Newly Compiled Arabic - Book 2

Author: Guo Shouhua
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-03-01
Features: Newly Compiled Arabic is a textbook designed for the core courses—intensive reading—of Arabic majors in colleges and universities for grades 1 to 3, consisting of 6 volumes. Newly Compiled Arabic was commissioned by the Arabic Teaching Guidance Committee of the Ministry of Education for Foreign Language Majors and funded by the committee. It is also a key project supported by the Beijing Municipal Fine Textbook Project Plan and a reform project funded by Beijing Foreign Studies University. The publication of Newly Compiled Arabic is primarily thanks to the aforementioned departments.
Newly Compiled Arabic is a collaborative textbook led by teachers from Beijing Foreign Studies University, with participation from Peking University and Beijing Normal University of Foreign Studies. It is the first Arabic core course textbook to cross institutional boundaries, representing a collaborative effort with broader implications.
Newly Compiled Arabic adheres to the requirements of the Guidelines on Undergraduate Education Reform for Foreign Language Majors in the 21st Century proposed by the Teaching Guidance Committee for Foreign Language Majors in Higher Education. It strives to achieve the following:
1) The teaching content and linguistic knowledge reflect contemporary relevance;
2) It effectively balances professional knowledge, language training, and related knowledge;
3) The textbook not only focuses on imparting knowledge but also helps develop students' learning, thinking, critical appreciation, and innovative abilities;
4) The teaching content is highly practical and targeted, emphasizing the cultivation of real-world language application skills;
5) It utilizes modern technologies such as computers, multimedia, and the internet to supplement the textbook with multimedia teaching materials, where feasible.
Newly Compiled Arabic is based on the Teaching Syllabus for Basic Arabic and the Teaching Syllabus for Advanced Arabic of Arabic majors in higher education. It aims to align with the syllabi in terms of correct pronunciation and intonation, standardized morphology, syntax, and discourse structure, vocabulary quantity, and the skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation, while also incorporating the linguistic and foreign language teaching principles. This makes it a scientifically and systematically structured textbook.
Newly Compiled Arabic fully incorporates the strengths of textbooks such as Basic Arabic, Arabic, and Fundamentals of Arabic, widely drawing on excellent domestic and international Arabic and English textbooks. It broadens perspectives and opens up new ideas, with increased emphasis on cultivating moral, cultural, and psychological qualities. It expands the content of relevant sociocultural knowledge and basic scientific, striving for a well-structured, rich, practical, and culturally relevant textbook.
Our aspiration is to make Newly Compiled Arabic a systematic, scientific, contemporary, and engaging textbook. Whether we achieve this depends on the judgment of our readers. We sincerely welcome Arabic majors in colleges and universities and Arabic schools across the country to use this textbook and provide valuable feedback for further improvement.
Newly Compiled Arabic (Volume 2) is guided by the Teaching Syllabus for Basic Arabic and based on 13 years of teaching practice from Basic Arabic (Volume 2). After soliciting feedback from students and teachers, the overall design and arrangement follow the principles of gradual progression from simple to complex, building on prior knowledge, and refreshing learning. In terms of content, in addition to emphasizing communicative and practicality, it also focuses on timeliness and interest, as well as introducing relevant cultural and contextual background. The teaching process places greater emphasis on stimulating and leveraging students' initiative.
This volume consists of 17 lessons. The first 16 are main lessons, organized around 5 themes: public communication (Lessons 2–5), leisure life (Lessons 1–7), study (Lessons 8–10), national conditions (Lessons 12–13), and sociocultural aspects (Lessons 11–16). Lesson 17 is a review. The book contains approximately 1,300 vocabulary words, with 1,060 key words and 96 sentence patterns. Audio and dictation exercises are provided at the end.
The design of this volume is structured for one lesson per week. Each lesson includes dialogue, text, proverbs and sayings, vocabulary, sentence patterns, notes, oral and written exercises, reading, listening, and grammar. The post-lesson exercises are comprehensive, allowing teachers to select all or part of them for classroom use based on specific teaching needs. The dialogues and texts are closely related to students' daily lives, facilitating comprehension and practical language application. Sentence patterns are presented with examples to highlight practicality. Notes explain linguistic knowledge while introducing related cultural, linguistic background, and alternative expressions, aiding students in previewing and better understanding new points. Oral exercises systematically review pronunciation rules and strengthen listening and reading training to refine students' phonetics and intonation. Activities such as personal statements, retellings, role-playing, pair dialogues, and group discussions provide opportunities for students to express their knowledge, experiences, thoughts, and opinions, transforming learned language into their own. Written exercises include skill-based tasks and thought-provoking activities to encourage students to discover and summarize linguistic patterns, further reinforcing their language proficiency and fostering independent learning potential.
The reading material complements the lesson themes, covering topics in sociocultural life and intercultural communication. Listening exercises feature diverse genres: self-reports, narratives, dialogues, broadcasts, and stories, making them engaging and lively. Grammar instruction is concise and contextualized, supplemented by systematic explanations and exercises. This approach aims to bridge the gap between grammatical structure and communicative function.
During teaching, teachers should continue to emphasize loud reading, phonetics, intonation, and training in listening, speaking, translation, and writing. When introducing new linguistic points, focus on key aspects and prioritize content, avoiding excessive breadth. In exercises, teachers play a supportive role—guiding students to find relevant materials, encouraging participation, and helping them prepare before applying their language skills to complete tasks.
Students should engage in the teaching process actively and creatively, understanding requirements, showcasing their intelligence, independent thinking, and insights. They should master the fundamentals of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation, actively applying classroom knowledge and other acquired language resources in both classroom and social activities to achieve the goal of solidifying skills and continuous improvement.