Formal Spoken Arabic: FAST Course.

• Author: Bergman, Elizabeth M.
• Position: Review

By KARIN C. RYDING and ABDELNOUR ZAIBACK. Washington, D.C.: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1994. Pp. xviii + 215. $19.95; audiocassettes, $75.

Formal Spoken Arabic: FAST Course makes a noteworthy addition to Arabic language pedagogy because it does not try to be all things to all people. Its subtitle is, unfortunately, an acronym rather than a descriptive modifier: this textbook is based on materials developed by the U.S. Foreign Service Institute to train U.S. government employees in a six-week "Familiarization and Short-Term" program. This is thus a tightly focused introduction to the language, designed to provide adult professionals with the language skills they need to live and work in the Arab world.

The textbook takes a functional approach that organizes its material into fourteen lessons. But the functions that provide lesson themes are not the usual topics of conversation or goals to be met using language. They are instead the social functions that students will carry out in an Arabic speaking environment. Telephone talk, for example, is rarely dealt with in other textbooks but figures in two lessons here. Early on, the model speaker simply answers the embassy telephone in a colleague's absence, and in a later lesson deals with an employee's family emergency. These dialogues are long enough to seem naturally conversational and provide learners with plenty of examples. They are followed by carefully graduated exercises that emphasize comprehension as well as production, and simple, nontechnical grammatical explanations. Role playing activities, in which students explore the linguistic and cultural possibilities of the dialogue, close each lesson. All Arabic language material is presented in Latin transcription, although dialogues also appear in Arabic script.

Two other aspects of this textbook are worth noting. The first is its treatment of problems, linguistic and otherwise, as integral to the learning process. In contrast to the bland and inhuman perfection presented in most language textbooks, model speakers here ask for repetition, request clarification, and even (gasp!) admit to less than total fluency in Arabic; they get lost, deal with absent employees, and lose track of their children on outings. The second is the structure of "role-play" exercises, which encourage students to practice coping mechanisms and anticipate problems through questions about practical considerations and about societal roles and expectations. When...