If you’re an Arabic linguist, you know the DLPT doesn’t ask you to parse sentences. It asks what a passage says. But at Level 2 and above, the grammar is often what decides that: a passive verb you read as active, an idaafa you split in the wrong place, a case ending that tells you who did what to whom.
All The Arabic You Never Learned the First Time Around was written at the Defense Language Institute by James M. Price for exactly this reader: someone who has studied Arabic for a year or two, can get by, and still finds the grammar a mystery. Every lesson is free on this site.
How the verb forms got me to a 3/3
I studied Arabic at DLI and held a 3/3 on the DLPT (listening 3, reading 3) for my whole time in the military. This book is a big part of how I got there, and the most useful thing in it was the ten verb forms.
I learned Forms I–X early at DLI, and it paid off every day after that. Whenever a new word came along, I knew how to file it: find the root, work out which form it was, and remember what that form does to the meaning (causative, reflexive, reciprocal and so on). Most of the time that let me make a good educated guess at what a word meant before I had ever looked it up. On a test where every passage has words you haven’t met, that is a big advantage.
— Matt Bussey, editor of the Complete Edition
Start with the verb forms
Work through the derived forms in order, and do the drill after each one: Form II · Form III · Form IV · Forms V and VI · Forms VII and VIII · Forms IX and X. Then keep the free verb charts PDF (every form and verb type, fully vowelled) next to you, or use the verb charts on this site. The drills for the forms are 27, 32, 36, 40, 44, 47.
Where to look when something trips you up
Every drill has a full annotated answer key in the Complete Edition: the PDF ($19) or the 600-page paperback on Amazon (paid link).
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