Al-Kitaab Part One with Website: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic Third Edition

Brand new book with companion website code, as advertised. That's what I needed!

This book is incredibly pedagogical and introduces the material in a logical, coherent and self-contained manner. It provides exercises for virtually every new topic, both in vocabulary and grammar. The accompanying website has recordings for each new vocabulary item: recordings of single words, of sentences that put words in a context, and then the whole conversations.I did every exercise in that book and compared against the answer key (sold separately), I found the explanations and structure completely clear, precise and to the point. One just has to be careful and study in order, page by page, as with any other topic that one wants to master.I totally disagree with the critical reviews of some other students.

Tech support is responsive and generally helpless. Product requires close coordination with students, teachers, and humans who make errors. Company just tells you to buy the product again rather than fix auth code issues. Good idea marred by poor execution.

I feel a lot better after reading the other reviews. I thought I just wasn't getting it but this book is terrible. It leaves out so many of the fundamentals and foundations one needs in order to comprehend and complete the exercises. I have a tutor who is on sabbatical so I got the "independent learner program" that accompanies this book in order to keep up on my own until she returns and it is a maddening, frustrating waste of time. For anyone looking for help learning Arabic, this is not the book to use. The people who contributed to and wrote this book don't seem to know how to teach.

If you are looking to learn something easily and with confidence, this is not the book for you. It seems as though the only reason this book is the standard is because there is nothing else out there. The book constantly raises rhetorical questions about rules of grammar, that it then does not answer. It refers back to previous lessons raising concepts that it 100% did not identify in the referenced lesson, and also fails to provide page numbers (or even chapter numbers), so you just have to look for it. In the majority of cases, it also describes a “rule,” that it almost immediately breaks without explanation. Finally, if you would like to try out your new Arabic skills in conversation, good luck—in the first chapter, you’ll learn how to say “United Nations” (and you imagine how often that comes up in conversation), but if you need the police, you’re out of luck. I could go on and on, but they’ve been through three editions so far, with only cosmetic changes. I just hope someone else writes a book, so we can stop putting money in these people’s pockets. They should stick to academia because their teaching skills are خرة.