Learning languages has been
always very important during the human history.

However, the degree of
difficulty is variable from a language to another.

Arabic is one of the most
difficult languages that people from different lingual backgrounds find so
difficult for several reasons that personally call psychological more than
technical.

– The Alphabet: The
Arabic characters are unique and has very specific forms.

These letters can be found in
very limited other languages which are not really as spoken as Arabic in term
of speakers’ number. 

– The Forms (Shekel الشكل): 
  while most of the languages have a single sound for each letter. Arabic
letters has 7 sounds for each For example the letter ب 
  Bmay sound as the following :

“Ba” بَ

“bu” بُ

be” بِ

ban” بً

 bun بٌ

ben” بٍ

eb”   بْ

– The written
language: While most of the languages start from the left to
the right, Arabic has an opposite style by having the sentence written from the
right to the left. The difficulty here is more psychological die to the mental
habits of writing the other way. This problem can’t be so hard to solve. All
what the student needs to practice a bit and he can easily overcome it in a
short period of time

NB: This problem
may not exist for very young learners because of the fresh brain and capacity
in adapting any new style.

– The structure
of the sentence:  It will be surprising to most people to know
that Arabic has so similar sentence structure to Latin languages.

 Past (subject)
* Verb + A subject indicator (attached to the end of the verb) + object 

• Subject is not always
required to mention 

 ذهبت إلى المنزل 

I went(ذهبت) to the house(إلى المنزل)

The structure is so similar
here to the ones in Persian and Turkish.

Present(continuous form all the time):

 Subject + subject indicator attached to the
verb + verb + subject indicator attached to the verb + object 

الأطفال يدرسون العربية

The kids are studying
Arabic. 

Future :  Future is similar to English ,it has two main
forms :

  Future simple :س   se will

Subject + (futureindicator)
*subject indicator attached to the verb +verb + subject indicator attached to
the verb + object 

انا سأذهب الى فرنسا

I will go to France

This future
expresses the possible happening of an event if the future which is not
certain.

Be going to :

أنا ذاهب الى فرنسا

I am going to France.

This future
expresses a certain plan the same way ‘’ be going to’’ does in English

There are more differences
that we will talk about in other articles later.

Now we come to the method of
learning Arabic as a second language effectively. 

Arabic in fact can be learnt
the same way as any other language can be learnt and surprisingly I would say
that it’s taught the same method English is taught despite the linguistic
differences between the two languages, so how can we do that?

Before I start
this method is exclusively created by the Speaking Cats online school. 

The method is
based on the modern strategies of teaching online and mainly TPR, so it
requires changes if it’s held in the actual classroom. Plus, our course is
devoted to children but still can be so effective for adults in
case there is a real enthusiasm and determination to learn Arabic.

Our method is divided into two parts: 

Part 1: The vocabulary Set:

Learning different sets of
related Words

for example:

Animals:

Bear   (دب)        lion (أسد  )   fish    
(سمك)       rabbit (أرنب )

Eat   (يأكل )

As you can see here we have 4
nouns and one verb 

The words are all connected
with the verb as the following:

BearèEatèFish

Lionè   Eatè  Rabbit

Part 2: the sentence 

In this part we build the
sentences using the taught vocabulary in the first part 

With different forms:

الاسد يأكل الارنب

The lion eats the rabbit.

What does the student learn from this structure?

ð With such sentence patterns, the student will be able elaboratethe same
structure with different words in the future.

ðThe student learns the tenses, so he can apply themto other sentences.

ð The student learns how to install the forms (shekel) as he will be able to
acquire the techniques for changing themaccurately.

This method has been approved
effectively with hundreds of our students who found it easier and more
enjoyable than other methods.

I said enjoyable
because our designed course is based on a wide range of educational unique
games which are created specifically forour lessons and where the student plays
these educational games with his teacher to memorize the vocabulary and learn
the sentences structures. 

I hope I have given a hand to those who are trying to find easy ways to learn Arabic as a second language .As kindly , ask you to have a look at our course on

www.thespeakingcats.com 

For more details, we will be
glad to assist you in reaching your goal of learning Arabic as well as
French and English.

We welcome you all.

 J.Elamir.