and the three parts of Al-
    Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya. Like the previous editions,
    exercises, video, and audio featured in Al-Kitaab are also available
    on the companion website at the following address:
    alkitaabtextbook.com.
    Al-Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya (part one) is intended for
    beginners; it aims to “help [them] achieve intermediate-level
    proficiency in speaking, reading, listening and writing Arabic,” as
    well as “to introduce [them] to aspects of Arabic culture.” The book,
    which reads from right to left, uses strictly Arabic script to write
    Arabic, sometimes embedding Arabic words in the English text. It
    opens with two extensive introductions to the third edition (7 and 8
    pages long respectively), addressed to teachers and students.
    This textbook is structured around the story of Maha and Khalid
    Abu El-Ila and their family, presented in both Fusha and spoken
    Egyptian. The novelty of the third edition is the appearance of new
    characters originating from Syria: Nisreen and Tariq Al-Nuuri, and
    Reviews 103

    their family. This in turn allows the authors to introduce spoken


    Syrian (called “Levantine”) to the materials. Nisreen and Tariq Al-
    Nuuri’s story is presented on video only, driving students to watch
    and listen, and is completed with reading and speaking activities.
    Part One of Al-Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya consists of
    thirteen lessons dedicated to various topics connected to daily life,
    such as location information, introductions, family, weather, etc.
    Within each lesson students will find recurrent categories:

    - Vocabulary (‫)داتالمفر‬
    - Grammatical rules (‫)القواعد‬
    - The story in dialectal Arabic (‫)القصة بالعامية‬
    - The story in formal Arabic (‫)القصة بالفصحى‬
    - Cultural material (‫)الثقاقة‬
    - The dialog (‫)الحوار‬
    - Review exercises (‫)تمارين المراجعة‬

    Lessons include lots of listening and writing exercises. The


    desired learning outcomes of the lesson are stated at the beginning of
    each chapter. The authors strongly encourage an “active” approach
    to language learning, recommending to the students to think about
    “how to say things in Arabic for fun,” to talk to themselves, and to
    constantly question what they are learning, etc. Upon completion of
    the course, students are supposed to be able to:

    - entertain basic communication on daily-life topics


    - read and write simple texts on topics connected to daily life
    - know the differences between formal and spoken Arabic
    - possess “a general understanding of aspects of Arab culture”

    All lessons rely on the audio and video materials featured on the
    accompanying DVD. One needs to open files before launching the
    DVD: it is the only way to navigate between lessons, and within a
    lesson between materials. Audio and video files are in Mp3 and Mp4
    formats, and can therefore be read by any computer or DVD player.
    At the end of the volume (p. 293), the learner will find
    “Grammar and reference charts,” a “Grammar index,” and two
    glossaries, one English/Arabic and one Arabic/English, as well as an
    “Answer key.” The back cover states that any purchase by a
    104 MELA Notes 86 (2013)
    language lab will automatically come with rights to post an
    electronic copy of the DVD content on a secure (password-protected)
    network for use by students and faculty at the institution. The book is
    printed on acid-free paper.
    Al-Kitaab fii taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya (part one) includes a colorful
    textbook, and a plethora of audio and video materials. In addition to
    providing rich linguistic and cultural information, this ambitious
    comprehensive program offers learners and teachers a unique
    opportunity to approach Arabic in a communicative and interactive
    way.

    ANAÏS SALAMON
    MCGILL UNIVERSITY

    ______________________________________________

    The World through the Eyes of Angels. By Mahmoud Saeed.


    Translated from the Arabic by Samuel Salter, Rafah Abuinnab,
    and Zahra Jishi. Middle East Literature in Translation. Syracuse,
    NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011. Pp. ix, 204. $17.95
    (paperback). ISBN: 9780815609919.

    Mahmoud Saeed, a distinguished and award-winning writer from


    Mosul, Iraq, has written more than twenty novels and short story
    collections, and numerous articles. Saeed decided to become a writer
    at the age of twenty, when he was awarded first place for a short
    story competition. Having been imprisoned several times, Saeed left
    Iraq in 1985 after the government banned the publication of some of
    his novels. Currently, Saeed is an instructor of Arabic language,
    culture, and Iraqi political history at DePaul University. His novel
    The World through the Eyes of Angels is the 2010 winner of the King
    Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation of
    Arabic Literature Award.
    Although this is a work of fiction, Mahmoud Saeed’s book The
    World through the Eyes of Angels gives the impression of being
    semi-autobiographical. The book is divided into twelve parts, and the
    story is told by a boy named Saleh. The purpose of this book is to tell
    about a young boy who is growing up in Mosul, Iraq, in the mid-

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