Note that these CDs are specifically in the Damascus dialect, ask a native speaker if that dialect will work where you are going. My wife is Syrian from Damascus, and I found these tapes much more useful than the class I took from an Egyptian teacher. The spoken dialects are very different. Now my wife's family is actually understanding the things I say, it's worth every penny.

My guess is that the critical review below stems from trying to use the Eastern Arabic CDs for a trip to Egypt. You have to get the Egyptian CDs to learn the Egyptian dialect. Egyptians struggle to understand my wife, they are probably not going to understand an English speaker trying to speak the Damascus dialect.

I thought it was very helpful and well done - they recap everything from previous lessons so you don't forget it. It's very useful and I definitely recommend it.

One of the male speakers has an extremely confusing manner of pronouncing the "t" as a "k" in feminine verb forms. I played the tapes over and over repeating these errors many times before figuring this out. Now I'm trying to unlearn this stupidity. There is no book (transcription) along with the tape - so you are totally on your own, with no way to verify if you are hearing what you think you might be hearing. The aggravation I received from this course was 10 times worse than the amount I paid. Don't waste your money or especially your time on this course - unless you're a comic and want Egyptians to laugh at your idiotic pronunciation.

For some reason it has been a desire of mine to learn Arabic. It has been a daunting task, especially when looking at books that attempt to describe how you should say certain words.

My desire to learn the language was rekindled by an upcoming trip to Egypt so I tried these tapes. I found that they are wonderful and make Arabic easy and managable. I look forward to using my abilities, and actually be able to understand what is going on around me in Egypt. The only problem is that I don't know which tape set to buy next to learn more without repeating what I have learned.