How to Learn Arabic in the Next 18 Months

assalam alayum if you're someone who wants to learn Arabic and are thinking about you know the best methodology to follow you know what is the best way to go about teaching yourself Arabic have some advice that want to share with you so in the beginning want to tell you bit about myself started learning Arabic seriously in about 2008 so that was about 10 years ago and this is when joined University joined the International Islamic University of Malaysia and wanted to get into the Bachelor of Islamic reveal knowledge and Heritage program so this was Sharia course the only thing was it was completely Tau in Arabic the books were Arabic the lectures were Arabic if you wanted to ask question you had to do it in Arabic we had to give presentations in Arabic write assignments in Arabic so completely Arabic so when went there did not know any Arabic at all had learned some basic Arabic grammar and you know some basic words maybe completed the Medina book one or two don't remember exactly but remember that could not communicate at all in Arabic couldn't understand anything thing apart from few basic things you know like very basic stuff so you know they had program they had Language Institute they would put students who wanted to get into the Kia the Islamic Studies College in this program first if you didn't know Arabic and you can take about year year and half two years learn Arabic pass the exam and try and get into the degree program so we started with this program and you know it wasn't anything special it was just normal Institute we had about 1 and 1 half hours of class every day and we would use the rest of the time to practice and learn and you know long story short hamdulillah was able to complete this program in roughly one year and then get into the but took one semester before this studying Arabic on my own that's long story it doesn't matter you know but would say in about 1 and half years completed my Arabic and then started with the course and in the first semester just knew enough Arabic to get by just enough to survive so could just you know with lot of difficulty could could just keep track of what is going on in the class and alhamdulillah was able to pass alhamdulillah but then you know once the program started alhamdulillah the Arabic started getting easier and easier and you know it kept on progressing and by my third or fourth semester was fairly comfortable alhamdulillah and lot of lectures they remarked alhamdulillah that my Arabic was very decent it was nowhere near it still isn't anywhere near you know native proficiency but for someone who had to learn from scratch alhamdulillah think did decent job so the thing is this program don't think it was anything special the reason want to tell you is you know not everything we did in that program was useful because it did not work for lot of people and want to tell you what worked for me and what worked for lot of people that saw this program you know as said lot of people you know they did not learn Arabic and so much so that they stopped accepting complete beginners into the program you know later they made the rule stricter if you did not know any Arabic they won't even give you admission into the program you had to know know little bit of Arabic because it wasn't really working for complete beginners so this is thing so alhamdulillah you know when look back at my journey can see some things that did that made big difference that allowed me to master the Arabic language reasonably and in hindsight can also see lot of things could have done better better you know with my experience teaching Arabic you know making content for Arabic Learners interacting with other Arabic teachers looking at resources think there are lot of resources and things you can do basically that can make real good difference real big difference for you inshallah so want to give you basic framework that you can use if you're serious to learn Arabic to master it I'm not just talking about just being able to to communicate or speak few words but to you know read the Quran and understand their meaning to be able to read the had to read Arabic classical text and understand and even communicate and speak you can reach fairly decent level of Arabic in the next 18 months inshallah if you're serious if you're committed if you follow this basic framework and it's nothing really special but I'm just going to put my experience into perspective inshallah I'm just trying to summarize it the things that will really make big difference for you inshallah the first thing think you should do is choose textbook or many textbooks because you're going to need more than one textbook obviously don't listen to those people who say don't learn grammar when you learn language just learn by Brute Force by just listening and practicing and you know you just pick up grammar along the way this does not work for classical Arabic maybe it works for spoken Arabic maybe it works for learning spoken language you know you can just learn to communicate by using this method but it is not going to work for you need to learn Arabic grammar and learning and understanding gramar will you know make the journey smooth it will you know give you structure it will give you foundation upon which you can build so the other things which we are going to talk about are built upon this Foundation of grammar and for this you need textbook and it doesn't really matter which textbook you choose there are lot of good options the Medina Arabic series the three books which are very famous they are very good you might need teacher because all these books are in Arabic alab another excellent series it's very good but you might need teacher for these books if you can't find teacher there are lot of good tutorials online which you can use I'm developing some courses myself I'm working on comprehensive course inshallah have course on the which is classical text on grammatical analysis or so if you're learning please check that out I'll put the link in the description inshallah so you know when started out used lot of textbooks studied the Madina books and when needed more explanations did some textbooks which are written in English these are good these can help as well at the end of