Customer Reviews

Speak Arabic For Beginners—The Michel Thomas Method™ (8-CD Beginner's Program) (Michel Thomas Series)

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I already posted my review of the Foundation course.
http://shrinkify.com/eo3
I see this "advanced course" more as a complement to the Foundation course than as an "advanced" course.
When you finish this course you are unlikely to understand conversations, but you can build you own sentences with a limited vocabulary, and you have (painlessly) acquired the essentials of grammar.

More importantly you feel confident that you actually can envision speaking Arabic. Well, the Egyptian dialect, which is widely understood.
Grammar is made simple and absorbed. The mechanisms of the language are simply explained and internalised.

I wish I had used this program before I used Pimsleur Eastern Arabic, i would have better benefited from Pimsleur's 2 levels. Although Pimsleur very efficiently gives you more (yet limited) vocabulary and what you need to be an efficient traveller, its quite hard at the beginning. The dialect differences are obvious and not important. Some words differ , pronunciation differs, but it's easy to deal with the differences, similarities are stronger than the differences.

After these Foundation ad introductory courses, I went through Pimsleur Eastern Arabic very fastly a second time. And my feeling is that I was ready to learn more: more vocabulary and more verb tenses. Which I did as you'll see.

In brief, Pimsleur taught me lots of useful sentences and basic vocabulary, but it was not that simple (and it's awfully expensive). Michel Thomas / Wightwick / Gaafar give the structural understanding of the language and this dramatically improved my abilities to build new, never heard before sentences.
It is quite likely that the next final "vocabulary" level will be very useful.

The course , it should be stressed, should be used as they tell, in a laid back manner: relax and let it flow in and out (I mean you are goind to produce sentences that will easily flow out). Don't strain and don't try to remember. You're not at school , you are learning to speak a new weird mysterious language for real ! With very few CDs (8 + 4) that I essentially used while running , or driving (which is not the best usage of the CDs but the best usage of my available time) I deem the results remarkable.

Then one has to use other materials to reach a conversational level.
After I tried some other Eastern Arabic and Egyptian arabic material which did not eally suit me well, I eventually bought the Linguaphone complete Arabic course. This (Linguaphone) is a very thorough course with 10 dense CDs exclusively in Arabic. There are lost of new words, as in the Assimil methods(by the way I tried the Assimil Arabic for French speakers, it's audiotrack sounds nothing like Arabic and is ridiculously slow. An Arabic friend judged the Arabic used ridiculous pronounced. And I'm a huge fan of Assimil that I used for 4 other languages I can now speak quite well).

Linguaphone is not as rewarding as Pimsleur and Michel thomas /Wightwick/ Gaafar. I would not have been able to use it, had I not had an earlier introduction that allows me to progress. Of course , as this is classic Arabic , modernised, it's different, and more complicated. Still my previous introduction to Syrian / Eastern arabic (Pimsleur) and to Egyptian (with nicely taught grammar) now proves invaluable to make the best use of this very rich Linguaphone course whih I think must be very frustrating for a complete beginner.

Take home message: if you want to learn Arabic, this course (Michel Thomas foundation and advanced) is the perfect introcuctory course to a widely understood Arabic dialect. I don't know were the "vocabulary " course will take us, but even without it , it's easy to improve one's abilities after Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar have lead us to build new sentences , understanding the basics of this strange language's grammar, painlessly and almost unknowingly.

I'd recommend this course as the first one if you want to learn Arabic. Otherwise, the other courses may disgust and deter you. With this one as a starter, you'll magnify your further learnings.
J.

I've tried a few Arabic language learning products. From audio courses - to software such as Rosetta stone (V3). It was very frustrating, with one audio course I couldn't even remember 2-3 words confidentially. Then I heard of the Michel Thomas Method, and decided to give it a try. I went for a one hour bike ride, and by the time I got back I was amazed by what I had RETAINED. The feeling of actually holding onto the new information was a great feeling. Highly recommend this course.

