A fun and practical way to develop and improve conversation skills in a new language
This audio-based language series from Teach Yourself is an entertaining, non-intimidating way for you to build conversational proficiency or brush up on your skills. Ten common situations--such as buying food and drink, shopping, asking for directions, and visiting locals--are each represented by two sample conversations to show readers how language is used in daily life. With simple and bite-size explanations and instructions, you will easily gain confidence in conversation skills.
Good Course, but uses two dialects This is the second Teach Yourself ____ Conversation course I have purchased. The first was Teach Yourself Spanish Conversation, which was quite good. This course is also good, however it does suffer from the fact that the speakers are using BOTH the Egyptian and the Iraqi dialects. While a person will still be understood if they find themselves speaking this mix of Egyptian and Iraqi dialects, if one is focusing on studying a particular dialect (Egyptian, in my case), it may be beneficial to ignore the speakers of the other dialect on the CDs.
The program covers most standard tourist and daily living situations a person may encounter. It is quite similar to Pimsleur, in that you are supposed to take part in the conversation and respond to questions, as opposed to memorizing words or grammar tables in isolation. The CDs come with a booklet, providing a transcription of all of the dialogs, however the transcription is transliterated and contains no Arabic script. One can use the CDs only and never look at the booklet. I would estimate that the entire course covers 350 words.
This course can be used by a beginner, although they may find it frustrating repeating each lesson several times, and most likely they would need to use the booklet as well. Someone who has completed another basic course in the language (perhaps Pimsleur or Linguaphone) could use this course as a great review and a tool for increasing their vocabulary.
CD Arabic Conversation I am making a short trip to Morocco...thought there would be some easy greetings....it starts right our with conversation...I possibly bought the wrong CD.
Great book I had to buy this book because I kept getting late fees for failing to return the library copy on time. It's great for getting a basic grasp of the language but especially good if you can use it in conjunction with getting some help from a native speaker. The binding could be stronger though - the pages start to fall out if you study a particular section for very long... It could be improved by including some more of the vocab on the cds too. But this is definitely the best overall book that I have found to date to give a comphrehensive introduction to Arabic.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
