Michel Thomas Method Total Arabic: Beginner to Intermediate

I have been learning Arabic from two different Tutors and got this program to supplement my education, while I am travelling. The program is very comprehensive. It involves a schoolroom style of teaching with a Teacher, Assistant and 3 students. The classroom setting relies more on actively listening, repeating and comprehending than memorization.It is helpful to hear the student's answer correctly and make mistakes and to hear the pronunciation coming from various voices.This is for Beginner's, there is a 2nd course for Intermediate students.

Best language learning software I have come across to date. Vocabulary and sentence structure are broken down in a way that are easy to understand. I am using it daily right now, and there is enough review within each lesson that I seem to be progressing quickly. My father, a native Arabic speaker, is very impressed with the knowledge I have gained so far. After completing this level, I am definitely moving on to the next.

This is my first attempt at a new language. Before starting this I'd recommend learning the alphabet so your familiar with the sounds. Her easy Arabic script book is nice but you can also learn it for free on you tube with Arabic studio, its free and he's very good. He will teach you to read and write the Arabic script. As for total Arabic.....its awesome. I just finished the series and can't believe the results. You won't be a native speaker after this series but you will have a great base for continued learning.

Very nice and easy way to study Egyptian Spoken Arabic.

If you are going to learn Arabic, this is the ONLY way to do it. Really. It is utterly amazing how well this method works. It blows my mind to think that one can achieve an intermediate level on a language such as Arabic in a matter of hours. Yes! Hours.You are asked to construct the sentences yourself and this strengthens your recollection of the material learned. It works like magic.One of the most amazing things about this method is that you are not writing nor memorizing anything.Do practice the lessons as instructed on the CD; that is, find a quiet room, close your eyes and go. In my opinion, this methods will not work as well if you listen while doing something else such as driving or watching tv.Mr. Thomas was a genius. I don't know how the other companies selling foreign language courses will stay in business with this method out and available.I had a little bit of an error at the end of disc 3 but the rest of the CDs were error free.I hope they add more languages in the future.ROCK AND ROLL!!!!D.B. in Wichita

This is almost a good to great product. The instructors are very good and teach in a clear and concise manner. You really will understand Arabic quickly compared to other beginners courses. There are two reasons why this gets three stars instead of five. First, the lack of practice and understanding of Arabic plurals. They will delve into plural nouns somewhat, but not enough to satisfy anyone wanting to learn and master them. The hardest part of Arabic is learning singular and plural nouns since there is not a simple ending change like in Western Languages. Unlike other languages where their plurals are basically a little augmented, Arabic plurals are quite different and I highly recommend a plurals only course which could be course number 4, building off their vocabulary course. Secondly, the lack of vocabulary. This review here is about the Total, Perfect and Vocabulary Builder sections of the course and after finishing all three, it lacked a lot of vocabulary that is necessary. One example of this is the verb to eat; a top ten verb in any language and it is not covered at all in this course. Conversely, this course does a great job teaching verb structure. They do a masterful job teaching the verb system (past, present and future) and this course is worth purchasing just based on that. Overall, it is an average course that I believe is a bit overpriced. I would recommend buying their older used editions. One warning, this is Egyptian Arabic and not Modern Standard for those who may care. All the Best

This is a great course to start from scratch with Arabic. You will pick up your first phrases quickly. The rate of learning is really quite impressive. The first CD is basically the same as the Start Arabic pack, so no need to buy that first.Lessons are interesting and more engaging than the norm as you are listening to conversations between the teachers and real students. The students follow exactly the same course as you, so you learn at a similar rate. You also have the benefit of repeating each CD several times before you move on to the next, so you end up ahead of the students slightly and picking up on their mistakes, which makes it more engaging.If you want an easy to follow course that is suitable for complete beginners and doesn't rely on simply listen, repeat, remember then this is for you.

