Al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum al-'Arabiyya: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic: Part One Third Edition

This is a great book for a difficult subject. However, I used it in a class and spent a lot of time listening (to CD and companion site) and studying the vocabs, grammar and exercises. I hope to provide more detail review at a future date. If you do not spent the necessary efforts it will not work.

this is one of the most useful book for the ones who already took Arabic 1. and the condition of the book is great and solid

:) i wasn't expecting a hardcover when i order it! I LOVE IT!!! it helped me in my Arabic class!Worth it!

Could have been packaged in a bag to prevent the scuffing. Other than that, it is in good condition and the best price around.

This was a great book! I am a college student studying beginners Arabic, and I got this book in perfect condition; thank you Amazon! :)

A bit about me: I am a linguistics student and Arabic is my fifth language (my first being my native language, English). I have learned well and studied extensively Spanish, French, and Farsi (Modern Persian). I have also studied Mandarin and Japanese for a few semesters in the past. I have experienced the language learning process over and over again. I have a solid understanding of what works well and what doesn't work for learning any language.I will try to keep this general and straight forward, because I could really butcher this book section by section, chapter by chapter. This book fails to provide a progressive learning experience in many ways.-Explanations for grammatical concepts are overly complex and wordy. What could have been easily explained in a few short sentences they explain in long, technical paragraphs that sometimes take up an entire page. Verb conjugation is never clearly introduced or explained in a practical way. It is ironic to note that concepts that need less explanation are over-explained and those that need more explanation are not explained at all.-The audio exercises and videos are inconsistent with each other. The pronunciation of the new vocabulary and in the listening drills/excercises are always slightly different from the videos. The variations in their pronunciations makes it difficult to understand which is the right way to pronounce it. This makes word memorization very difficult. I am *not* referring to the difference of the three dialects presented in the book. These problems occur in the study of a single dialect. It is quite hard to memorize a word and not have a clear idea of how it is pronounced in your head. You end up only visually memorizing the text, which is useless and quite damaging to the goal of complete fluency.-The organization of the book is an obstacle for the learner. The authors try to spread out concepts in parts throughout the entire book instead of presenting them in a focused manner. As you begin to learn something new, they cut you off from learning the entirety of it, then say "we'll show you later!". This creates an incomplete understanding of each concept they partially introduce you to. It is so important to create a solid foundation of understanding to be able to learn new things later that are related to it. It gave my mind a hazy feeling of uncertainty throughout the course. I never felt confident in my knowledge and always wondered if what I learned was fully learned or not. It was the worst formal language learning experience I have ever had. The teacher of the course was the only reason why I did not drop out. Farsi has a lot of Arabic loan words in it (loan words are words adopted from another language). My knowledge and skill in Farsi was a good vocabulary crutch for me for the course. I really feel sorry for that dear teacher being stuck with this book for the required course material. Maybe after I graduate and develop greater fluency we can team up to publish a new book together! It would be among the best, I assure you all.-The interactive internet feature is another hindrance to the language learning process. Not everyone has consistent access to the internet. See Meera's review for the recounting of a student who couldn't pay extra for the website access. Also, I think going from medium to medium disconnects your mind from the "learning mode" (that state when your mind locks on like a homing missile to what you're learning or reading in a book). You have your book open, the computer in front of you with the website open, a media player open for audio files, the papers you're writing on, and your own brain's thinking process to sort through. Juggling all these things around felt ridiculous and unnecessary. There is a lot of time wasted and it disconnects the learner from the material. Arabic language subtitles for the videos would have been great to have. With Arabic subtitles, every word the actors say can be tracked by the listener. They would have helped a lot more than making the listener guess what they are saying or being totally lost in the dark.On a side note, I have heard many great things about the "Mastering Arabic" series of books here on Amazon. I am awaiting the delivery of these new books with much excitement! I love the Arabic language and hope to learn it very well!! So, good learning to you all! Stay away from this damnable book if you can! ;)