Gateway to Arabic 1

With its wealth of practice materials, Gateway to Arabic 1 teaches the skills necessary for reading and writing the language.

This book covers:

• Recognition of Arabic letters in their isolate form
• Formulation of letters in their written isolate form, with clear arrows to indicate the correct writing direction
• The three short vowels: fatha, kasra and damma
• The recognition and formulation of letters in their joined forms
• Nunation (al-tanween)
• The three long vowels (al-madd)
• Al-sukun
• Al-shadda
• The sun and moon letters (al-huruf al-shamsiyyah wa'l-qamariyyah), and their associated rules
• Al-alif al-maqsura
• Al-hamza

Gateway to Arabic 1 is basically a foundation course in reading and writing the Arabic script. The first thing you will notice is that it is oriented from right to left to accustom the learner to the idea that Arabic books are read in a manner that they might perceive as being back to front. All of the titles in this series are set out in this way. The key objective of this book is that, by the end, students would have acquired a sufficient grounding to be able to read vocalised Arabic text. It does not, however, aim to teach any vocabulary or grammar at this stage: that begins in book two of the series.