Al-Kitaab fii Ta’allum al-’Arabiyya with DVDs: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic, Part One Second Edition

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5 Reviews

1. I bought two copies of this book, one for when I am in London and one for when I am in the Gulf. I was looking for a good textbook for a beginner who knows the arabic alphabet. Most of all, I wanted a book into which I could pour my effort and which would reward me with progress in Arabic. I have since learnt from experts in language teaching that whereas the field of books for English speakers who wish to learn, say, French or Latin is mature, the field of Arabic language textbooks is not yet mature and has many gaps. This book and its series seemed from the description and from reviews, and from its undoubted commercial success, to be what I wanted. I propended for three months, spending about 20 minutes a day on learning Arabic, sometimes with flashcards, sometimes with a great personal tutor, and sometimes with other books. Al-Kitaab was attractive, and it has all the right elements, including a story, a video, interactive lessons with grammar structured in a way that worked for me. But I found that despite this book being most the most attractive one to me and despite my putting much effort into it, I was making more progress with _Teach Yourself Gulf Arabic_, which had more obvious limitations. After a couple of months I began to notice the problem with Al-Kitaab. It tests the reader on grammar and other features of the language which it has not yet taught. So while all the elements of the textbook are good, they don’t fit together, and it is probably not possible to learn the language from this book, although it might have some value as a side attraction to a student following another book as a main text. Having discovered what I thought to be the problem, I asked a top language teacher to review the book for me and assess its suitability for my purpose, i.e. learning Arabic with this as the main textbook. Her verdict was that it is not suitable, for the reasons I suspected: this book expects the reader to know critical things that it has not yet taught. I was surprised by this, because I had assumed that like, say, maths textbooks, most of the popular language textbooks would be reasonably well designed. My expert language teacher said that this is in fact not the case at all, and many of the most popular language textbooks suffer precisely this flaw. As part of my effort to learn Arabic, I had bought every popular textbook I could find, because the problem is not time or money in learning a new language, but rather how efficiently one’s effort (time) converts into facility in the new language. I asked my expert language teacher to look through all the books I had, and with her help I selected Schulz, Krahl & Ruschel _Standard Arabic_, which I owned but which I had not paid much attention to. Since switching my effort to Schulz & Co, I have made faster progress and my understanding of Arabic has a much better structure. This is my personal experience of trying to learn Arabic and I hope my views may be of some value to others who want to learn this great language.

2. Book arrived in 2 days, it was very fast. The book is in good conditions

3. Al Kitaab has pretty much been the standard text for college Arabic classes since it was first published thirty years ago. The first edition was definitely comprehensive, but extremely dry. It was still the best resource out there, but it was badly in need of an update for decades.

   The new edition, however, is absolutely incredible. Not only is the typeset and formatting INFINITELY more user-friendly, but the addition of DVDs was genius. They have all the lesson dialogues in both standard and colloquial (Egyptian) Arabic. Wrapping your head around the difference between the two is really difficult for new students to the language, but is relegated to a footnote in 95% of Arabic learning texts.

   This is still not a teach-yourself-Arabic book, but I don’t think there is a better text out there for a serious student.

4. The book arrived very quick! The company is very responsible. The website said “like new” but the first chapter has many written in it. I expected no writing in the book. The book condition is very good beside the writing.

5. Kristen and friends- I think you guys are idiots. Please find someone to write a better book. This is the worst language book I have ever used. Alif Baa starts out not bad, gives you a very small base of understanding, then you move on to Al Kitaab level 1 and the first word you learn is ‘the United Nations’. So students of Arabic I warn you- if you use any of the words you learn in this book in any Arab speaking country, you will look like an idiot. Even after completing all three books, your vocabulary and speaking range will be so limited you won’t have much use for it. There needs to be a second Alif Baa basic book that has more basic information. Yes, Arabic is a hard language, but it is not impossible. This book makes it impossible to learn Arabic. I still can barely put a sentence together and can’t hold a conversation with a native speaker. (I want to include that I speak 4 foreign languages fluently, much of that I learned on my own). I have no idea what these three were thinking when they wrote this book. I hope by now someone has told them what an awful job they did and they should be ashamed of themselves. What a bunch of idiots. I wish I could give this book a zero instead of one star.