Martin Putnam
24 Arabic (Levantine) lessons
Osama is a great teacher of Arabic for someone who is willing to work — and if you are not willing to work, why are you studying Arabic? The lessons combine a wealth of everyday phrases and idioms with a systematic approach to grammar. Osama covers a lot of material, so each lesson calls for several hours of work outside the tutorials.
The Arabic alphabet is used from the beginning, which makes the structure of the language much more transparent than if one were struggling with Latin-alphabet transcriptions.
In my classes, the focus is entirely on the dialect of Arabic spoken in Palestine. This simplifies matters in that the grammatical rules of MSA need not all be covered. But there are also many Palestinian idioms that are nowhere to be found in MSA. This is an enterprise that absolutely requires a native speaker of this dialect. Google Translate is not your friend.
Osama is a gifted teacher who is a pleasure to work with. I recommend him without reservation.
Oct 30, 2024