9 Solutions to Improve Your Arabic Speaking

When language learners first start learning a language, they usually start with reading. They read online articles, books, information on apps and so on. If they take a class, they spend 20% of their time repeating words, and 80% of the time reading the textbook, doing homework or just listening to a teacher. So, if you spend most of your time reading instead of speaking, you might get better at reading but your speaking skills never grow. You get better at what you focus on.

Make ‘listening’ your utmost priority. Get your listening resources in place and listen to them whenever you can, even if you have to do it while you’re driving, working out at the gym or doing your regular household chores. When listening, your complete focus should be on the speaker and not on translating what the speaker is saying into your native language.

1. Readout loud – If you’re listening to a lesson and reading along, read out loud. Then re-read and speed up your tempo. Do this again and again until you can speak faster. Try your best to pronounce the words correctly, but don’t obsess about it.
2. Prepare things to say ahead of time – This will help you not only to learn how to say the words, but how to say them in the right context. As you may know from experience, most learners run out of things to say. But, if you prepare lines ahead of time, you won’t be at a loss for words in conversations.
3. Listen to Arabic content – Listening to Arabic, particularly for beginners,  can be frustrating at first because you will likely not understand most of what you hear. With time, your ear will get trained and you will start noticing it is getting better at turning sounds into meaning.
4. Try to speak – Start small and make small wins that could only boost your confidence and help you pick up momentum. It will be ideal if you can find an in-person or online practice partner. If you don’t, you can speak to yourself, your pet or your phone recorder.
5. Improve your grammatical skills – Your successful attempts of reaching good Arabic fluency and a wide repertoire of words could be useless  if you do not maintain the appropriate level of Arabic rules and grammar. You must keep your conjugation skills as sharp as possible to include the gender nouns, adjectives and the corresponding verb forms, etc.
6. Improve your vocabulary – It might seem odd to be learning tons of isolated vocabulary words without context or grammar rules to piece them together. Having good vocabulary skills can go a long way when you’re trying to make a conversation with someone.
7. Patience will take you a long way – Be patient with yourself and your level of uncertainty. Don’t be surprised if you don’t understand a single word even after listening to your Arabic resources for quite some time. All you need to do is keep an Arabic dictionary on your person at all times and be patient enough to look up for the meaning of the words you’re unable to understand.
8. Review again and again – This is the key to perfection, and we can’t emphasize it enough. Most learners don’t review! If you review and repeat lines again and again, you’ll be speaking better, faster and with more confidence.
9. Use shadowing – Shadowing helps create all the neural connections in your brain to produce those words and sentences quickly and accurately without having to think about it. Try to shadow the conversation line by line, and you’ll be mastering it in no time.

It is important to remember that learning a language, and particularly Arabic, is a marathon, not a sprint. It is not about doing things fast; it is getting things done right by setting objectives, being consistent and remaining disciplined. Do not be afraid of making mistakes as you speak. Hit reset and repeat. Have fun learning and mastering the skill.

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