I am very impressed with this product. If you want to converse in Arabic and have the self-discipline to work on your own, this may be exactly what you are looking for. You will be one of three students learning the language. The other two students, a man and a woman, learn as you learn, stumble as you stumble, and succeed with you. They are clearly not actors. The structure of the course is simple: there are two teachers, an English woman fluent in Arabic, and an Arabic man fluent in English. The teachers introduce concepts then ask the students questions in the form "How would you say?" The students answer and the teachers correct their syntax and pronunciation. The teachers build the language, piece by piece, much as one would build a complex structure out of Lego blocks. The students become comfortable with handling each piece and with how the pieces fit together to form bigger pieces. I very soon found myself talking to myself in Arabic as I was walking to work. The course is very good value. At ten times the price it would still be a bargain.

I have only been using these discs for 3 weeks now and they are already proving worth the money. A good buy and a must if wanting to learn Arabic.

I spent a few hours before getting this cd set researching what is the best and easiest way to learn arabic and I really believe that this is it. I've been listening to the cd's now and it is coming really easily and it's so exciting to be getting a head in the language without even trying too hard. I would really recommend this set to any beginner wanting to gain conversational arabic.

Buy these CD's! If you are just starting out with learning Arabic or just need to brush up this CD course is brilliant! I learned more Arabic from listening to the first CD than I have from all the software, books, flash cards, etc. that I've purchased. Skip Arabic for Dummies, Arabic for Idiots, etc. and go straight to this course.

I'm married to an Egyptian and have been trying to learn Arabic for over 10 years. I've tried a lot of various methods, and Michel Thomas has worked the best for me and for my kids. It truly is learning the Egyptian dialect of Arabic effortlessly. I find that the words and phrases we do learn are very useful--right away. From the beginning, my kids and I were asking for Mumkin this and that? (May I have _____?)

When I tried to learn Egyptian Arabic through Pimsleur, my husband was frequently critical of the words/phrases they used. I also found the conversations a bit unrealistic. There was also no written guides or English explanations. With this method, you have a written guide. Plus it's expensive--when I bought it, close to $200.00. With Michel Thomas, you also have Jane and Mahmoud talking about why this and that occurs. There's some explanation--as well as some hints, such as the "Samira" door for talking about women. Jane Wightwick has authored numerous books on learning Arabic and is a true expert in teaching English-speakers to learn Arabic. (Just search her name on Amazon.) You can listen to a sample lesson on Youtube at [...]

Rosetta Stone is useless as its MSA--and nobody speaks Modern Standard Arabic. It also did not have the immediately useful nature of vocab. I also think that especially with a complex language like Arabic, some explanation makes learning easier.

I've tried other methods as well--the Medina series, various software, etc. Honestly, if you want to learn easy and effortlessly, this can't be beat!

My 7, 5, and 3 year old are also learning along with me. Each short lesson is maybe 3-5 minutes long--so it's very doable for young kids.

Highly highly recommended.

I have a question : what is the difference between this course "Speak Arabic for beginners" and the Michel Thomas "Foundation" and "Advanced" courses in Arabic? I would like to avoid buying the same product twice. Thanks for any information which will help me avoid a purchasing error!

This is a wonderful way to learn a language. My CD set was in excellent condition and came at a great price.

I thought this was going to be like the other useful Michel Thomas cds. I've listened to the French ones, and picked up a good deal, this one on the other hands is not very useful. First of all the women who is speaking does not have a good accent, for example she doesn't have distinct enough sounds to tell the difference between an aleph and an ain. So you don't really get a feel for the sounds. Why they don't just have Mahmood, the other guy on the recording, do the whole thing is beyond me.
Second the phrases she teaches are not useful in any context. I've gotten to the fifth disc and have yet to hear salaam wa-alaykum, or inshallah. They should be the first to phrases uttered; don't travel to an Arabic speaking country without these. Instead you learn how to say, that's not my daughter, where are my glasses, are you going to the cinema, none of which I need when I am trying to not get ripped off by taxi drivers in the back streets of Jeddah. Save your money, and get the alif-baa series instead.