Here you can learn how to use the Media Arabic Text Collection to improve your reading and comprehension skills.
There is a video on YouTube in which I explain how the MATC works. Link: https://youtu.be/ySEwWeoj7vc
You start with the
Text Selection Page
On the text selection page (nagore.pythonanywhere.com) you have to make a few choices.
You can choose a subset from the collection (Palestine, Tunisia, Short Texts, see explanation on a different page).
You have to choose a specific text from the already chosen subset.
You can choose how much grammatical information you want to be shown. These options are explained on another page.Your choice can always be changed.
If you press the Start button, the selected page will appear.
The Catalog button produces a table with all available texts. Here you can easily see if any new texts have been added to the collection. You can sort the table on every column by clicking on the column header. So for example you can select the easiest text in terms of syntactic structures or vocabulary.
The Text in different Tabs
Each text is presented in its entirety in different tabs with different types of information. You can use the following tabs:
number of glosses: this gives you an indication of the degree of difficulty of the vocabulary of this text; every gloss gives information about the meaning of a word that is not in the TMV
number of syntactic tips: this number gives an indication of the syntactic complexity of the text; every tip provides information about a potential syntactic ‘hurdle’. For an explanation see the information about the Syntactic Info tab.
Lexical difficulty: percentage of glosses (in relation to the number of words in the text). A low lexical difficulty indicates a low number of unknown words in the text.
Syntactic difficulty: the number of syntactic ‘hurdles’ in relation to the number of words of the text. A low syntactic difficulty indicates a low number of complicated syntactic structures which are provided with an explanation.
Remarks about the text.
Summary: a few keywords provide some insight about the content of the text
A download button to download additional materials.
how to use this tab:
The above mentioned information should give you an impression of the content and size of the text. The size gives an indication of the time needed to study the text (depending on your level of command of MSA).
Tab Plain Text
content of this tab:
This tab contains the text as it was found on the internet. The text may be slightly edited and spelling is corrected.
The tab contains a download button to download a pdf version of the text.
how to use this tab: Text colours in this tab: black=normal text, green= names of persons or geographical names (not clickable)
You may use this version of the text for an initial reading to see if you can grasp the general message or even the details. If you do so, you could proceed in trying to answer the questions in the Questions tab to verify if you have indeed understood the content correctly.
If this plain version is too complicated, you can proceed studying the text using the other tabs.
After thoroughly studying the text you can use the plain text version to re-read the text occasionally, in order to maintain your active knowledge of the vocabulary and phraseology in the text. If you have downloaded the pdf version you can do this anytime and anywhere.
Tab Vowelled Text
content of this tab:
The plain text has been supplemented with all vowels. The vowelled text shows the effect of Arabic grammar rules since all case endings and other relevant vowels are present.
The vowelled version shows, among other things, the effects of the syntactic rules mentioned in the Syntactic Info tab.
how to use this tab:
Text colours in this tab: black=normal text, green= names of persons or geographical names (not clickable)
You can use this version to read the text aloud in order to improve your pronunciation. Or you can verify your grammatical knowledge by explaining all the case endings or verb vowels. For example, why is a particular word in the nominative case? Or why is it jussive? Etc.
Tab Vocabulary Info
content of this tab:
There is a list of approximately 2600 words which I call the Top Media Vocabulary (TMV). I assume you know these words when you start reading the texts of this Media Arabic Text Collection. You can read more about the list and download it on a separate page.
Building vocabulary is an essential principle of this collection of texts.
Words in the texts that are not included in the TMV are provided with a gloss indicating the meaning of the word, and, if applicable, morphological information (masdar, participle, stem IV, etc.). Words with glosses are presented in blue. If you click on the word, its meaning and the morphological information will appear in the bottom bar of your screen.
This tab also provides a button to download the vocabulary table. If you want to expand your active knowledge of the vocabulary you can download the vocabulary table of every text you have studied in order to maintain your familiarity with these words. These are the words that are available in the Vocabulary and Vocab/Syntax tabs and so these words are not in the Top Media Vocabulary.
how to use this tab:
Text colours in this tab: black=normal text, green= names of persons or geographical names (not clickable), blue= words with glosses (clickable)
You can study the text with this tab if you want to focus on the content and vocabulary without the possible distraction of the syntactic information.
I recommend you use the combined Vocab/Syntax tab to study the text.
Tab Syntactic Info
content of this tab:
This tab provides tips with syntactic information helping you to overcome syntactic ‘hurdles’ while reading Arabic. There is a set of mainly syntactic codes (download the list of codes) providing information in specific locations in sentences. Availability of a tip is indicated by a red rectangle. If you click on the red rectangle the tip that will appear in the bottom bar gives you information about the word or words following the rectangle. The information consists of a code indicating a grammatical phenomenon, a definition explaining that phenomenon and in some cases there will be additional information.
