Ahlan wa Sahlan: Letters and Sounds of the Arabic Language: With Online Media

I bought this workbook (and the accompanying textbook) for a first-semester intro to Arabic class. It is absolutely necessary to study this workbook all the way through before cracking open the textbook. I would not recommend self-study, although you could probably get by using this book and knowing someone who actually knows Modern Standard Arabic to help you out.The workbook does a good job of introducing the Arabic characters--first it introduces the non-connectors, so students will remember them (it helps that all of said sounds are found in English too). The rest of the letters are introduced by their similarity in form, with the exception of the short vowels (which seem just thrown in their location, but it was as good a place as any). The table in one of the appendices is really useful for remembering what sound goes with which letter. For some of the sounds not found in English, explanations and diagrams of where to produce the sound are given.That said, the way the characters were introduced as written was off-putting. Many of the more confusing letters have no explanation as to how to write the initial, medial, and final forms (trying to figure out how write the medial form of ' on your own without a calligraphy pen--thank goodness for my professor). If you actually do the writing and dictation exercises, your handwriting will get much better, and there are rather a lot of them.The CD is of average to poor quality. Many of the tracks do not match up with what is given in the answer guide, frustrating if you're learning on your own, and a few of the later tracks have strange pauses in between dictation words. The DVD is a bit better, although this may just be because we can see the speaker's face (this helps a lot). For both, there is a lot of background noise present that can be either distracting or comforting, depending on the sort of person you are.The vocabulary lists at the end of each unit correspond for the most part with what was in each section. It is annoying when the heading for each list insists that only the words with characters you have not learned yet are written with Latin characters. Oddly, some of the words mentioned are found only when listening to the CD, and others only in the vocab lists.Cultural notes on the different dialects kept me very entertained. This workbook is easier to follow if you're already a little bit familiar with the Arab world--fun fact, the vocab list for unit 4 gave the capital of Palestine as Jerusalem and doesn't mention Israel (full disclosure: I support a two-state solution). I go to Brandeis University, which has very Jewish roots, so hilarity ensued in class that day (I call 'hilarity' what happens when two sides refuse to sit down and acknowledge the other; luckily it was only a few people arguing).I used this workbook in conjunction with what our professor gave us in class, YouTube videos of how to write certain characters, a diagram that my Saudi Arabian friend gave me on the place of articulation for every sound [...], and Google Translate when I could not understand what the man on the CD was saying.In conjunction with a decent instructor, this workbook is invaluable. Otherwise, I'd recommend getting another text.

This text was required for my first Arabic class in college. I must say, for a complete novice who had no idea what to expect, this text was a real blessing. It starts you off assuming you have no knowledge of the Arabic language or culture. This may not sound like a big deal, but I have seen other books that do not make that assumption. They start you off, page one, learning to read and write grammatical sentences; no easy task if one does not already have a good grasp of Arabic script.Some people have noted discrepancies with the CD tracks. While it is true that some things don't quite match up, it's nothing you can't overcome. Case in point: there is a conversation on the CD in which a man and women are speaking to one another, however in the text it shows two men in the accompanying example. It threw me off a bit at first, but I actually found it helped in the end because it forced me to actually read the Arabic text to verify I was in the right place rather than just "breezing" through it.All and all, I think this a great text. Sure, it's not as good as some (thinking anything by Jane Wightwick, here), but certainly better than others.As an aside, a perfect compliment to this, or any other Arabic text for that matter, would be Nicholas Awde's "Arabic Alphabet" book.

First, let me start off with the positive. Ahlan wa Sahlan is a well-rounded resource for learning Modern Standard Arabic. This Letters and Sounds workbook introduces you to reading Arabic (a fundamental skill before moving onto learning the actual language). The exercises are useful, and plentiful to be sure. Also the DVD provides great examples of natural Arabic speech.However, this otherwise great resource is marred by what I call "stupid errors". After pulling my hair out about how the author / reviser came up with an answer on an exercise, I got a hold of an Arabic speaker who confirmed that I was right based on the Audio CD and the answer key was incorrect. This is a new edition, and I imagine this error was due to lack of proof reading or over-zealous "copy-pasting". There are also blatant typographical errors in the text (which can easily be found while matching the CD audio with the printed text).Another problem is omission, or rather the lack of solid handwriting instruction. The student is taught to print, which can take a long time. Sometimes there are also missing details about how to construct the initial, medial, or final versions of letters, which was disappointing to say the least.These errors were totally avoidable, but again, not insurmountable. Coupled with resources like:  Mastering Arabic (Hippocrene Mastering)  and  Easy Arabic Script  (both by Mahmoud Gafar ... an excellent pedagogue), Ahlan wa Sahlan completes an extensive, rigorous introduction to MSA for the beginning self-learner.

I brought this workbook to go with the Ahlan wa Sahlan textbook that I used in college. To be honest, I enjoy the workbook more than the textbook. I learned more from the workbook and to me it seemed to have a more organized structure to it. It covers everything from how to pronounce and draw the Arabic alphabet, to differentiating between long and short vowels (this lesson is very important by the way), and it also gives you excellent and useful vocabulary. The only thing I don't like is that it didn't come with a CD even though there are listening exercises in the book. The Textbook didn't come with a CD either. But that's not really important for me; it mostly became just a distraction.

Excellent companion to the Ahlan wa Sahlan textbook. This is more of a precursor to that book, and is very easy to follow. I've encountered several 101-level Arabic texts (Alif Baa being the other major one), and I prefer this. I would also recommend the Ahlah wa Sahlan textbook.

password in book didn’t work on website, and it said on another part of the website that the audio and video content had been removed

Very good , wish if it is in colour. However, it is essentiall for your first step in learning Arabic .This textbook (172 pages onlu 6 units/lessons ) consist of Audio and DVD. Some version has the audio of the next book. You must listen to the audio (CD, or Online) -and do the interactive exercise on line. This is very important because some one will show you how to write the letters and you will get immediate feedback.However,this is NOT selfstudy's textbook (you need a teacher or native speaker to guide you ).Make sure it is the SECOND EDITION and not 1st edition (this has 30 lessons).

Bought becasue I am studying arabic at university. Very helpful and would recommend seller. Lots of excercises and a beautiful language to learn. :D

good, arrived on time.