YouTube’s Trendspotting Tuesday focused this past week on the growing number of videos that can teach you a foreign language (for free, of course). Among the 12 video collections featured here, you’ll find ones that offer lessons in French, Spanish, Modern Greek, Latin, Japanese and Swahili, among others. They also highlight clips that demonstrate how to write Arabic. (Find the first clip below.) Straightaway, you’ll notice that these videos have a home brewed feel to them, and they’re not necessarily as substantive as what you can get for free via podcast. (See our large Foreign Language Lesson Podcast Collection). But, at least when it comes to demonstrating something visual (such as how to write Arabic) they have their purpose.
(P.S. With the video below, I have no idea how much the “instructor” actually knows about Arabic. The point isn’t to pass this off as a definitive source of knowledge, but more to show how the video platform is being used.)
Dear Sir,
Thank you and your teamfirst to fecilitate such a great opportunity to 2nd langauge learner.
your faithfully,
MuahmmadKhalid
I think that YouTube can be a wonderful way to at least start learning a new language. This blog: http://www.learn-with-youtube.blogspot.com is based on the same idea.
Great article!
just starting to learn arabic found the videos very good and easy to understand.
many thanks dave
YouTube has some great videos for learning foreing languages. The only problem is, of course, to know what content is actually good and what content is detrimental to the correct acquisition of the language. The video here is a case in point, as the pronunciation of the Arabic letters is not too good.