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HomeLanguagesArabicAce My Language - Arabic Edition |
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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review:
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8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
Useful upper-intermediate Arabic resource for self-study or classroom study. Jun 09, 2008
Please note, this is not a textbook. You don't get grammar or vocab. It's an exercise book to practice listening and reading skills for media Arabic, aimed at improving test scores on the DLPT and similar examinations.
This book is a collection of just over 400 Arabic news items each of around 100 words. The author notes, "Using proprietary statistical methods, I have ensured that you will encounter extensive essential vocabulary, every type of sentences structure, and varying degrees of textual complexity that you will see and hear in real-world contexts and on many standardized tests."
The first section contains the texts in a very clear Arabic font, followed by a single multiple choice question. The second section simply contains the questions and the third contains the answers to the questions. Included is a CD with all of the texts read by Ghneim, the files being provided in WAV and MP3 format.
The value in this book is the excellent choice of texts, the clear, very readable Arabic font and Ghneim's excellent, clear and well-paced readings of the texts. There is no glossary provided, and I think that is appropriate, since in my experience with these texts I can get the subject and broad picture and then go to Hans Wehr for clarification of unknown vocab.
One issue I noted was that, in transferring the audio files to iTunes and then to my iPod, every file had the EXACT same name. When transferred to my desktop, and having changed some of the names, the original (unhelpful) title reverted as soon as I dragged it into iTunes. As you can imagine, this resulted in the VERY TEDIOUS process of moving all 406 MP3s across to iTunes, then clicking on and relabeling them in a numerical sequence.
Well, that was a pain. But having transferred and renamed each track I now have a massive resource for listening study.
The questions, for me, are less useful. But that is because I have reached a level of self-study. But I am sure they would form a useful basis for classroom discussion of the texts.
I absolutely recommend this for upper-intermediate self-study and advanced revision and think it would be terrifically useful for teachers of Arabic.
I've given it five stars, which may seem high (my previous review also scored five) but I think that reflects the quality and effort that has gone into what is a very useful study tool in an area of language study that has over the years been a bit shambolic and random. Clearly I am not assessing it on grammar instruction or glossary - since neither of these areas are covered - but on the basis of what the book is designed to do and how ell it achieves its objective.
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