Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

Just a Few of Your Many, Many Memrise Language Choices!

4-5 Arabic, Apps, Audio Lessons, Flashcards, Multimedia, Vocabulary, Websites, Kids

I am now a hard-core Memrise addict. It is all over for me, but stop reading here and you could be saved from a similar fate. Still reading? Beware, compulsive types! If you try this website—which is free, making…

30 Pimsleur Lessons for Modern Standard Arabic

5 Arabic, Audio Lessons

I really, really, really wish Pimsleur offered 90 lessons for Modern Standard Arabic, often referred to as MSA. I love Pimsleur, and 30 lessons aren’t nearly enough! Pimsleur is a great resource for dozens of languages. It is extremely interactive…

Pimsleur Egyptian Arabic: If Only There Were More Than 30 Lessons!

5 Arabic, Audio Lessons

Pimsleur offers highly interactive audio lessons, each about half an hour long, that have so far impressed me more than any other teach-yourself product for spoken language skills. Everyone has different language-learning tastes, though, so before you buy, I recommend…

Schoenhof's Website Is a Window to the World

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites, Bookstores/Libraries, Kids

Founded in 1856, Schoenhof’s claims to have the “largest collection of foreign books in North America.” As a student at Harvard, I used to shop at their main store in Harvard Square for my language and literature course materials. I…

The Sign Out Front

5 Arabic, Organizations

This mission of this wonderful community resource, notes its website, “is to support and empower the Arab Immigrant and Arab American community by providing services to help them adjust to their new home and become active members of society. Our…

This Is a Great Little Book

5 Arabic, Books

I loved The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read & Write It by Nicholas Awde and Putros Samano. It is hard-core, sincere, and careful. I learned a ton from it. There is much useful vocabulary in there alongside…

I Often Did Pimsleur Arabic on the Floor; It Made It Easier to Focus

5 Arabic, Audio Lessons

I love Pimsleur and have used it for 15 different languages to date. Pimsleur Eastern Arabic consists of a series of exquisitely designed audio lessons, roughly half an hour each, in which you are constantly challenged to speak Arabic in response…

Block Where Alwan for the Arts Resides

4 Arabic, Museums/Cultural

In downtown Manhattan, you can visit Alwan for the Arts for cultural events in the realms of music, dance, film, books, and more. An event I went to there in 2009 was enticingly called “Leyya Tawil’s Dance Elixir,” with clarinetist…

It Says Easy, But It Didn't Work Out That Way For Me

2-5 Arabic, Books

I did not find Easy Arabic Grammar, by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar, easy. I admit I had a brief spell of euphoric pleasure when I was reading the early pages, where I enjoyed an excellent and reassuring…

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