Reading and Speaking Arabic

Well, I've moved on to another reference for learning to read and speak Arabic. I've actually got the reading part down now (although I don't always know the meaning of the words I can read) but I don't know exactly how the letters sound. I am going to remedy that by using a very inexpensive book called Arabic for Speaking and Reading. It's got an audio CD to go along with the lessons. This is good because it repeats the alphabet, a few of the greetings and a few of the words that I know. I was a little dissappointed that the audio CD is only about 40 minutes long broken up into roughly 38 sections. However, I'm only using it to get a sense of the sounds so I can move on to listening to the news or formal podcasts. It also has a nice listing of the different diacriticals and their sounds. So, it's a good mid-term reference to get started making the sounds correctly once you have a few words under your belt.

I also started listening to the ArabicPod101.com podcast today. I have to say I was much more impressed listening to it than the Arabic Podclass podcast. The people on 101 are conversational, natural and comfortable. They weave in some history and culture and they are very straightforward in explaining things to the listener. They break down the sounds and the grammar as it occurs, not fabricating the lessons in some artificial way. It's a nice balance between following natural language acquisition theories and practical acquisition exercises. My iTunes downloaded the 8th lesson as the most recent one for some reason although I see on their website that there are at least 9 episodes. They also have some tools and programs to use for drills and flashcards. I haven't tried them yet but if they are anything like their podcast, I'll be checking them out soon.