Best Price: $179.95
(CD Version)

Our Rating:
80%

Transparent Arabic Review (Complete Edition)

By Gerrit du Plessis

You may have seen ads for Transparent Arabic, extolling its virtues as a comprehensive, affordable solution to learning Arabic fast. And for $179.95, it definitely isn't a bad program, particularly if you've learned foreign languages before and pick them up fairly easily. However, if you struggle with languages or this is your first attempt at learning one, you may not find Transparent Arabic quite as comprehensive as you'd like.

First, the good things about Transparent Arabic. Its developers seem to understand that people learn in a variety of different ways, and for this reason, there are computer games, audio conversations and stories, and reading and writing exercises. There is also an innovative component that compares the sound of your voice speaking Arabic to a correct native pronunciation to let you know whether or not you're speaking correctly and clearly.

But therein lies part of the problem with Transparent Arabic. Unlike English, spoken Arabic is rather liquid – the words all seem to flow together, with no sense of where one word ends and another begins. For this reason, it's important for your language learning program to deal with that issue head-on. Also, some of the sounds in Arabic, such as "kh," simply don't exist in English, and they are very difficult for us to replicate. Transparent Arabic doesn't have enough customizable features to deal with these problems.

So is there anything good about Transparent Arabic? Absolutely! If you don't plan to spend much time in an Arabic-speaking country and you really just need a quick introduction to Arabic phrases – and especially if you've heard enough spoken Arabic to have a sense of how it should sound – Transparent Arabic should work well for you. But if you're a complete novice and need an in-depth immersion in the Arabic language in both its spoken and written forms, you might want to consider the less-expensive Rocket Arabic online course. Transparent Arabic is a good program, but possibly not the best choice for the money.

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