This CD set is rather a limited resource and the lack of any transcript of the lessons in Arabic script reduces it's utility very considerably for those trying to learn to read and write as well as just to speak. Be very clear this is only a listening and speaking resource. Also, as I believe it states somewhere, it is Egyptian spoken Arabic, so you should be aware before you start. As Egyptian spoken Arabic is widely recognised across the Arabic speaking world - partly due to their film industry - I was fine with that.What I've been more disappointed by was the fact that the first couple of CDs were the basic course I'd already heard from the library and so the new content really did not go as far as I would have liked. Effectively it stops at a brief introduction to verbs (this is not as bad as it sounds as there are a lot of basic sentences you can create without actually declining and verbs because they use a slightly different speech form). It is a useful way to get some straightforward spoken Arabic and commonly used constructions and sentences and I find the way the material is presented is largely pretty good. So, I have learnt a fair bit from this and it has helped me to progress and probably helped me to persist in other efforts as it is certainly a way to feel that you are making some progress quite quickly.The lack of an Arabic script transcription makes it much harder to integrate with other written resources which tend to use MSA (modern standard Arabic) and harder to share with other learners if they're not actively listening to the CDs - it doesn't pretend to be a written course and that's fine, but since it doesn't actually contain a huge content, then to have it written up in Arabic wouldn't be a big deal and would to my mind make it a more flexible and useful resource. There is some stuff briefly written down, it's just all in transliteration with no Arabic script.It turns out that if you want to go further in this approach you have to by "perfect" Arabic. Well, to be perfectly honest I don't think this one was worth the money as for me it just didn't go far enough, so I don't feel like paying out more...Here's roughly what you get to learn (I'd have liked to see this before I bought!) - all in sentences with attendant bits of vocabulary.in the following, as well as "I", the forms for you, (s)he, we and they are also covered...Yes, No, please, thank you, today, tomorrow, May I have?How to form the possessive, so asking and giving your name and questioning about various things.I'm tired, thirsty, happy, busy, wanting, coming, going, seeing, knowing, having, understanding.how to negate all of the above, telling the time, the questions where, who and when, conjunctions and and because.shop, house, someone/anyone, something/anything, nothing, everything, office, bank, hotel, taxi, doctor, manager, Mum, Dad, brother, sister, son, daughter, children, school, book, teacher, water, coffee, tea, market, restaurant, near, egyptIn the last CD they get a wee bit into the verbs to drink, to go and to understand with a construction including "necessary".In fact it seems this "total" Arabic course is a rename of what they used to call "foundation" Arabic (which makes a lot more sense) and they have a free pdf of the material covered in the old course here, which is the same as this one, so if you want to check it out before you buy, take a look: http://www.michelthomas.com/assets/downloads/FOUNDATION%20ARABIC.pdfI'll continue in my attempts to learn, but pursuing other routes for the time being rather than spending more on this one - I guess if the perfect Arabic edition had also been included I'd have been happier (not that I know it's content) although it still wouldn't cover the Arabic script issue.I've been intending to learn Arabic for a long time, but only began in Oct 2014 by trying an adult education class. Unfortunately the teacher was v poorly organised and it was a frustrating experience for me and most of my class mates. The positive outcome being that we tried to work together pooling info on resources and trying to find better was to learn. Someone got the beginner Arabic Michel Thomas from the library and it was definitely more accessible than our lessons for a total beginner. I'm trying to learn MSA for reading and writing alongside any widely spoken street dialect. Arabic pod is a useful free resource to start off with and it turned out that learning the script through printing off some online materials and watching youtube videos was more effective than our class teacher, who appeared to have expected us to magically know the whole alphabet after one lesson introducing four letters...I've also found an a very helpful repository of Egyptian / MSA Arabic here http://arabic.desert-sky.net/index.html

This is a fun way to learn arabic.I found the tempo of the learning appropriate and appreciated having a native speaker repeating many of the phrases.

Easy, learning well just great for learning

It has met my expectations perfectly. I have bought French, Italian and Spanish, too. This method suits me, even the French , which I can speak pretty well, was enhanced with help from these courses.