Al-Kitab Fii Ta'allum Al-'Arabiyya: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic

I have studied Arabic at a variety of schools (graduate, undergrauate, professional programs) with different text books, and I found this book the be the most help. Most Arabic text books are preoccupied with wasting chapters on describiing school life and leaving very little time to develop vocabulary for adult/non-student situations, such as talking about personal lives, jobs, political and eocnomic situations, and comprehending news stories. In this series you follow people through daily lives, not only students, but people who speak about immigrations and failed relationships and fellowships and jobs and moving and being lonely. It's an awesome scope of context for vocabulary development, and the stories are linked in a way that provides a good basis for retaining the vocubulary accumulated. This is also an easy book to follow on its own, in the absence of an Arabic teacher; if a course is not avaiulable near your or too expensive at the momment. The audio cassettes/cd are vital but the video cassetes are not, and the stories told on video tapes are the same used for the oral comprehension exercises form the video tapes. Other Arabic series I tried (or were forced to use in classes) were Ahlan wa Salaam, which had an abyssmal vocabulary, focused entirely on student's perspecitves and gave almost no information about the gramtical structure; and the Cambridge (orange book) textbook for Elmentary Arabic, which lacked oral exercises. Both books provided answers, but due to poor editing, many erors were in the provided answers, which caused much confusion for students until a teacher was available for a dialogue(the Cambridge book was much worse in that apsect, but covered more grammatical details).

As a student of the Arabic immersion program at Middlebury College in VT, I have to say that of all the texts I've come across this is the most accessible and thorough in terms of gaining a useable knowledge of the language. While I wouldn't recommend it for independent study, I wouldn't recommend independent study of the Arabic language at all with anything more than the smallest aspirations. Arabic is not a language that can be learned in isolation. No where, are you going to find a book that, having read it, you will be able to say, "I speak Arabic." However, in a classroom environment Al Kitaab simply cannot be beat. Also, as a plug for the Middlebury program, I give the strongest recommendation possible to the the 9 week immersion program at Middlebury College in VT. The professors are AMAZING, the student body is motivated, and the unique language pledge makes the school and unquestionably sound investment for students of Arabic at any level.

This book is the best I have found so far in learning Arabic. The cassettes are also very good and the video helped me a lot to see what they are talking about in the dialogues. I have used other books and studied Arabic with other materials, but this is the most organized system I have found. I speak several other languages, and I recommend this book highly.

I had been trying to learn Arabic for a few years and not getting far when I finally was pointed toward this book. Wow -- our small study group made amazing progress. We're in the final couple of chapters and already bought Book 2 in anticipation of starting it immediately afterwards. The textbook is set up like a workbook, so with the exception of essay-type exercises you do the writing in the book itself. There's a good balance of all 4 skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) so it's not just focusing on reading/writing like other Arabic textbooks do. It assumes you already have basic reading/writing skills, plus know a few vocabulary words that are taught in _Alif Baa_. From the beginning they incorporate real-world reading from newspaper & magazine articles. There's a big focus on educated guessing and using context & other clues to get the meaning. This is extremely useful.You have to get the cassettes if you're serious about studying, but we managed fine without the video. Near the beginning of the book, the speakers on the cassettes stick pretty close to MSA, but near the end you will hear the Egyptian accent much more -- get used to those g's!The culture sections at the end of the chapters are actually interesting -- Fairuz, Umm Kulthoom, Nizar Qabbani, etc.The textbook is meant for a classroom, but we are using it in a small study group. Once we got about halfway, we found it useful to have a native speaker tutor join us for our study group to correct our exercises & do the spoken drills with us. Now that we're near the end of the book, it's almost essential to have that kind of support. Without it you'll have no idea whether your answers are correct on the more difficult exercises.When you get partway, there will be dictionary exercises. It's important to get the right kind of dictionary, because not all of the Arabic dictionaries you find at the bookstore will work for these. I already had 2 sets of dictionaries, neither worked. Get the Hans Wehr dictionary, which has words arranged by roots/patterns.

I have been studying Arabic for a long time. This book does what no other has done for the arabic language...made it clear, concise and real. Many others have attempted but most fail to teach this as anything other than a language to study the Quran, this book made my studies real and usable(real). If you want a clear concise book that you can honestly use to learn, understand and study; buy this book but don't forget to make them sell you the video and cassettes!!!!!