Language Teaching Methodologies – Learn Arabic Efficiently

Demetra Molocea 9/1/2019
About Arabic language
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Learning a new language is both exciting and frightening at the same time. However, that didn’t stop many new language learners from learning Arabic. After all, Arabic has been gaining more popularity lately. The Arab world is a fast growing market for trade in both goods and services, not to mention how vast and rich the Arab culture is. The Arabic language is, indeed, quite unique, and for a majority of people it seems hard to learn. We believe that once the basics are learned, it’s just like any other language and we would like to show you a few examples on how to approach learning and what methods to use so that it will help you learn Arabic more efficiently. These methods differ from one another, so feel free to pick whatever method or methods that suit your learning style and abilities.


Label The Common Items In Your Home

A great way of learning vocabulary and having it stick to your memory is by putting labels or stickers on random objects in your house with their Arabic meaning. The point of this is to immerse yourself in the language by seeing it all around you all the time.

Arabic Flashcards System

A Flashcards system is a fantastic tool for memorizing. Anything that can be studied in a quick “question and answer” format can be turned into flashcards – things like short definitions, foreign vocabulary and other fast facts. A flashcard is a piece of card with a clue on the front, and the answer on the back. The clue can be a question, a single word or a picture. Electronic flashcards can also have sound or video clues. When you review your flashcards, you will take one card at a time, look at the clue and try to answer it as quickly as possible before checking the answer and moving on to the next card.

See The Words You Want To Learn

Let’s say you just learned the Arabic alphabet and even acquired a bit of vocabulary. We highly advise you to get a book in Arabic, no matter what the subject, and try to read it. Whenever you encounter a word you don’t know, highlight it, search for the meaning and write it above the word in Arabic. This way you can learn the word in context and it helps you remember the vocabulary. You will remember a basic sentence a lot faster than if you learn words separately from a list.

The Gold List Method

In this method, you write lists of vocabulary words in pairs (in the target language and in your spoken language) and re-write them every two weeks or more in order to instill the vocabulary that you have learned in your long term memory. Also, you keep re-writing the vocabulary that you still haven’t memorized. This is a good method because you will find out that, every time you re-write the words, your brain remembered 30% of the vocabulary, and you have it stored in your long-term memory.

Mnemonic Techniques

A mnemonic is anything that helps you build an association between two pieces of information in your mind. A classic mnemonic that almost everyone knows is ROY G. BIV – the acronym that helps you remember the order of the colors in the visual light spectrum. Rhymes make good mnemonics, too. You’ve probably heard this one: “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” In addition to acronyms and rhymes, associative images make for great mnemonics as well. An example of Arabic mnemonic would be: استسلم which means “Surrender” and it sounds like Is Tess slimmer”.

The “Dissection” Strategy

In short, you take a recording on YouTube, for example, with subtitles in two languages and dissect it in small chunks of words and phrases. Store those words and phrases in a notebook, app, or Word document and repeat the words over and over again. The Arabic app developed by Kaleela.com lets you store the letters and words you memorized so far and also keeps track of the progress you’ve already made.


These would be our recommended methods to help you learn Arabic more efficiently. Of course, there are many more, but it depends a lot on your learning abilities, availability and memory type (auditory or photographic, for example). Please check out our blog where we offer a few comprehensive lists of basic sentences in Arabic, basic words in Arabic and a few more tips.

If you liked this article and would like to start learning Arabic, why not head over to our website and download the Kaleela Arabic learning app and learn to speak Arabic today? With the Kaleela Arabic learning app you can start learning Arabic on your own, at your own pace, whenever and wherever you want. It really is the best way to learn Arabic! Try it now and find out why.