This book presents a comprehensive foundation course for beginning students of written and spoken Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), providing an essential grounding for successful communication with speakers of the many colloquial varieties. This long-established and successful text has been completely revised with the needs of English-speaking learners especially in mind, and will prove invaluable to students and teachers alike. • Step-by-step guide to understanding written and spoken texts • Develops conversational ability as well as reading and writing skills • Arabic-English Glossary containing 2600 entries • Fresh texts and dialogues containing up-to-date data on the Middle East and North Africa • Includes Arab folklore, customs, proverbs, and short essays on contemporary topics • Grammatical terms also given in Arabic enabling students to attend language courses in Arab countries • Provides a wide variety of exercises and drills to reinforce grammar points, vocabulary learning and communicative strategies • Includes a key to the exercises • Accompanying cassettes also available