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Not Liking Arnold & Choi

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:10 am
by Jason
So, why don't I like this textbook? As I mentioned before, three reasons:

(1) It is aesthetically unpleasant. The font is ugly and unprofessional. The examples pulled by the authors are in-line and not set off to allow for quick notice as the page is turned. All you see is blocked paragraphs with bold-italic labels at the beginning. It's just ugly.

(2) There are no exercises. To make the book useful, it would make sense for them to have a set of exercises. I don't see the sense of making just another reference book. If you're going to have another reference grammar, it should at least have a whole set of accidence covered.

(3) It does not attempt to answer the questions most relevant to intermediate students. This is where accidence is important. There is nothing to tell students that נָתַן is לָתֵת in the infinitive. As beginning grammars are moving away from covering all of the middle-weak verbs (which pisses me off), leaving it for intermediate... why would the intermediate grammar NOT cover those forms and explain what's happening with them?! Students will want to know how to actually read and understand the forms.

(4) The categorization is forced. It's like Daniel Wallace for Hebrew. Just a list of almost forced views that are trying to explain forms, but it is so non-thorough that it cannot be but oversimplified and not-too-useful.

What do you think?