About our Printer-friendly lesson notes
Follow along to our award winning lessons with detailed PDF Lesson
Notes! These easy to print notes take a closer look at the grammar
point and vocabulary words presented in the audio lesson. Plus,
read more about
language101 cultural topics related to the lesson.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access the PDF Lesson
Notes today!
Kanji Close-Up
Take a closer look at the kanji characters used in the lesson
Dialogue with the Kanji Close Up Practice Sheets! You'll learn the
meaning, readings, and stroke order of each character. Plus,
improve your writing with kanji stroke order practice sheets!
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access the Kanji Close Up
Practice Sheets today!
About our Review Audio Tracks
Listen and repeat with the Review Track. Hear the lesson
vocabulary and main phrases and repeat after the native speaker -
it's the best way to perfect your pronunciation!
Upgrade your account to access The Review Track and start
perfecting your pronunciation today!
About our Lesson Audio
Our team of
Arabic language specialists have been releasing new audio and video
lessons weekly since 2005. That's a lot of
Arabic language learning! All lessons are free for the first 2 weeks
before going into our Basic and Premium Archive.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access every single
lesson we've ever created today!
About our Dialog Audio Tracks
The audio lesson is a comprehensive, easy to use lessons that
makes learning Arabic fun for anyone.
Each audio lesson contains can be downloaded in seconds
to your computer, iPod, phone, or mp3 player so that you can learn quickly and be speaking Arabic in no time at all.
The audio lesson is your ticket to learning to speak
Arabic with confidence and accuracy, and from your very first lesson!
About our Dialog Audio Tracks
Don't have enough time for an entire lesson today? Listen to the
Dialogue Only Track to hear the native Dialogue. Listening to a
little bit of
Arabic everyday, no matter how much, will greatly improve your listening
comprehension. Guaranteed!
Upgrade your account to access the Dialogue Only Track and other
Premium Tools today!
About our Grammar Audio Tracks
Tackle grammar head on with the lesson Grammar List. We break
down the grammar piece by piece so you fully master the structure
and formation.
Upgrade your account to access the Grammar List and other
Premium lesson tools today!
About our Videocasts
Our team of
Arabic language specialists have been releasing new audio and video
lessons weekly since 2005. That's a lot of
Arabic language learning! All lessons are free for the first 2 weeks
before going into our Basic and Premium Archive.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access every single
lesson we've ever created today!
About our Learning Center
Listen and read the line-by-line breakdown of the lesson
conversation with this Premium Tool. Listen to each line as many
times as you need until you fully understand the conversation and
pronunciation. Line-By-Line Audio Transcripts are the perfect way
to improve your comprehension - fast!
Upgrade your account to access Line-By-Line Audio Transcript and
other Premium lesson tools today!
About our Videocasts
Our team of
Arabic language specialists have been releasing new audio and video
lessons weekly since 2005. That's a lot of
Arabic language learning! All lessons are free for the first 2 weeks
before going into our Basic and Premium Archive.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access every single
lesson we've ever created today!
Dialog - Formal
|
Play
|
Popup
Learning Center
Premium Lesson Checklist
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Beginner Season 1 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
15 Responses to “Beginner Lesson #2 - Where are you from?”
at 3:14 pm
Head over to the forum and send your language partners some private messages in Arabic. Ask them where they are from, and don’t forget to check your own box for messages! Look up your locale on wikipedia and see if the page has an العربية (al-[sup]c[/sup]arabiya) link in the language menu to find the name of your own country. Then stop by and leave us a post.
[rtl]من أين أنت؟[/rtl]
at 10:59 am
Hi APOD101. Thanks for keeping up my enthusiasm for learning Arabic with this brilliant second “Beginner” lesson.
There is one technical point that I’d like to mention: The vocab flashcards don’t feature vowelled Arabic characters, so it’s not possible to distinguish between — say — “lasti” and “lasta”.
