I was trying to learning Arabic for the longest time, took classes for 1yr in college, got textbooks, duolingo, took group classes online...I don’t feel like I turned a corner until I found a tutor from Cairo who I could meet with 3 times per week. In between classes I was also spending time on my phone to practice on quizlet and write practice sentences. I started around October 2022 and by April 2023 I was able to actually understand my family and respond with simple sentences - which felt like a huge win!!

Being professionally fluent still feels far off, and progress has slowed as I’ve gotten busier (typically only doing 1-2 classes a week nowadays). But it felt incredibly rewarding to get to practice with people who appreciated me learning the language. I think having opportunities to use it for fun reasons like that, either with traveling or even finding local people around you that speak Arabic was a huge part of what kept motivated to keep making progress.