Teach Yourself Beginner's Arabic Script (TY: Beginner's Courses)

This book is very useful.
The printing of arabic writing, however, is too small and blurred.

I am teaching myself arabic. I have previous knowledge of the script and picked this up to increase my vocabulary and learn the linguistics of the language. This book is helpful, yet there are some significant drawbacks. The printing (of arabic) is too small. Also, it shows both type and handwritten form, which is practical, but just adds to a learners confusion. Very fast paced, my advice is to have some knowledge of arabic, or linguistics and grammer in general before approaching this book. I am only part way through, and find the vocabulary and teaching style pratical and well designed, but some previous knowledge of language is required. But hey, who said teaching yourself anything would be easy? Keep trying!

Arabic script is not that easy, and is a fully cursive script which means there is no easy way.

This is not my first study of the script, as I've studied the Persian script in the Nastaliq style (which is more complex), so this was relatively easy to use, given my prior knowledge and the simplicity of the sript used by Arabic. I recommend this book for learning the Arabic script.

I am in the process of learning a bit of Arabic so I picked this up. I read through once tracing characters with my fingers and got through it in a few hours. I decided to go back with a pen and actually follow the directions (e.g. "read and write" followed by 12 or so vocabulary words), actually do the exercises, and actually do the tests at the end of each unit. I'm finding it takes about an hour per unit and I'm learning a lot more by actually doing this.

Once I'm done with that, I intend to do it all over again with the handwritten versions of the letters.

However, I wish the writing were a bit larger and there were more hints for how to write the characters and get them right. For example, I still don't the proper way to make a mim that is connected to the letters on either side and there is no information on the order to write letters in. Do I make all the toothed character lines and fill in the dots later? Or make the dots on each tooth? Since my goal is just to read (probably the real goal of the book anyway), it's not too important to me, but I still feel it's a bit of a deficiency.

Still, I am very happy with my choice to pick this book up. I'm spending hours upon hours with it, and my hand is getting sore. I can see my progress, and actually completing each exercise with a pen (not just tracing with my finger) is proving to really drive the writing system home.

Very good and informative content. I wish it was more "user friendly" in terms of layout.