I know you will find a very intelligent solution to this. For me personally, I am actually hoping to not depend too heavily on vowellization, which I haven’t begun to study yet.
My (humble) suggestion is to offer not one, but TWO additional format choices for your Arabic flashcards, ie.:
1. Unvowelled Arabic characters + full romanisation; and
2. Unvowelled Arabic characters + a short sample phrase, using that character, which provides just enough of a context (eg. a name, or a noun with a clear gender) for a lower-Intermediate/ Intermediate learner to infer what the vowels would be.
As to (2), the reason why I think that perhaps it is more useful to avoid vowelled characters, is that learning how to infer the vowels from the context, rather than from vowellization, seems to be so important on a practical level where Arabic is concerned. Here I have to admit that I’m only a newb, so I’m also happy to trust you completely and let you decide what is best.
I’m still 100% in favour of the vowelled characters in the “Vocab” lists, because it’s so useful to be able to link each word — as it actually sounds — with its meaning properly, and without any fuss, at least when we take our first close look at the new vocab and the context is pretty clear and fresh.
What I have just proposed — in particular, the sample “context” phrases — adds up to a lot of additional work for the team, so I fully understand if it’s just not do-able. Thanks!
at 11:06 am
For (2), you may like to consider providing an loose (ie non-literal) English translation as well for each sample phrase, to give your less advanced students (like me) an easier time of it. But because the translation is not a literal, the student still gets practice scanning the Arabic phrase in order to find the specific vocab item being tested. This way, you won’t have to expend so much time and energy on controlling the vocab used in the sample phrases.
at 11:25 am
I would actually like to stress the importance of vowel marks being put on everything possible - or at least giving us the option for everything, as Auntie has requested. It was always the single most frustrating thing as a beginner *and* even as an intermediate student, for me to look at an Arabic text that didn’t mark the vowels. From my own personal experience, it takes a whole lot of exposure to vowelled text in order to be able to get used to reading later without vowels.
I know that other people might learn differently, but I’m sure I’m not the only one that benefits from training a long time with vowel marks so that my brain can reach the point of “filling them in” itself later down the road. Min fudlikum!
Shukran jazilan.
at 11:41 am
Hi bouks. I totally agree with you. As a newbie who only knows a fraction of what you know, I have to support your request for full vowellization (even though I’ve been avoiding learning the vowels!).
But I do need some kind of contextual support to know that is being tested with the vocab flashcards. Whether this is romanisation, or a sample phrase, or vowellization. The only reason why I suggested non-vowelled options is that I think the same “bridging effect” could be achieved by romanisation, at least at the earlier levels, without getting people hooked on vowellization, which is something we won’t find easily once we hit the “real world” in Arabic.
at 12:02 pm
Auntie…I know that not everyone learns the same way, but my experience with the vowelization is different. Instead of becoming “hooked” on it, it was a valuable training tool.
You can think of it like this: A champion figure skater has a set of exercises she has to do in order to excel at skating. When she does those exercises, she doesn’t get “hooked” on them…they take her to the next level of skating, and eventually she doesn’t need them anymore. That is how vowellization worked for me. Do you see what I mean?
So perhaps in the advanced level that option would be important - to have the vowellization or take it away - but in beginning and intermediate levels, I say vowel everything!
at 12:12 pm
Bouks, I hear you. And I thank you for the good advice. I am studying Chinese, with CPOD, and even though I advocate learning Chinese characters as soon as possible, I do also appreciate hanyu pinyin, which is so much more than a crutch, it is a valuable tool for perfectionists like me, who want to be able to look up a word and know PRECISELY how it is to be pronounced. Let’s vowel everything, then! Thanks!
at 12:14 pm
P/s: bouks, do you realize that our request for vowellization has probably wrecked the weekend for the dedicated and ever-working APOD101 team? And maybe even the next few weekends to come… but I appreciate everything they do for us, there are no words to express that.
at 1:24 pm
Muahahaaa! We did ruin their free time, didn’t we
But it will be worth it to them…we will make them proud with our fantastic Arabic skills one day!