This set of syntactic codes is a major element of this method of teaching/studying Media Arabic. It helps you to overcome certain difficulties during the reading and comprehension process. More info on the coding system can be found on a separate page.
how to use this tab:
Text colours in this tab: black=normal text, green= names of persons or geographical names (not clickable)
You can study the text using this tab if you want to focus on syntactic structures without the possible distraction of the lexical information. You can choose to have all the syntactic information available, or a limited set of codes (not showing the ‘easy’ structures) , or a very limited set of complex structures only. You can decide this for each text separately and you can always change your choice.
I recommend you use the combined Vocab/Syntax tab to study the text.
Tab Vocab/Syntax
content of this tab: In this tab the information of the two preceding tabs has been combined: lexical information and syntactic tips are both available in this tab. Both categories of information are available by clicking. This tab combines two essential principles applied in this collection of texts: building up vocabulary and recognising syntactic structures.
how to use this tab:
Text colours in this tab: black=normal text, green= names of persons or geographical names (not clickable), blue= words with glosses (clickable)
This tab should be the main tab to use if you want to study the text. The availability of the combined lexical and syntactic information will enable you to study the content of the text with all available information at your disposal. You can read sentences or paragraphs and click to reveal the available information. If you click on a blue printed word you will get information on the meaning of the word and if you click on the red rectangle you get grammatical information about the following segment of the sentence.
After studying the text you can verify your comprehension by answering the questions in the Questions tab. Another way to verify this is by checking the English translation of the text in the Translation tab.
Tab Phraseology (not in CATC)
content of this tab:
In this tab special attention is paid to collocations and multi word expressions (MWE). Collocations are frequent combinations of words. They can consist of a noun and an adjective, two nouns, a verb and a noun and some other combinations. MWE’s are combinations of at least three words that may occur in similar composition in other texts and may be considered as more or less fixed expressions. Words in blue are collocations and sequences in orange are MWE’s. Two words of a collocation can be separated from each other. Sometimes a word can be part of two different collocations. A noun can collocate with a preceding verb and a following adjective.
With the download link in this tab you can download the combinations of this text to work on memorising them.
On another page I present a table in which I have merged together phraseology of all texts in the current collection.
how to use this tab: Text colours in this tab: black=normal text, green= names of persons or geographical names (not clickable), blue= collocations, orange = multi word expressions
This tab is to raise your awareness of the fact that words very often occur in combination with other words. If you intend to learn to speak and write Arabic on an advanced level, these combinations (collocations) and multi word expressions need to become part of your active vocabulary.
Tab Connectors (not in CATC)
content of this tab:
In this tab I have highlighted words that can be considered as connectors between segments of the text. Connectors make up the structure and coherence of the text and indicate the connections between sentences or clauses. Connectors can also express chronology or causal or logical relations in the content of the text.
These connectors can be function words like conjunctions or adverbs, but words with meanings like ‘cause’, ‘result’, etc. can also be considered connectors since they contribute to the coherence of the text.
how to use this tab:
Text colours in this tab: black=normal text, green= names of persons or geographical names (not clickable), blue=connectors (clickable)
Studying the highlighted words in their context will raise your awareness of the role and function of this kind of words and consequently your skills in recognizing the relationships between the segments of a text, which will lead to a better understanding of the relationships between elements of a text. If you click on the blue words you will get some information about it.
Tab Questions (not in CATC)
content of this tab:
Here you will find content questions to verify your comprehension of the text. If you can answer the questions correctly you have understood the content of the text properly. If you put the answers to the separate questions together they constitute a sort of summary of the text.
how to use this tab:
Answer the questions and check your answers with the model answers that appear if you click on 'Answer'.
Tab Translation
content of this tab:
This tab contains a translation into English, made with Google Translate. The translation was slightly edited and should only be considered a tool for clarification of the content of the text.
how to use this tab:
You can use this translation if the lexical and syntactic information provided in the other tabs is not sufficient for you to fully understand the meaning of the Arabic text.
Download button
You can download several files related to the text.
a pdf of the plain text
a pdf of the phraseology (collocations and multi word expressions)
a small Excel file containing the vocabulary items of the Vocabulary tab
In the CATC there is no phraseology file available for downloading.
Catalog button
On the Start screen (the Text Selection Page) there is a Catalog button. Here you can easily see if any new texts have been added to the collection. You can sort the table on every column by clicking on the column header. So for example you can select the easiest text in terms of syntactic structures or vocabulary.
