Qamus al-Imla
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- Qamus al-Imla
Qamus al-Imla (قاموس الإملاء, "Dictionary of Orthography") is a reference and pedagogical guide on Arabic spelling rules, orthography, and dictation instruction by Musad Muhammad Ziyad .
Pedagogical Objectives and Scope
The book approaches dictation (al-imla) not as an isolated discipline, but as an integral component of comprehensive Arabic language instruction that fosters proper writing, reading comprehension, and communication skills . It outlines several overarching objectives for orthography instruction, categorized into educational, technical, and linguistic dimensions:
- Training learners to correctly write letters and words according to standard Arabic orthographic conventions .
- Overcoming common orthographic difficulties, particularly words containing hamza, final alif, or phonetically similar letters .
- Improving handwriting, promoting neatness and organization, and training the senses through visual observation, auditory discrimination of close sounds, and manual muscle control for penmanship .
The text also addresses structural challenges faced by learners in Arabic dictation, including vowel diacritics (al-dabt bi-l-shakl), the divergence between pronunciation and spelling in words containing unpronounced letters (such as the waw in 'Amr and ula'ika, or the alif in mi'ah and qalu), the interdependence of orthographic rules with grammar (nahw) and morphology (sarf), and variations and exceptions in applying orthographic rules .
Structure
The work is organized into eleven instructional units (wahadat) :
- Unit 1: Orthographic skills and methods of training students in them (al-maharat al-imla'iyya wa-asalib tadrib al-talamidh 'alayha) .
- Unit 2: Divided into two parts; covering vowel elongation (madd), the open and tied ta (al-ta al-maftuha wa-l-marbuta), nunation (tanwin), and solar and lunar lam .
- Unit 3: Letter gemination (tashdid/tada'if), words ending in alif, waw, or ya, as well as practical exercises, demonstrative pronouns (asma al-ishara), and relative pronouns (al-asma al-mawsula) .
- Unit 4: Words beginning with lam prefixed by solar al-, elision of the connecting hamza (hamzat al-wasl) when preceded by the preposition lam, terminal flexible alif (al-alif al-layyina) in nouns, verbs, and particles, terminal hamza (al-hamza al-mutatariffa), and medial hamza written on waw .
- Unit 5: Medial hamza written on ya, medial hamza on alif, and medial hamza written isolated on the line .
- Unit 6: The disjunctive and conjunctive hamza (hamzat al-qat' and hamzat al-wasl), letter additions and elisions, elision of the alif from interrogative ma, the premonitory ha, and dhak, as well as the elision of nun from the prepositions min and 'an when merged with ma or man .
- Unit 7: General orthographic rules, including cases where a hamza is followed by an alif madd, and rules regarding words that must be connected in writing .
- Units 8–10: Nine practical sample lesson plans (models 1 through 9) formulated around behavioral and educational objectives .
- Unit 11: Punctuation marks ('alamat al-tarqim) .
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