Yes, I also appreciate all of their hard work. Shukran jazilan, ya ArabicPod staff! I hope we didn’t make things *too* hard for you
at 1:04 am
Hi Bouks, hi Auntie,
It’s perfectly ok to vowel vocab lists so that you know how to spell new words, and I think it’s also absolutely necessary to have a roman transliteration as well, at least in the early learning phase when you’re not yet sure if you interpret the vowel signs correctly.
In my opinion, however, in normal text I think it is only necessary to set vowel signs were they are needed to avoid misunderstandings or where you just don’t know if a word is masculine or feminine (anta, anti, lasta, lasti, etc.) For me it was always important to take an Arabic word as a whole and to burn this image into my brain (at least I tried to) so that you can recognise it when it appears again and it will not appear with vowel signs outside our ArabicPod101 world!
Though I am in favour of romanization unless you are at an intermediate to advanced level, just keep the romanized text far enough from the Arabic text so that you won’t automatically look at the romanized text because it is so much easier and convenient for you to read …
That was a big problem for me when I learned Arabic many years ago and when the romanization disappeared after the first 15 lessons or so I could not cheat anymore, I was suddenly alone with Arabic script.
Like you said, Bouks, everybody might learn differently and at this stage it is just too early for us all to say what is best, so let’s exchange our opinions, we have to experiment and should help us each other as best as we can. Hopefully, the AP101 team is wise enough to guide us with their teaching experience. And hopefully, we’ll never succeed in making them leave the studio totally confused and fed up and wishing they’d started something easier such as EsperantoPod101 or the like.
at 5:23 am
مَرْحَباً بِكُم - marHaban bikum - Hello everyone,
You all have pointed out a lot of the discussions we had when initially planning this site. Let me review some of the features we implemented as a result.
The PDF and the Learning Center have unvowelled Arabic, vowelled Arabic, romanization, and English translation, all in separate sections so you can focus on one without being tempted to accidentally cheat. The podcast and the Learning Center have audio available for you to actually hear the correct pronunciation.
And in response to your comments above we’ll be soon changing the current flashcard system to provide more flexibility by allowing you to choose between Arabic, Vowelled Arabic, Romanization, and English as question type.
These decisions were made so that you could determine when you were ready to progress. We just hope to make this your one-stop stop source for all your Arabic language learning needs. So please keep up the suggestions.
at 5:47 am
Timothy…you are wonderful and we love you!
Of all the languages I studied (and I have studied many), Arabic is the most difficult in many aspects. I recognize that you have to work twice as hard as other language teachers to accomplish the same task. It’s not always obvious to us members because the work is done behind the scenes - but now it is clear that you have gone out of your way to accommodate all of us in our diverse opinions. Thank you for your careful consideration and your hard work.
at 7:42 am
Dear Timothy, thanks for showing us, your unruly students, so much respect and consideration. Everything that I see and hear on APOD101, from the word “go”, speaks of a great deal of thoughtful planning shaped by the perspectives of very experienced language teachers.
And you seem to be bringing more and more to the Arabic learning with each new lesson — eg. the Grammar audio in the Premium Learning Centre seems to be a new feature? Only three minutes of audio, but so valuable and effective!
With every new lesson, APOD101 is calming my reservations about my impulsive, lunatic decision to try and learn Arabic when I am already juggling so many “-pods” (CPOD, JPOD101, KCLASS101), especially since so much has been made of the dialects, modern standard Arabic, and the complex grammar. You’ve got me so enthusiastic that I’ve even started watching the aljazeera channel on youtube (http:www.youtube/aljazeerachannel), just to hear and watch people speaking Arabic. Even though I don’t understand more than one or two words here and there…
Thank you for all these things.
at 7:05 am
اَنَا مِنْ اَمْرِيْكًا
at 7:05 am
اَنَا مِنْ اَمْرِيْكًا
I am from America