12 Terrific ways to practice your Arabic listening skills

Arabic is a Semitic language, like Hebrew and Aramaic. Around 292 million people speak it as their first language. Many more people can also understand it as a second language. The Arabic language has its own alphabet written from right to left, like Hebrew. Since it is so widely spoken throughout the world, it is one of the six official languages of the UN, the others being English, French, Arabic, Russian and Chinese.

Many countries speak Arabic as an official language, but not all of them speak it the same way. The language has many dialects or varieties, such as Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, Maghrebi Arabic, Levantine Arabic and many others. Some of the dialects are so different from one another that speakers have a hard time understanding the other.

Do you want to improve your Arabic Listening Skills?

Have you ever had difficulty understanding a native Arabic speaker? You know most or all of the words he or she used. You would understand what they said if you had read it, but for some, you can’t figure out what is being said when it’s spoken.

If you’ve studied Arabic for some time but still struggle to understand native speakers you’re not alone. This problem is a widespread one, and to be honest it’s not a bad problem to have. 

In this blog, take a look at twelve practical ways you can improve your listening skills in the Arabic language, and take your overall proficiency to the next level.

• Doing things like listening to Arabic music while cleaning your room, or watching an Arabic show or movie with English subtitles are beneficial to your Arabic learning, but only to a point. These are both forms of passive listening, where you hear the language but your mind isn’t usually engaged in trying to interpret what is being said.
• What really makes the difference is active listening. You can also use Arabic music, movies, podcast, or even a YouTube channel to practise this skill (just make sure they’re in the dialect you’re learning).  With your chosen tool play a short segment of the Arabic audio.  Don’t use English subtitles. Play the recording back a couple of times until you can more or less guess what the speaker is saying.
• After you make your guess, double-check what was said against the Arabic subtitles or script. If you find any mistakes in your interpretation, go back and listen to those parts again. This method of trial and error is an excellent way to work out your Arabic listening muscles!

• This might sound surprising, but if you don’t know how to physically make a sound in Arabic your brain is going to have a much more difficult time trying to recognize it when it’s spoken. Many language learners think of a good accent as a luxury, but when you’re learning a difficult language like Arabic it’s a borderline necessity if you want to freely have conversations with native speakers.
• To develop good Arabic pronunciation start by focusing on the individual letter sounds. After you’re comfortable with those, start to combine the individual letter sounds into words, and the words into longer phrases. Once you start practicing longer phrases try to find some recordings of basic phrases or conversation. Listen closely to the speakers’ intonation and the way they combine words when they speak. It’s these little nuances that will mean the difference in your listening skills.

• Once you start practising your listening skills it’s important to make it a regular part of your Arabic study. It’s a good idea to set aside a specific time for each listening activity. For example, you may spend ten minutes practising the sounds of the alphabet, another ten minutes trying to decipher an Arabic youtube video, and finally another ten minutes practising some basic phrases.
• Your listening practice can easily be more than ten minutes or less than ten minutes. The amount of time will depend on your schedule as well as how important it is to you that you improve your listening.

• Listening passively to the Arabic language is not enough to make you a fantastic Arabic listener. You need to start listening actively, which means noticing new vocabulary or patterns of words and asking questions.
• If you’re listening to someone, don’t be afraid to interrupt them to ask what a word means. If there’s not a real person to ask, write down the vocabulary you don’t understand and look it up, or save it for later when you can ask your teacher or Arabic-speaking friend.

Many people love to watch Arabic variety shows, drama, or anime. They help you get used to the ways natives speak and the words they use. As it is effortless to read the subtitles, they are just enjoying the story and not listening carefully to the Arabic language. As a result, to improve your listening, you should focus on listening to Arabic without looking at the subtitles.

 By enrolling yourself in an Arabic learning class, you’ll be exposed to a bunch of other speakers and a language expert. You can ask the teachers to adjust their speaking speed as per your understanding; you can also ask them to pronounce words with emphasis on the first letter because as a beginner student, you often cannot differentiate between the words and a whole sentence of eight words may sound like one long long word that never ends!

Take advantage of every single chance you have to listen to Arabic. The old adage of “practice makes perfect” certainly rings trues here. Rather than standing stunned like a deer in the headlights when someone throws rapid Arabic at you, constant listening practice will help you get the gist of what they’re saying. Soon, you’ll be able to distinguish critical keywords. This means you can understand the context of a conversation without worrying too much about understanding every single word.

One issue with all of these resources is that it’s also easy to take a very passive approach. It’s one thing to simply watch an Arabic drama, but attempting to transcribe what you heard during a drama program takes the Arabic learning experience to an entirely different level. You can develop your listening abilities by actively trying to decipher what you hear, regardless of what you’re listening to.

In order to have the most productive and enjoyable listening experience, you need to have a conversation with someone who not only speaks Arabic but is patient and preferably, interesting. Talking to someone who’s also learning a language means that they are likely to be sympathetic to your language learning needs.

• Podcasts are the new radio. You can listen to them whenever you like, fast-forward any bits that don’t interest you and carry them around with you on your cell phone or tablet.
• There are many great podcasts that can help you on your quest to listen like a native. The good thing about podcasts, as opposed to radio, is you can play them as many times as you like – so don’t panic if you can’t understand everything right away.
• Listen at first to get the gist of what’s going on, and then replay parts of the podcast slowly to try to gather information. It’s fine to spend half an hour figuring out five minutes of a podcast if you want to focus on listening for detail.

• Arabic-language TV also has a lot to offer the aspiring Arabic speaker. If you’re lucky enough to live in a Arabic-speaking country, try watching children’s TV programs or the news to get you started, and then work your way up to more complicated shows.
• Another good idea is to watch TV shows in Arabic that you have already seen in English,

To truly immerse yourself in the language, switch to Arabic. Anything that you usually read or listen to in English should be in Arabic instead. That means switching your phone’s language and making the most of the Arabic-language on social networking sites like Facebook, Pinterest.

Following these tips will go a long way toward helping you improve your listening abilities and, ultimately, your Arabic conversation skills.

Try to make Arabic listening a part of your routine. Allot a specific amount of time for each of your listening activities. Try to practice a minimum of ten minutes of active listening. You must remember to choose the right audio or video according to your level of interest to get effective results. By following the above-mentioned procedures you will definitely become a better Arabic Listener. You can also opt for Arabic courses in various institutes or online platforms for better learning.