As a linguistics student who is also a serious student of Arabic, I disliked the lack of Arabic script. The work is written entirely in English; you're guided with only a few new letters representing sounds that English doesn't have.

While pronunciation guidelines of any kind are helpful, these are only phonemes (individual sounds), not prosodical information (the 'musicality' of sentences), which is just as important if you're only learning to speak. If so, you're better off buying tapes or audio CDs. Print media assist better for learning literacy - but this book won't help you learn that. Badly planned.

A very timely book that I found to be quite useful. I've been studying arabic for over a decade and have yet to find a better book which is so methodical in its approach.

the format used of drills for pronunciation is boring and the subject matters of the exercises are not relevant to today's Morocco. Outdated language is used much to the hilarity of my husband's family who are educated Moroccans. Examples of sentences taught are " I gave the rifles to the judge" and "she hit the dog". It's useful for the basics and the grammer but the choice of vocabulary taught means that whilst I know how to construct a sentence, I don't have the vocab! It has inspired me to learn Moroccan and then write a book for English speakers.

i don't think you'll be striking up many conversations with moroccans unless you are a truly devoted student AND you have an excellent imagination... what do i mean by this? well, you will have to imagine how all of the words in the book are pronounced since it does not come with audio (tapes, CDs, anything please!) and ordering the audio material means writing to washington, d.c. and sending a check, etc. to me the book is completely useless without these valuable materials since the pronunciation of any form of arabic is virtually impossible without examples...

despite this, the information is all there... i don't think the author's transliteration system is any worse or better than any other system... in fact, i found it pretty straightforward... i think the format of the book could be updated however, to make it a little more user-friendly and didactic and provide more everyday situations, like how to greet people and ask for things in a store or restaurant.... as well as the famous phrase missing in every language book in the universe: "where's the bathroom?" (!!!)

the grammar explanations are clear if you are a linguistics student, but otherwise you will be quite lost since verbs, for instance, are never presented in easy-to-understand formats like tables and charts... vocabulary words are rarely grouped into any sort of categories either, making them more difficult to memorize (for instance, in the same vocabulary list you will find gold, silver, French, today, with you, factory, hunting, her brother and arithmetic) so you ask yourself, "what is the topic of this lesson?" and "when will i use words like hunting and factory?"

so you won't find typical foreign language book helpers like a chapter with labeled fruits and vegetables, or a drawing of a living room with the names of the different pieces of furniture shown... that kind of "spoon-feeding" is entirely lacking... but having said all this, it is probably the most thorough book written on moroccan arabic and will give you a good knowledge of the language if you study diligently

This book is very useful. Although it uses linguistic signs for pronunciation instead of Arabic signs it is still accessible. Being a teacher, I was really able to evaluate the ods used in this book. I have found the exercices easy to follow. The level of difficulty is progressive allowing you to master what you have learned previously before learning more. Being French Canadian, I would have preferred to have a Moroccan-French book. But this is the best one I have found in North America.