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| Michel Thomas Method: Arabic Foundation Course (Michel Thomas Series) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jane Wightwick, Mahmoud Gaafar
Publisher: Hodder Arnold
Category: Book
List Price: £69.99
Buy New: £10.00
You Save: £59.99 (86%)
New (24) from £10.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 91190
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.5 x 2.5
ISBN: 0340957271
EAN: 9780340957271
ASIN: 0340957271
Publication Date: September 28, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 I can finally talk to my wife's family September 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have been trying to learn Arabic for a few years to talk to my wife's (Egyptian) family. This is the best course I've found by far and I'm finally gaining confidence. I don't agree with the 'Ali G' comment at all. Everyone in Egypt, including President Mubarak, speaks Egyptian dialect - and most other Arabs understand it. Now I'm going to try the Advanced course to improve my level further.
 WARNING- MICHEL THOMAS ARABIC IS PIKEY ARABIC September 4, 2008
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
THIS FOUNDATION COURSE IS THE ARABIC EQUIVALENT OF WHAT THE SON OF VICKY POLLARD AND ALI G WOULD SPEAK! SHOCKINGLY COLLOQUIAL AND TERRIBLY BASIC. IDEAL FOR THOSE OF THE MOST LIMITED CAPACITY WHO WISH TO GRUNT THEIR WAY THROUGH ARABIC. WARNING- THIS COURSE MAY SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR REPUTATION. IMAGINE A JAPANESE DIPLOMAT LEARNING TO SPEAK ALI G ENGLISH! IZZ YA LIKE GETTIN ME BREDREN? YES IT IS ENGLISH- OF SORTS. LEARN THE STANDARD ARABIC OF THE BBC ARABIC SERVICE AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY ALL OVER THE ARAB WORLD- IF IT HAS SUCH UTILITY WHY DON'T THE BBC USE EGYPTIAN PIKEY ARABIC? I REST MY CASE.
Ineffective methodology and very basic Arabic July 26, 2008
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
Read this review carefully BEFORE MAKING A PURCHASE!
Learning languages through listening is one of the most effective ways in my opinion and thus I bought this audio course and other accompanying courses of these authors with great enthusiasm. I was though extremely disappointed.
The positives: It does familiarize you with the Arabic language and you will get to know a few vocabulary and understand the peculiarities of Arabic. If you are looking for a course to get a basic "taste" of the language it is a good start.
The negatives: If you are looking to learn Arabic seriously, there three main points on the negatives to mention.
1. You should know that you will learn the "Egyptian Dialect" of Arabic. While one could discuss which dialect is the best to learn, many universities and language schools nowadays teach "Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)" rather than a specific dialect. This is due to the fact that for example Gulf Arabic (e.g. Dubai) is different. If you learn MSA you will have a basis to understand all dialects and will be generally understood in different Arab countries including Egypt.
2. The course throughout all CDs has native English speaking "students" who attempt to pronounce the Arabic words. In the MAJORITY OF THE CASES they STRUGGLE. This leads to listening to WRONG PRONUNCIATION MANY MANY TIMES which is bad for the human brain that learns based on repetition. While my opinion is subjective, I believe this is an extremely ineffective method of learning a language. The English teacher "Jane" has also a sub-optional pronunciation. Only the Arabic teacher "Gafaar" on these CDs pronounces the words properly. Sadly, he is the one you hear the least during the course in my opinion.
A far better methodology is "Pimsleur Approach". You will found audios of Pimsleur on Amazon as well. They might be a bit more expensive but have a very good reason. I have not tried them for Arabic but seen that they exist. I have the pack for French was very impressed!
I believe that this course could be a lot better, just by using merely native speakers when repeating many, many times the Arabic words. The pace of the course is very slow. For someone who picks up foreign languages quickly, it gets even VERY ANNOYING that after the fifth of sixth track you might already be able to pronounce an Arabic word well while the "students" of the course you hear with their STRONG(!) English accent pronounce the words still in a quite bad way, struggle and even confuse forms (for example feminine and masculine forms or "you" with "I" which is really simple). They are then corrected by "Jane", the teacher. By then though you had to listen to many wrong pronunciations. I found this extremely annoying. It takes the fun out of using these CDs.
3. The overall level of these courses do not get you to a serious level of Arabic. As mentioned earlier and also by another reviewer here, it is basics you will learn. You might not be able to book even a hotel room (I agree with the other reviewer her) but will have a "taste" of the language.
Excellent March 26, 2008
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
Despite several frustrating and unsuccessful attempts to learn languages at school, I was resigned to only ever speaking English. Having read the product description on this item stating that it used a unique method of teaching I decided to try it. After only one week of learning for just 20 minutes a day, I could already construct basic sentences. As the course went on it cleverly added words and ideas, so forming ever more complicated sentences came naturally. I cannot recommend this product highly enough, if I can learn Arabic using it anyone can!
An effective, yet painless method January 14, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
(I first posted this review on Jan 14, 2008, but it got deleted)
This is a very impressively effective method.
And it's definitely worth the money. It's actually a cheap method given the results.
I say this from the point of view of an "experienced amateur language learner". Over the last 4 years, I've learnt 3 Romance languages, I have revived and improved the German I had learnt at school, in addition to my mother language (French) and to English. I confess I have learnt some Arabic with Pimsleur's 2 levels for Syro-lebanese Arabic.
I could do this because 1) There are very smart rather painless methods that I discovered and used: Pimsleur and Assimil. 2) I had the time , mostly when driving calmy,or performing some brain-easy activities (running, walking the dog etc...) 3) The methods I used are so rewarding and effective that they prompted a crave for learning new languages. I can now have conversations (general and in my professional environment) in all 3 romance languages and German.
