Drawing on her years of experience as an Arabic instructor and course developer, Samia Louis has used a functional approach to create a bright, innovative set of coursebooks for the study of Egyptian colloquial Arabic—the spoken dialect most frequently studied and most widely understood in the Arab world. Now three new books, for beginner, early advanced, and higher advanced students, have been added to the series. Designed according to the ACTFL guidelines for teaching Arabic as a foreign language, each book of Kallimni ‘Arabi trains students through highly structured lessons in the crucial skills, with particular emphasis on listening and speaking, using real-life situations and expressions. The accompanying audio CD carries recordings of the dialogs and exercises in each chapter, made by Egyptian native speakers. “The books in the [Kallimni ‘Arabi] series altogether present the best Arabic textbooks available . . . miles ahead of most others.”—David Wilmsen, American University of Beirut

This three-part course in Modern Standard Arabic for non-native speakers approaches the language through a series of themed topics—daily life in the Arab world, politics and governance, literature and the arts, science and medicine, astronomy—concentrates principally on listening and speaking skills. In each section, vocabulary is built up as various linguistic structures and strategies are introduced and practiced in a clear introduction to Arabic grammar. A CD accompanies Volume 1, and a supplementary dictionary, al-Mu‘jam al-musa‘id, gives a complete key to the vocabulary of all three books in four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. Comprehensive and easily digestible, varied and informative, these books make an ideal basis for a classroom-based course in Arabic anywhere in the world.