Some time ago I ran into a stash of secondhand books for Maghrebi Arabic and did the only sensible thing: buying them all! I didn't really have any plan to learn the language but I still ended up spending a month working through one of these books. I was favorably impressed and thought I could post something about it.
Title: Cours d'arabe maghrébin
Authors: C. Canamas, M. Neyreneuf, C. Villet
Editions: 1979 (CIEM), 1985 (CIEM-L'Harmattan), 2005 (L'Harmattan, revamped edition, available as a pdf)
Audio: 4 CDs
There are 25 lessons, teaching around 500 words in all. Each lesson is made of five sections: a short dialogue, a vocab list, pictures, exercises and grammar notes (see pictures below).
According to the introduction, the authors have tried to produce dialogues stripped of linguistic features that would be too local. They acknowledge this gives the texts a rather artificial flavour. They also mention that their goal is not to teach some sort of standard Maghrebi Arabic ("which does not exist") but to give the learner the basic structures and vocabulary they'll need to later acquire a "real" spoken variety. Regional variants for basic vocabulary are given in the lessons.
The authors have also produced a follow-up course, Dossiers d'arabe maghrébin, which makes use of dialogues as spoken by Algerian/Moroccan/Tunisian speakers, without any modification. I haven't used it but I can post about it if someone is interested.
Another point worth mentioning: the course was written at a time when it was planned that French borrowings would be gradually phased out and replaced by words from Modern Standard Arabic. Consequently, the authors use these MSA words in the dialogues (but still mention the "normal", usually more common, word at the bottom of the page).
I don't know how sucessful this policy of getting rid of French borrowings has been. Mass immigration to and settlement in France has certainly altered the situation compared to that of the 1970s, when the course was written. After listening to several hours of Algerian radio shows, it seems to me that French is everywhere to be heard. And not just isolated words but whole phrases or sentences. So, my guess would be that the purification/Arabification movement initiated post independence hasn't been too successful and that the borrowings mentioned in the course, some of them at least, are probably still there and more common than their MSA counterparts. But I could well be mistaken, and the situation may vary depending on the country, the age of the speaker, etc.
I can't really say how effective the book is in the long run but I really enjoyed working through the first 15 lessons. My main complaint about most textbooks is that they introduce too much material too fast, and without enough exercises. This book avoids this pitfall and I found the pacing really well done. There is around 20 new words introduced in each lesson, 2-3 main grammar items, and 4-5 exercises. Each exercise is made of 5-10 substitution drills or Q&A, with the first two given in print in the 3rd section of each lessons. I found that was enough to learn and retain the material (I listened to the audio tracks several times of course).
Overall, I'd say the authors really went out of their way to produce a text that would be user friendly. This shows for instance in them splitting a conjugation over two lessons instead of hitting you straight with the full paradigm, creating three recap lessons (5bis, 10bis, 15bis), etc.
The dialogues are also well done, drawing from everyday life situations in France*: unemployement, children not wanting to go to school, buying new clothes and cursing about them being too expensive, etc. Translations are given at the end of the book, as well as a version in Arabic script (in the 2005 edition, the text in Arabic script has been placed inside the lessons).
*The course was originally written to teach Social Security workers in France the basic skills they'd need to communicate with immigrants from Morocca, Algeria and Tunisia.
Here are pictures of lesson 6 and 14. You can see how regional variants (AL-MA-TU) and MSA-French borrowings (məṣnaع = uzîn, "factory") are given below the vocab list.