the day it is not the textbook that really matters it is really you know what you choose to do with it you can have the best textbook the best course but if you're not committed if you're not learning you know every day if you're not revising if you're not practicing it's not going to make any difference so choose all the textbooks you want but be regular and start learning so this textbook this is the first step it is the foundation on which you can build your language the second tip want to give you the second step is learning vocabulary now there is way to learn huge amount of vocabulary very fast inshallah one of the most powerful learning devices is right in our pocket all the time and it is our smartphone what like to do and what lot of language Learners have done successfully is use flashcard apps to learn new words so there are excellent apps like Quizlet Anki memorize all these apps they give you words in the form of FL cards you can find lot of excellent word lists for example 80% of the words of the Quran you can download this list which is already made and uploaded by someone wordss in the Quran 5,000 most common verbs in Arabic 5,000 most frequent words in the Arabic language so all these words you can just download it or you can make your own list and put it on your phone and whenever you have some free time review these cards revise them and some of these apps they're very Smart in the sense that they use system called space repetition which is that it will show you cards repeatedly separated by certain intervals this is very effective memorization technique so if you learn 10 words today you know after 3 days it's going to show you some of these cards again and if you remember the word you can click remember and it is going to show you again after maybe week or two weeks if you don't remember it's going to show you again after 3 days so this is space repetition so you want to check out this app it's called Anki or you can just use the normal flash card apps like Quizlet which are also very effective so this is something very powerful you can do in your free time whenever you are you know waiting for taxi with for your Uber you know waiting for your wife you can just you know use your phone and learn lot of new words revise lot of new words and the final step have have only three steps because these are the things think that really work didn't want to make long video you know giving you 21 steps of on how to learn Arabic because don't want to waste your time this is what think really works and this is all have the third step is what think makes the difference between success and failure for lot of people this is so important lot of people don't do it and if you're not going to take this third step don't think honestly that the first two steps are going to help you learn Arabic to complete to level of Mastery it's not going to let you Master the Arabic language it's not going to be enough the third step is immersion it is about surrounding yourself with the language and practicing the language what's going to make difference is when you practice the things you learn and apply them in Practical situations you need person with whom you're going to practice speaking every day insh so if you're serious about learning Arabic in the next 18 months you have to find someone you're going to speak Arabic with the things you learn every day you're going to use it in conversation you're going to practice saying it if you just learn how you know you're going to use these simple sentences and say it to someone when you use it in speech this is going to reinforce your learning this is going to reinforce the grammar rules that you learned or else it just stays as Theory and you're not going to master them you're just going to forget them and lot of people they just want to learn Arabic to read the Quran to understand the Quran read books they think speaking is not important but the thing is if you communicate with the language when you interact with Arabs this is going to accelerate your language acquisition exponentially this is going to help you learn Arabic at much faster pace and this is what is going to make huge difference so it is very important to speak Arabic to practice Arabic and it doesn't really matter if you're not in an Arab country if you don't have people near you physically who can speak Arabic there are excellent ways online to find partner to practice Arabic with there is this site called italki.com where you can hire someone to practice Arabic with if you can afford it you know you can hire someone who will practice Arabic with you every day so you can find some excellent speakers there in for any dialect of Arabic even for fussa you can find inshallah people who speak very good or you can go to one of the many very good Facebook groups and there are lot of people who might be willing to practice Arabic with you for free in exchange for you teaching them English or your native language so you can do this kind of language exchange so all these are options you just need to you know be proactive and find way because if you're serious this is very very important step and don't want you to just stop at speaking and practicing want you to start listening to Arabic listen to audio books listen to the news in Arabic listen to speeches in Arabic even if it is one or two words that you're able to pick up at the beginning this is you know this kind of immersion it really makes big difference even if you think nothing is going on lot is going on inside your brain when you you know train your mind to become familiar with this language so these are the three steps have for you and think if you stick to this plan if you're serious and if you do these things you know every day for the next 18 months you can easily master and this 18 months it's it's very safe period that have given you think lot of people if they're dedicated can do it in much lesser time inshallah Anyone who puts their mind to it can achieve this in 18 months you can learn Arabic to very satisfactory level inshallah so hope this is helpful and hope you know to hear from you inshallah hopefully you'll be speaking Arabic so let me know if you found this helpful and let me know if can help in any way would love to hear from you bar