Rapid Arabic: Volumes 1 & 2

By: earworms Learning

Narrated by: Marlon Lodge

Length: 2 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's Summary

Earworms mbt(c) is a revolutionary accelerated technique that takes the hard work out of learning. By listening a few times to these specially composed melodies, with their rhythmic repetitions of Arabic and English, you will pick up essential words and phrases that will not just be on the tip of your tongue but burnt deeply into your long-term memory in next to no time.

If you like music, and want to make rapid progress without any formal knowledge of language learning, Earworms mbt(c) Rapid Arabic (bundle) is the course for you. Now you can buy Volume 1 and Volume 2 together and save money. Volume 1 is your survival kit of essential words and phrases to get you by on your trip abroad. You will feel you are learning within minutes and might just be amazed by how easy acquiring a language can be! Volume 2 will have you talking about yourself (past, present, and future), chatting, and even flirting!

©2013 Earworms Ltd (P)2013 Earworms Ltd

A Surprisingly Helpful Program

Where does Rapid Arabic: Volumes 1 & 2 rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I was surprised how much I like this program, considering it could be written off as a bit cheesy at first listen. It's in my top Arabic learning programs so far (and I've tried quite a few.) The reason I purchased the program was because I liked the specific music track behind the program on the sample. It was soothing and added to the learning experience. Some of the music on the Rapid programs samples for other languages seemed a little annoying to me, but I'm glad I went ahead because on the Arabic tracks the music actually fades into the background and helps with learning the vocabulary and phrases. There is plenty of useful dialogue on this, as well as explanation of what you're hearing. The "learner" on the tracks will often respond with helpful insight about what he has just heard which makes the words and phrases make much more sense than a simple repetition track. I find that the vocabulary and dialogue given in this method are easy to remember because you are experiencing the conversations and not just repeating sounds that have little connection with you. You won't learn everything, but as a complete beginner it's been hard to find ways to hear and learn vocabulary to go with the grammar and script learning that one has to do when starting Arabic.

Review by Arabic Speaker: good, not perfect

I am a native Arabic speaker living in the US using Rapid Arabic to teach my 6 year old kid. The format is brilliant: short bilingual conversations with lots of repetition and calm background music. It's my kid's favorite bedtime audiobook.
But... the Arabic speaker is inconsistent. She uses a mixture of formal, Egyptian, and Lebanese dialects. Moreover, there are mistakes in several sections. There are extra articles, missing prepositions, mistranslated expressions (as simple as "you're welcome!") She can correctly pronounce most but not all of the uniquely Arabic sounds. Her Arabic would definitely help you get around an Arabic speaking country but there's plenty of room for improvement.
Still, you'll get plenty of common phrases and topics and it's a pretty entertaining format.

Easy to listen to

Where does Rapid Arabic: Volumes 1 & 2 rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This book is very easy to listen to. The narrators' voices are pleasant and they seem to have a good raport with each other. I like how the male plays the role as the learner and asked questions of the teacher, like I would ask if I was in a class.
You will not learn conversational Arabic with this audiobook but you will learn a few key phrases such as ordering food, asking for directions, booking a hotel etc.
I listen to this on the way to work each day and I'm getting better and better at remembering the words and phrases.

Any additional comments?

Use this as an introduction course, then if you want to get serious, buy a full language course or get a tutor.

Helpful

This is useful if you picture the thing/ scene the words represent in your mind as the words are being said. Follow along in mental pictures.

Like the course very much

Listen for the course from time to time in the last couple of years and words just stick on their own.

Nicely done

Pros: Easy to follow style - if I was single and trying to flirt with a middle Eastern girl, would be handy :)


Cons: little more formal setting wound make it valuable to engage in daily business

this method suits my way of learning

Motivated by learning Arabic, I have tried several methods (generally of the type with no explanations " here's what you say when you want to see the menu, now memorize it"). This one is the only one that has enabled me to make significant progress. With a rythmic background beat, repetition is given the priority it deserves. This works for me because I need to hear structures and vocab several times clearly to give me the time to memorize them and understand how they work. This latter concern is facilitated by very simple explanations (this is when speaking to a woman, this is when speaking to a man, this suffix added to a noun means there's two of them etc) that are helpful. Maybe some more in-depth explanations would be welcome. One last significant detail: the scenario here is a female teacher teaching to a male student, doing rôle-plays. At the end of each rôle-play there's a challenge where the student reinvestes the essence of what he's learnt. It's all about learning to speak; there's very little in the way of audio comprehension unfortunately. The voices make for easy listening (mildly spoken but engaging with received prononciation). The Arabic taught here is standard Middle Eastern I'd say and takes a wee bit of getting used to when you're familiar with Magreb Arabic. This is not a bad thing.

Pointless and Awful

impossible to learn anything. Music plays in the background constantly, and echoes ans reverb throughout

Quite effective

If you like music, this might actually work for you. They don't use the best music, but hey some of the phrases actually stuck in my mind now!