Speaking Arabic by J. Elihay - if Assimil had done a colloquial Arabic course....

[jimmy]

Hi ;

I am concentrating on MSA. I think these days I am about to be at the earl of B2 (intro B2), so I wrote B2 on my profile.
If I reach to Excellent level (C1-C2) I think I should use two sentences for the accomplishment:

---my mother tongue's pronunciation is very similar to MSA (Kurdish).
---spending long hours & efforts has brought me capability to see myself able to cope with deep grammar of MSA.
I am hopeful and hope to reach excellent level (inshaallah,amin amin amin).

I would kindly like to invite you communicate in Arabic threads.

as to mention something little bit related to colloquial Arabic, I think Al jazeera and some Saudi sources are understandable (Approximately and roughly 50%)

but levantine and egyptian seems like to me a bit annoying (Just %20 is understandable).

[willcouchman]

At the risk of reviving an old post, wondered how you’d got on with Conversational Eastern Arabic since your last update?

I’m only a few lessons into the first book but now I’ve got my head around the transliteration (and found an Arabic script Anki deck accompanying the series), I’m enjoying the way it presents a dialect.

Interested in knowing, if you’ve got to this point, how you’d rate your abilities and comprehension after book 1, 2 etc?

Thanks for getting in touch! Firstly a disclaimer - I'm a language dabbler and this course is intense, so after these two years I'm only just getting to the final book 4!

That being said, I have learned/acquired Arabic almost exclusively through Elihay's course and I can speak a decent conversational Arabic - I was in Morocco last week and had to use Arabic a couple of times where English and French were unsuitable, and I was very pleased with how smoothly it flowed, despite the inevitable stumbles. I was able to converse back and forth in some basic social/transactional situations without searching for words or second-guessing myself.

I have also had some more complex conversations in Arabic, including some emergency translation to give assistance, and my Arabic has been complimented highly - and this is by my own admission without having gone anywhere near as in-depth with the exercises and grammar explanations/tasks in the books as I could have.

If I look at how proficient my Arabic is, having just really listened to and sometimes shadowed the dialogues - and much less so having even translated the English into Arabic which I think I abandoned doing around book two haha - and I can listen to some 'B1' level short stories or GLOSS recordings without too much difficulty, had I really pounded these books as designed, one lesson per week, I would expect I'd have been a comfortable B2 over a year ago.

We can debate such things endlessly, of course, but the point is to show just how effective and comprehensive these books are. In the realms of language learning materials, nothing for me will ever beat Assimil's 'New French with Ease', but Elihay's course comes a close second.

[ArabicAmateur]

At the risk of reviving an old post, wondered how you’d got on with Conversational Eastern Arabic since your last update?

I’m only a few lessons into the first book but now I’ve got my head around the transliteration (and found an Arabic script Anki deck accompanying the series), I’m enjoying the way it presents a dialect.

Interested in knowing, if you’ve got to this point, how you’d rate your abilities and comprehension after book 1, 2 etc?

Thanks for getting in touch! Firstly a disclaimer - I'm a language dabbler and this course is intense, so after these two years I'm only just getting to the final book 4!

That being said, I have learned/acquired Arabic almost exclusively through Elihay's course and I can speak a decent conversational Arabic - I was in Morocco last week and had to use Arabic a couple of times where English and French were unsuitable, and I was very pleased with how smoothly it flowed, despite the inevitable stumbles. I was able to converse back and forth in some basic social/transactional situations without searching for words or second-guessing myself.

I have also had some more complex conversations in Arabic, including some emergency translation to give assistance, and my Arabic has been complimented highly - and this is by my own admission without having gone anywhere near as in-depth with the exercises and grammar explanations/tasks in the books as I could have.

If I look at how proficient my Arabic is, having just really listened to and sometimes shadowed the dialogues - and much less so having even translated the English into Arabic which I think I abandoned doing around book two haha - and I can listen to some 'B1' level short stories or GLOSS recordings without too much difficulty, had I really pounded these books as designed, one lesson per week, I would expect I'd have been a comfortable B2 over a year ago.

We can debate such things endlessly, of course, but the point is to show just how effective and comprehensive these books are. In the realms of language learning materials, nothing for me will ever beat Assimil's 'New French with Ease', but Elihay's course comes a close second.

This is a really helpful response - thanks!

Appreciate this wasn’t the technique you used by your own admission, but is the “one lesson a week” intended as going through the dialogue multiple times, reviewing regularly and internalising before moving on?

[willcouchman]

Yes I think the one lesson a week as they set out - which includes going over the dialogue multiple times, translating the English into Arabic (i.e. the Assimil active wave) and doing the exercises - is the ideal way of doing it.

If I could go back in time, I'd redo it that way and pound each lesson for a whole week, grammar explanations and examples and all, until I'd bled it dry. I'd have finished the course in way under half the time I've been doing it, and be a lot further along.

It would be challenging, but doable I think!