Mohammed

I’ve been taking lessons with Mohammed for many years and I owe much of my progress in Arabic to him. He tailors the class to me and focuses on conversational skills in Syrian dialect, using different conversational topics to structure sessions around vocabulary building whilst maintaining the flow of conversation - some more formal (culture, history, traditions etc) and others informal (idioms, travel, social occasions). We work with google docs to capture new vocabulary and phrases and he often gives me the etymology and nuances rather than just a translation (eg when the same word might be appropriate or less appropriate depending on the scenario / context). I have tried many Arabic tutors over the years and Mohammed is by far the most skilled and patient.

As usual, today's lesson with Mohammed was great. We mainly just had a conversation, pausing sometimes for Mohammed to explain a new word I hadn't know before. I appreciate Mohammed's patience, depth of knowledge, and attention to detail when addressing grammatical mistakes or explaining a pattern in the language.

I had a fantastic first lesson with Mohammed. Looking forward to more.

Es war die erste Stunde nach sehr langer Pause, und sie war wie immer wunderbar: Sehr angenehme, ruhige und entspannte Lernatmosphäre, ausgesprochen kompetente Lehrkraft, die sich auf die Bedürfnisse und das Niveau des Lerners einstellt. Sehr zu empfehlen!

great teacher

Today was another great lesson with Mohammed, which followed our typical structure of Arabic conversation practice followed by reading a text in Arabic together. Mohammed explained several terms and grammatical structures along the way, including رفيق الدَّرب (lifelong friend) and the distinctions between several words for angry/sad in Levantine Arabic and MSA.