What to Expect when Learning to Speak Better Arabic
It’s natural for your understanding to be a whole phase beyond your speaking abilities.
Expect this.
Your understanding will always at least one phase ahead of your ability to articulate yourself in the same ways. There is a time dimension to learning Arabic that cannot be rushed.
It takes time to grow up.
Even in your first language, you could not speak at a University educated level at age 14. You had to first become a University educated person. That’s why it takes most people around 17 years to develop native-like fluency in a language like Arabic.
Additionally, you cannot put into words what you don’t yet know. We learn to speak by imitating what we’ve heard. Occasionally someone will come up and tell me, “I cannot talk about practicing yoga!” When is the last time you heard an Arab talk about yoga? You have to pursue those voices to find that language, in order to imitate the insider language of that hobby or practice or interest.
Until we’ve heard someone express those thoughts in Arabic, it’s difficult to do so ourselves. We are only able to use the puzzle pieces available to us at our current level of understanding. When we speak, we are attempting to assemble something that we have limited pieces for in terms of expression.
This is another reason why you will need to begin to shift more session time to speech practice as you move upwards in the phases. More time will need to be given to learning to articulate yourself in ways that you want to express your personal interests and ideas.
