Train heading up to Baghdad, The
This short story was originally published in 1954 in the Lebanese magazine Al-Adab and republished together with nine other stories, with an English translation, in 2011 in Ten Stories from Iraq Volume 3 by Sayyab Books, London.
To help the learner gain confidence in this rich environment, the story is presented in two stages. First of all, there is an abridged version of the original story with some two hundred of the less common words taken out. By working through this reduced version, the reader will be able to follow the story and not be overwhelmed by too much new vocabulary. In addition, the text has been pointed so that the reader will be able to read it without constant reference to the dictionary to check on pronunciation. The two versions of the story are read on the accompanying CD. This will bring the text to life and encourage the reader to go beyond a mere understanding of the Arabic on to the deeper and more rewarding appreciation of the sounds and cadences of the text. To help with the learning of vocabulary, words that are probably new are glossed on the page under the text and at the end of the book there is a Word List listing items under their root forms. The reader is encouraged to highlight items that he has needed to check.
The initial aim is to be able to read the abridged Arabic version without reference to the English. By ‘read’, I mean both the ability to read aloud the Arabic text and also to understand the Arabic, whether a translation into English is explicitly made or not. With each successive reading, the wish to translate will diminish, to be replaced by an increasingly fluent understanding of the Arabic. At first, the learner will listen to the recording together with the printed text. He should try gradually to just listen to the story and not use the print at all. It is at this stage that the learner will begin to appreciate the essence of the Arabic, why the writer has used a particular word or phrase. To help him with this new vocabulary I have included a number of exercises following the abridged text. These exercises concentrate on the nouns, adjectives and verbs from the text and provide extensive practice in recognizing and retaining them.
Once the reader is confident with the abridged version, he can go on to the full, original version and repeat the process. This original text is again pointed. Following this second version there is a second range of exercises to help consolidate vocabulary, mainly adjectives. The ultimate aim is for the reader to be able to look at the English translation and be able to recall the corresponding Arabic word or phrase. If the learner has ‘internalized’ the Arabic sufficiently well, this should not be an unrealistic goal.
| Weight | 0.270000 |
|---|---|
| ISBN13/Barcode | 9780993246951 |
| ISBN10 | 0993246958 |
| Author | Mahmoud Abdul-Wahhab [translated by Fred Pragnel] |
| Binding | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 30th April 2013 |
| Pages | 90 |
| Publisher | Pragnell Books |
This short story was originally published in 1954 in the Lebanese magazine Al-Adab and republished together with nine other stories, with an English translation, in 2011 in Ten Stories from Iraq Volume 3 by Sayyab Books, London.
To help the learner gain confidence in this rich environment, the story is presented in two stages. First of all, there is an abridged version of the original story with some two hundred of the less common words taken out. By working through this reduced version, the reader will be able to follow the story and not be overwhelmed by too much new vocabulary. In addition, the text has been pointed so that the reader will be able to read it without constant reference to the dictionary to check on pronunciation. The two versions of the story are read on the accompanying CD. This will bring the text to life and encourage the reader to go beyond a mere understanding of the Arabic on to the deeper and more rewarding appreciation of the sounds and cadences of the text. To help with the learning of vocabulary, words that are probably new are glossed on the page under the text and at the end of the book there is a Word List listing items under their root forms. The reader is encouraged to highlight items that he has needed to check.
The initial aim is to be able to read the abridged Arabic version without reference to the English. By ‘read’, I mean both the ability to read aloud the Arabic text and also to understand the Arabic, whether a translation into English is explicitly made or not. With each successive reading, the wish to translate will diminish, to be replaced by an increasingly fluent understanding of the Arabic. At first, the learner will listen to the recording together with the printed text. He should try gradually to just listen to the story and not use the print at all. It is at this stage that the learner will begin to appreciate the essence of the Arabic, why the writer has used a particular word or phrase. To help him with this new vocabulary I have included a number of exercises following the abridged text. These exercises concentrate on the nouns, adjectives and verbs from the text and provide extensive practice in recognizing and retaining them.
Once the reader is confident with the abridged version, he can go on to the full, original version and repeat the process. This original text is again pointed. Following this second version there is a second range of exercises to help consolidate vocabulary, mainly adjectives. The ultimate aim is for the reader to be able to look at the English translation and be able to recall the corresponding Arabic word or phrase. If the learner has ‘internalized’ the Arabic sufficiently well, this should not be an unrealistic goal.