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Introduction

This open-source book on Intermediate Arabic is aimed at undergraduate students who are taking Arabic in their third semester. The course will continue to build language competence using both standard and spoken Arabic. It is expected to move students to mid-intermediate level by offering them more opportunities to improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Focus will be on acquiring more vocabulary and more knowledge of the fundamental grammatical structures that enable self-development language capacities. By the end of the course, students should have internalized the principles of word formation, be able to recognize roots and patterns, use the dictionary with ease, smoothly switch between standard and spoken varieties for a more informed cultural integration. Students are expected to improve on their communication skills beyond the simple short sentence format to coherent and connected discourse. They can discuss topics beyond their immediate contexts and handle some abstract topics in some detail. They can argue and discuss cons and pros in fairly organized manner.
By the end of the course, students should confidently reach at the intermediate-mid level which allows them to:

  • Converse with ease and confidence when dealing with the routine tasks and social situations.
  • Handle successfully uncomplicated tasks and social situations requiring an exchange of basic information related to work, living situations, school, recreation, particular interests, shopping, travel, celebrations, etc.
  • Narrate and describe in all major time frames using connected discourse of paragraph length.
  • Discuss some abstract topics, reviewing points of view and general issues, providing persuasive arguments.
  • Switch between standard and spoken Arabic with ease and confidence.
  • Understand conventional narrative and descriptive texts, such as expanded descriptions of persons, places, and things, and narrations about past, present, and future events.
  • Understand the main facts and many supporting details from familiar abstract topics.
  • Reflect on the overall message of some authentic native material.
  • Compose simple summaries on familiar topics.
  • Incorporate some cohesive devices with some control of common structures and vocabulary associated with the advanced level.
  • write medium-length compositions on various topics using different types of writing including description, narration, arguing, and others, and using both present and past,
  • write summary of the main ideas presented in articles.

 

Each chapter includes self-check embedded quizzes that help learners digest language concepts. The book is also designed with teachers in mind. Each chapter includes pair work and group tasks that the teacher can implement in class and other parts that can be assigned as homework.
The main focus of the book is to expand the foundations in Standard Arabic structure in a simplified and sequenced approach. While developing a solid foundation in written Arabic, the spoken Arabic component will enhance students’ spoken fluency and enrich their cultural experience in their language learning journey.
The material used in the book is is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Third-party texts, images, and other materials quoted in these materials as copyrighted are included on the basis of fair use as described in the Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Open Education. 

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Intermediate Arabic I Copyright © by Ayman Mohamed and Sadam Issa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.