Intensive Moroccan Colloquial Arabic (Darija) INDIVIDUAL

You asked me about the instructor on a scale of one to 10, she is definitely an 11. She is tough, compassionate, and she is consistent. She has always gone out of her way to help me understand the language. Even when I asked her to do translations that are not part of the Lesson plan.

My complaint or concern is the textbook or workbook. The workbook is a black and white copy of the textbook that is originally in color. Because of this, a lot of the text exercises are very difficult for me to read and took time away from our lesson sessions. How we worked around this, was sometimes I would just have to rewrite the lesson conversations on a separate sheet of paper and then the instructor would correct them with the right pronunciation and accent marks needed to make the words correct.

For the cost of the course, the books should be up to the same standard as the instructor. The corrective action, we did with the work or text book, by ordering the proper text books from www.arabicforall.net This unfortunately this action came at the end of my learning sessions, too late for me to fully utilize that material.

The location of the class was easily accessible from the main roads. The facilities good. The instructor is very good and I have learned a lot, and still have a long way to go, but I will be speaking Arabic very soon hope this helps.

If you already have some knowledge of Arabic, want to fully focus on learning from native Moroccan teachers (speaking little English) and like a straightforward, no-nonsense method: this is the right school for you. But, if you start at 0 and learn best by getting cultural and historical context, a lot of practice and diversity in methods, I advice you to go to a different school, in Fez, Casablanca or Tangier, or even Egypt.

My level was extremely basic upon arrival, and I took 2 weeks with 20 hrs each of class. If there are no other students at your level, they propose to have private class instead but in half of the hours, which meant that I got 2 hrs of private class each day, for two weeks. Classes started off by learning the Alphabet, using cards and practicing pronunciation, reading and writing all at once. We then went to fruits, vegetables and then to a whole conversation. The method was: I say something, you repeat, and then you just practice these lists of words at home. Between not knowing any Arabic, grammatical structure etc and having to read, write and remember whole sentences in one week was plain frustrating.

In the second week of class, after having two days of quite stressful classes I decided this wasn't my method and I quit early and studied on my own. With a study book and duolingo, I learned more in a few hours then I learned in private class, and it was a lot more fun.

I have to say, the other people at this language school seemed happy about the classes and my teacher was a kind woman. Just my experience wasn't good.

I've had language classes in Spain and Bolivia before which were a lot more exiting and efficient.

Nice housing, nice lessons, nice teacher (khadija), the director always available and drove me back to airport. I recommend!