Answer Key to Alif Baa with DVDs

This is the answer key to the second edition of Alif Baa with Multimedia, also reviewed in this directory. If you are using the newer, third edition of Alif Baa—which appeared in 2010, after I had already completed my Arabic unit—then don’t buy this; buy the corresponding third-edition answer key instead or, alternatively, purchase access to the publisher’s companion website for the third edition. 

For more information on these product options, please see my review of Alif Baa with Multimedia, particularly the bottom portion.

In the meantime, I am giving this answer key a rather negative three stars for two reasons. First, the answer key should not be sold separately. It should be included in the book for which it is providing answers.

Otherwise people will order the book without realizing they need the answer key, then start doing the exercises, then get mad because they don’t have the answers, then have to wait for the answer key to arrive when they are in the midst of being all excited about learning Arabic, then fizzle out while they are waiting for the answer key to arrive and forget what they were learning.

I know, because it happened to me.

Second, in Arabic the handwritten versions of certain letters can be radically different from the versions you would see in print publications, so the answers should be provided in handwritten form, and at least in this edition, they were not. 

Just go for the third edition anyway, is what I say.