For Arabic, check out Al-Kitaab (and its predecessor book) at Amazon.com (worth reading the reviews, imho). Part of a three year course. Still I think forms the

For Arabic, check out Al-Kitaab (and its predecessor book) at Amazon.com (worth reading the reviews, imho). Part of a three year course. Still I think forms the basis for most university programs. May be available on the internets. Some day it'd be great to have rich, interactive ways to do learning. Rosetta Stone is cool. My experience is that this is good for a colloquial/conversational emphasis. It's all about details at some point though -- so Alif Baa / Al-Kitaab might not be so bad. Personally, I don't know Arabic -- but I had a friend who was staying with us who was studying it at a university -- so I was curious to look it up. There are a lot of different theories about the best way to learn language: immersion, multimedia, native speakers, etc. I think when you're learning a language for the first time though, there's so much ground to cover, that it doesn't matter which direction you take. The best direction is the one you can go furthest in (is the most sustainable because of interest, convenience, availability, etc.) which is most positive and least negative. I.e., we don't learn a language perfectly the first 100 times traversing through it. But gradually we get there. But it's probably like with programming -- the most undervalued link is actually just putting yourself in front of it (as much as possible, in a sustainable manner). This can be something as simple as eating at a restaurant where they speak Arabic. Or it can be flashcards, etc. At any rate, I guess they still use it at Midd too (I'm from California -- UC Berkeley and Stanford, I think use Al-Kitaab too, or used to): http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/arabic/curriculum/courses http://www.middlebury.edu/ls/arabic/curriculum/courses But yeah, depending on interests / how engaged you'll be with the language in the future (reading a newspaper can be both a goal and a tool -- but only if you really need it / want it), it probably all depends.