TO THE TEACHER

The philosophy behind this textbook represents a departure from that of

previous alphabet textbooks in several ways. First, it is our belief that everyone can
produce Arabic sounds accurately, and that it is necessary to encourage and expect
accuracy from the outset. Not only is this the only opportunity you and the students
will have to focus all of your attention on the phonetic aspects of Arabic, it is also
better to form good habits from the start. Second, we believe that all language skills
are important, and that they reinforce each other. The ability to hear the difference
between, for example, and , is a necessary prelude to being able to produce
them, and the ability to do both will aid in mastering Arabic morphology, in writing,
and in retaining vocabulary. Third, we believe that Arabic is one language, albeit
one rich in varieties, and that each variety embraces its own level or part of the
culture. In order to understand the language and the culture, students need to learn
both formal and spoken varieties. It is the goal of this textbook series to provide a
framework for introducing students to both varieties while focusing on the formal;
the extent to which you emphasize each variety will depend on your program and
the needs of your students. We have found through experience that this approach
does not confuse students, as long as spoken variants are introduced as vocabulary
items and expressions. On the contrary, it adds to their pool of vocabulary, and,
more importantly, gives them the tools they need to begin communicating with
native speakers they might meet or know in their immediate environment, who will
not speak to them in formal Arabic.
The material in this textbook can be covered in twenty to twenty-five contact
hours, depending on the amount of time devoted to the various activities, and assuming
that the student will devote one to two hours a night to doing the drills. The book is
designed so that the student can do much of his or her learning outside of class.
Class time should be spent on practice rather than explanations. We believe that it is
crucial for the students to learn the sounds correctly from the outset. In order to
help them do so, spend as much class time as possible on activities involving listening,
dictation, and reading aloud. Our approach stresses dictation because we believe
that the mastery of sounds and the ability to relate sounds and writing must be
developed early. Repeat sounds and words many times over, and have students
repeat as a group to take the pressure off individual performance. It takes several
repetitions of a new or unfamiliar sound in order to identify it, and several more to
be able to produce it.
The accompanying video tape contains some basic dialogues that were filmed
in Egypt in the Cairene dialect. Our decision to use colloquial Arabic was a natural
consequence of our desire to include a cultural component in these materials, and to
use language forms appropriate to that component. Many culturally important
expressions belong to the colloquial register, and introducing the students to them
as they naturally occur helps them to feel that they are learning to communicate
with Arabs. We decided to use the dialect of Cairo in this first edition of the
materials because it is the most widely understood among Arabic speakers. However,
it is not our desire to impose the teaching of the Egyptian dialect on anyone; if your
own dialect differs, we encourage you to teach your students the forms with which

you are comfortable. (We do not believe you will find the differences to be very
great.)
We hope that you will make use of the accompanying video tape not only for
its linguistic value but also for its visual and cultural content. You will need to use
the tape in class in order to explain the content. We have distributed the eighteen
dialogues over the first nine units. While we have included short cultural notes in
the book meant to accompany the video scenes, we have not provided detailed
lesson plans in order to give you the flexibility to proceed as you wish and focus on
the aspects you deem important. Use the tape and cultural notes as starting points,
encourage questions and discussion, and expand as you wish. We suggest that you
have the students listen to each dialogue several times as follows: (1) Before explaining
anything, have them watch for general content, then discuss, and see what they
understood. (2) Have them watch again, as many times as necessary, to listen for
individual words or expressions, followed by discussion and explanation of what
they heard. (3) Have them watch a final time, after they have understood what is
said, to focus on how it is said. After that, the students should be ready to try out the
expressions themselves, so let them make up their own situations and act them out.
Your own contribution will be vital to the success of these materials.
Do not worry about writing out the dialogues. It is good training for the
students to develop confidence in their aural and oral skills at this stage, and they
need to be encouraged to rely on their phonographic rather than their photographic
memory. Everybody has natural aural and oral language learning skills, because
nobody learned their native language through reading. As the students master the
alphabet, they will be able to study from the transcribed texts in the appendix.
Of course, no textbook can take the place of a good teacher. It is our hope
that these materials will help you to enrich your classroom and make learning Arabic
an enjoyable experience for your students.