This lengthy introduction is not intended at boasting, but rather at making 2 points:
1) I think I now can identify a good language learning method when I try one.
And 2) there are methods that are very smart and make language learning very easy if you have the wish to learn and enjoy speaking foreign languages.
So far I considered Pimsleur the best to start with because as it's only audio, it's quite natural, and your pronunciation is based upon what you hear, not what you read. When you read foreign words, you read them with a brain that may have difficulties producing an appropriate pronunciation because it will interpret the reading according to your reading experience in your mother language. This is why so many French people pronounce English like Inspector Clouseau (actually worse since P Sellers stresses the words properly). Pimsleur is also very good because it brings you to constructing your own sentences based on other, different sentences. And it is a very quickly rewarding method, you soon realize you can actually speak the language. But thereafter, especially after the ideal Pimsleur method that comprises three 30 lessons levels , each intended 25 minutes, with one lesson a day (I did more, you do not have enough words and tenses to understand the language when immersed in th country. And at times it's quite awkward to identify the sounds and reproduce them. But although you lack words you can express basic needs and have simple conversations. After these usually 3 months, you need to expand your vocabulary a lot, which Assimil is very good at doing especially if you work as much as you can with the CDs. There you will memorise words and many idioms in context . You'll need the booklet to understand the text that you'll need to repeat while understanding it, while listening to the CDs, like an almost simultaneous echo, which some call "to shadow the speech". Well that's how it works best for me..
================
But now I discovered this new "MICHEL THOMAS" Arabic foundation method, based on late Michel Thomas (MT) principles, and designed by a British teacher of Arabic helped by a native speaker of the Egyptian dialect.
THIS METHOD IS MUCH EASIER TO GO THROUGH THAN PIMSLEUR, and gives you more for your time and money. But it has the same huuuge advantage of being only audio (see details above.
The only problem was that only the Foundation course (8 CDs) was available at the time I did it, and remember longing for the "advanced" course" (March 2008) and the "vocabulary " course (2009 Inch ALlah).
But IN 8 CDS, THE ACHIEVEMENTS ALLOWED were REMARKABLE.
Well, my case is special since I had not started from scratch, having done Pimsleur's level one 1 year earlier and level 2 one month earlier in another Arabic dialect. But the Egyptian dialect is somewhat different.
The teaching is quite slow in purpose (I guess) so as not to put the learner under stress. It seems that the quiet environment created by the gentle pace and tone of the teachers, their nice and positive attitudes towards the students, all of this seems to be essential to open our minds and help us memorise and eventually speak. Well you realise this when later in the course you're asked to say something and you actually do say it.
Of course this basic course with it's 8 slow paced CDs does not teach you many words, less than a 30 lessons (15 CDs) of Pimsleur, but I think it's a more effective method for a difficult language like Arabic. I had to spend much more time on Pimsleur than 30 minutes per lesson for level 1, sometimes having to do the same lesson 3-4 times before I could pronounce /identify the words or sentences. In the MT program, it's way easier. And still you are led to build sentences on your own, being fed the bases earlier.
My impression is that those 8 CDs can be used without going again and again through the same "lessons". I did not need to listen more than once.
And after completing it you'll be much more at ease to further progress using either other methods or the aforementioned next steps of the program, pending for release.
I DEFINITELY RECOMMEND THIS "ARABIC FOUNDATION": if you want to learn Arabic it quite certainly is the best to start with and you'll see , it's not very difficult. Then you 'll probably find it easy to move on either with the "advanced course" and the vocabulary course later or with other methods.
RESERVATIONS:
1) I cannot speak from the point of view of a naive learner (from scratch). Nevertheless I found the method not boring at all and I did understand post hoc some details that had escaped me while doing the Pimsleur program.
I did try the Mandarin program from the same publisher, based on the same principles, and hence I'll know the value for the absolute beginner. An American would say it's an "awesome" course. Very impressive how you get out of it being able to construct sentences, with a limited vocabulary though. And believe me Chinese and Arabic are not difficult languages, when smartly taught. My feeling is that Arabic is more difficult than Chinese for the grammar, and Chinese more difficult to pronounce because of the tones. The Chinese writing remains a nightmare.
2) The choice of Egyptian. I think this is a good choice since many sources and Arabic speakers I know indicate that it's understood by almost all Arabs, mainly because so many TV series and films are from Egypt (Hollywood on Nile). Many methods teach you "Modern Standard Arabic". You never hear that Arabic spoken except maybe on TV news on international Arabic channels. I find it better to learn one of the dialects, either Egyptian or Lebanese/Syrian: all those are understood in Jordan, Irak and the gulf, and Egypt. Egyptian might be more understandable in Northern Africa for the reasons mentioned above. .
3) No teaching of the writing. So what? I don't care since I just want to communicate orally. Learning the writing would definitely slow down the pace of learning and make it more difficult. A good learning has to be rewarding so keep that for later, when you speak the language.
4)The 2 students in the course. Strange as it may seem I think they help. First, they have hesitations and make mistakes that you (I ) have or do. Second they help convey the positive empathy of the teachers onto you. This is supposed to ease the learning process in according to MT's principles. I do find the students helpful.
5) As you're exposed to only one speaker who speaks clearly and rather slowly, you are not prepared to understand a flow of Arabic at normal speed, and this is what expects you, because when Arabs will hear you speak well (you will, I think) , they will assume you understand as well as they hear you speak. This is also a problem with Pimsleur that facilitates a nice pronunciation, which exceeds the lower quality of our understanding. But you have to start somewhere and here again this MT Arabic Foundation I recommend wholeheartedly.
CONCLUSION
I think it's an excellent and cheap but effective method to start with. Very rewarding for the short duration it lasts. Hopefully the next levels will be as effective.
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