Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Verbs: Exercise Book

Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) Verbs Exercise Book is really, really good. Excellent, in fact! It is the companion book to ECA Verbs Conjugation Tables and Grammar, another excellent book for which I also wrote a review. I love this workbook; it forces me to use all the new things I am learning about ECA verbs. Since I am learning on my own, (no teacher!) this is really important to me.This will probably sound silly, but this workbook is sort of my tutor. How you might ask. Well, first off it explains things, starting simply and progressing step by step. For example, in the very beginning of the workbook it has you label the parts of the base form a verb, letter by letter. This simple exercise was very useful for me. The workbook then builds on this foundation by describing how verbs work in small but thoroughly explained increments. It continues in this way leading to full understanding and use of all verb forms.Along with the helpful explanations are lots of exercises to practice with. One thing I particularly like about the exercises are the useful verbs involved, not only verbs like "eat", "learn", "go", etc. Verbs like "attend", "request", "heal", "research", are included from the very beginning. The drills for practice are very clever; crossword puzzles, dice used as a "random verb form generator", among others. This workbook is fast paced. It keeps you moving forward, learning and learning.I can't recommend this workbook highly enough even though I am still working my way through it. It is really helping me learn how to use verbs properly and speak in a more comprehensible way.

The book under review as well as its "parent" -- Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Verbs -- both merit five stars. They fill a big gap in teaching Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, which is the most widespread form of colloquial Arabic. There are several good textbooks available for teaching the fundamentals of the grammar and the basic vocabulary, but in order to produce oral responses quickly and automatically one needs to drill repeatedly on grammatical structures. In this, verbs are perhaps the most important element. None of the (even good) textbooks provides anything like sufficient material for drills. These two books go a long way towards fulfilling the need. My only request would be for a CD or download that spoke out at least one example of each of the model verbs. However, let me repeat that the author of these books has put all learners of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic in his debt.

i purcahsed that with the verb tables... its an excellent companion and as great the thetables themselves... highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn egyptian verbs

I only wish it was about 3 times longer. I had to redo the existing exercises to feel comfortable.