This textbook is for beginning students of Arabic who are seeking to develop communicative oral skills in colloquial Levantine Arabic, the dialect used in Jerusalem and in contemporary Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine / Israel. It is the first textbook for colloquial Arabic developed according to the principles of the proficiency movement in foreign language teaching, in which the emphasis is placed on the use of meaningful drills, activities that are appropriate to the context in which the language will be spoken, and a balance between linguistic accuracy and active use of the language.