Ahlan wa Sahlan: Intermediate Arabic (Student Text): Functional Modern Standard Arabic for Intermediate Learners (Yale Language Series)

The best book ever written on Arabic gramme.

Do NOT buy this book! It is terrible. Rather than improving on the first Ahlan wa Sahlan, this book is actually worse. Just a few of the things wrong with it include:1. The text on the CDs does NOT follow the written text. There are extra words/sentences added as well as words/sentences deleted. This makes it very difficult to follow when listening/reading. The dates as spoken on the CD are different from the dates written in the text, i.e. the speaker will read the date in the passage (in Arabic) as "1997" but the written passage says (in Arabic) "2000."2. One of the things I liked about the first Ahlan wa Sahlan book was the ability to use the CDs independently, and the number of oral drills/exercise on them. These are non-existent in the intermediate Ahlan wa Sahlan. All you get is the initial reading passage and the comprehension passage - no drills or vocabulary list.3. The CDs, in addition to not following the written texts, are very difficult to use because of the way they are set up. The first two CDs go through the initial reading passage of each chapter ONLY. Each passage is one track. The third CD has two tracks. The first is the reading passage of the final chapter. The second is ALL the comprehension passages from ALL the chapters -- in one track! This means that if you are working on chapter 4, you have to first use the initial CD to hear the reading passage, and then you have to switch to the third CD to hear the comprehension passage at the end of the chapter. But even worse, you have to find the Chapter 4 comprehension passage somewhere in the middle of track 2 on the third CD.4. There are numerous other errors--in both Arabic and English--throughout the grammatical notes in the book, i.e. using the word "suffix" when they mean "prefix" and so on.Unfortunately, once you open the CDs and realize what a terrible job the creators/editors have done, you cannot return the book.

This book in confusing, the vocabulary is boring and often irrelevant, and the approach convoluted. I recommend Al Kitaab, which has better vocabulary (focused on international relations, politics and such).

The new edition is very expensive so this older edition is still to sell, but half price. I don't know anyway if the new edition corrects the quoted problems or not.