the homepage of Cameron Lindley Cross

Arabic Teaching Materials

Recently, I've had the wonderful opportunity to start teaching Arabic in a variety of contexts. Although pedagogy in the language has undergone a wonderful efflorescence over the last decade, there are still many things to be done to present the same information across the spectrum of different learning styles and approaches. I've attempted to put together some of my own handouts and summaries in the hope that they may be helpful for other students, and to invite comments, feedback, and corrections from other instructors whose knowledge of Arabic far exceeds mine own. I must emphasize that nothing in these documents is for sure 100% correct. I don't put anything up here that I don't think is relatively solid, but there are undoubtedly some issues, great and small, I have overlooked or misunderstood. It is as much a learning process for me to be putting these sheets together as it is for my students. That said, I hope they are useful out there.

Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA)

Verbs: An Overview. A detailed guide to ECA verb conjugation, which, I've come to realize, is extremely regular and consistent once you've learned the underlying phonetic rules that guide the language as a whole. Ideally, with this document in hand, you should be able to know how any verb you encounter should be pronounced.

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)

The Arabic Connectors. My main contribution to offer thus far is a running commentary on the book Kitāb Adawāt al-Rabt, which I've been teaching at the University of Chicago. These are meant to be supplementary handouts that provide a little more detail about what's going on with the connectors presented in the book, and is not intended to be a substitute. A second caveat is that this is not a formal presentation of grammar; I bring in formal terminology when I think it helps clarify the idea, but I leave a lot out that would require pages of additional explanation.