This is a ten week course that I teach on Skype. For that course I use my book 'Introduction to spoken Lebanese/Level 1. As the title of the book implies, it's all about spoken Lebanese.

Teaching spoken Arabic requires a lot of experience from the writer or the teacher. Unfortunately, spoken Arabic is not documented. This means the writer or teacher of spoken Arabic has to rely on his personal experience. My experience in teaching languages exceeds 40 years.

Introduction to spoken Lebanese level 1 takes into consideration four setbacks:

1) Spoken Arabic is a very tough language to teach or learn.

2) We have tons of Arabic dialects that are so different and diverse. How do you practice what you learned and with who? Your friend could be Lebanese, Saudi, Egyptian, or Tunisian etc… And, even if your friend was Lebanese, he/she could be from north Lebanon, south Lebanon, or from Beirut or inner Lebanon. They are not all exactly the same.

3) Spoken Arabic isn't documented. So, you can't take out the dictionary to find the meaning of a word in spoken Arabic. This is a huge setback for the Arabic language.

4) The grammar governing spoken Arabic isn't as regular as other languages. In Lebanese, the interrogative comes at the beginning of a sentence. In Egyptian, the interrogative comes at the end of a sentence. Even in one country, the irregularities are a lot between different areas in any spoken dialect.

Level 1 deals with all those setbacks in a unique way:

1) The style is simple and easy to learn. The idea is to move slowly and repeat a lot.

2) All the Lebanese words are transliterated. That means they are written using English letters. The student doesn't need to know how to read Arabic in order to learn how to speak it.

3) We dedicate a good portion of the lesson to practicing in class with other classmates.

4) We learn all the essential components of simple grammar: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, relative pronouns, prefixes and suffixes, and a lot more.

5) In each lesson we make use of a simple practical dialogue that the students can imitate and practice.

6) We introduce students to the Arabic culture through cultural awareness. It might or might not help language wise, but learning the culture behind the language you are learning helps you understand the 'how and why' we do and say things.

7) At the end of each lesson, I dedicated a small portion – not more than 10 minutes - to learning the Arabic alphabet. I consider it a bonus to learn how to read Arabic in 100 minutes.

This is a ten week course that I also teach on Skype. For that course I use my book 'Introduction to spoken Lebanese/Level 2'. The style is very similar to Level 1, but is more advanced.

Introduction to Arabic level 2 follows the same style of level 1. The only difference is that level 2 goes deeper into the structure of the Lebanese sentence.

In level 2 we learn how to conjugate verbs – past, present and future. We take nouns to a new level of singular, dual, and plural. We learn how to deal with adjectives in terms of number and gender.

Of course the dialogues are longer and more advanced. The style remains the same: it's just at a higher level.

We continue to exchange cultural awareness.

And of course, we continue learning how to read Arabic.

This is a ten week course that I also teach privately. For that course I use my book 'Introduction to spoken Lebanese/Level 3'. The style is very similar to Level 1 & 2, but is more advanced.

We start by translating 20 sentences from English to Arabic. Those sentences are taken from previous levels.

We revise most of the grammar we took in level 2.

We introduce a dialogue that the student can imitate and practice.

We introduce a new section where the student is introduced to a situation and he/she has to deal with it – all Lebanese.

We continue to exchange cultural awareness.

We also continue to read fully meaningful Lebanese sentences.