Introduction

Welcome to The Sounds and Letters of Arabic: A Linguistic Approach. This website has been built to accompany an upcoming textbook with the same title by Dr. Khaled Y. Huthaily.

These materials were designed based on research findings (Huthaily, 2009; Long, 1991) that suggest that proficiency and accuracy in learning a foreign language increase when adult students are taught greater phonological awareness and how the movement of speech organs feels when the sounds of the target language are produced. The student textbook and teacher's manual will be structured the production of Arabic and English consonants and vowels; contrasting word-stress, intonation and rhythms; and rapid Arabic and English speech, among others. The textbook incluses illustrations, animated drawings, and interactive exercises detailing the physical production of Arabic and English sounds.

The textbook and website should be used on combination. While the textbook shows illustrations and explantions of the mechanism of producing the sounds of Arabic, the website shows videos that demonstrate how the sounds are produced.

The author is very grateful to his wife, Amal Almisbahi, for creating the animations for the sounds, Mr. Abdulaziz Aljama for recording the audio files for most of the vocabulary items, and Dr. Kristen Brustad and Dr. Mahdi Alosh for their feedback.

Students

The goal of these instructional materials is to introduce English-speaking students of Arabic to the sounds and letters of Arabic based on linguistic analysis. You can use the materials either on your own or with an instructor. No prior knowledge of linguistics is expected or required. The author introduces basic terms and definitions in a simple and easy approach in the introduction. Thus, please read the introduction before you start with the first letter/sound.

This website supports left-to-right as well as right-to-left directionality. Support for English, Arabic, and International Phonetic Alphabet has been tested on major web browsers as well as small-screen devices. Even if your device does not support Arabic, it should display the codes and fonts correctly. If you have any problem, please don't hesitate to contact the author.

Teachers

Teachers ... This website is a companion to the textbook "The Sounds and Letters of Arabic: A Linguistic Approach" by Dr. Khaled Huthaily. The goal of these instructional materials is to introduce English-speaking students of Arabic to the sounds and letters of Arabic based on linguistic analysis. You can use the materials either on your own or with an instructor. No prior knowledge of linguistics is required.

Dr. Khaled Huthaily
Dr. Khaled Huthaily
Author

Dr. Khaled Huthaily is Associate Professor and Head of the Arabic Studies Program at the University of Montana. He received a B.A. in education (with a focus on second language instruction) from Hodeidah University in 1999, an M.A. in applied linguistics (with a focus on Arabic-English contrastive linguistics) from the University of Montana in 2003, and an Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction (with a focus on teaching Arabic to native speakers of English based on linguistic awareness) also from the Univeristy of Montana in 2008.

Dr. Huthaily received a two-year Fulbright scholarship from the US Department of State for graduate research (from 2001 to 2003). His main research intersts include second language curriculum development, English-Arabic contrastive linguistics, the phonology, and bilingualism. In his book, "Second Language Instruction with Linguistics Awareness," he summarizes his research findings on the importance of linguistic analysis when teachign second languages to adults.

Dr. Huthaily is also a web developer. He enjoys working with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. His skills include Linux, Git, AWS, etc. Another useful website for students and teachers that Dr. Huthaily has developed is CarryLinks.

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