Mondly Review

Saturday, June 25th

2022 Arabic Lesson Reviews

Mondly

• App-based Arabic lessons
• Uses games, contests and leaderboards to keep you interested
• Can practice dialogues with Chatbot and Augmented Reality
• Has voice recognition activities for perfecting your Arabic accent

Language-learning apps are more popular than ever, and Mondly is one that offers more than most with over 40 to choose from - including Arabic. Just take out your phone (or navigate to the website) whenever you've got a few minutes; you'll be picking up new words and phrases in no time. And, if you're the kind of person who's motivated by points and leaderboards, Mondly's got you covered there too.

You had me at "Hello"

You can create a free account with Mondly and try out the first lesson of every language they offer: it's always called "Hello" , though the actual content varies. For the intro lesson in Arabic, you'll learn "mother" , "father" , "sister" , "brother" , "hello" and "this is my _____" (fill in the blank with one of those family member words). We're grateful that Mondly allows users to toggle between the words written in Arabic and their transliteration with the English alphabet: you decide when you'd like to learn to read the new words.

Theme-focused vocabulary sets

Mondly's Arabic lessons revolve around themes like Family and Travel. The amount of content varies; you might get just 27 words and no phrases in a category like Animals, but over 200 words and 60+ phrases under City Tour.

Not much grammar instruction

Even though some of the vocabulary sets are called "Grammar" , you're not going to find much on Mondly that teaches it explicitly. What is the standard word order in Arabic? How can you put together your own sentences? This isn't the kind of program where you'll be told outright how to do that. There's a little bit at the end of each lesson: look for the blue icon next to the "Redo" button. It's not always useful, though: in the first "Hello" lesson, the grammar gives you all of the conjugations for the verb "to be" ...but that's not used even one time in the lesson itself!

Chatbot and Augmented Reality tools can be fun

Mondly has a couple of unique features that you won't find with other Arabic lessons. Start by trying the free Chatbot conversation that comes with your trial access: it's on the main dashboard under the "Hello" lesson. You'll get a basic back-and-forth exchange of introducing yourself, asking how the other person is doing, and so on. We'll be honest: we had a very hard time imitating the spoken Arabic well enough to get the system to recognize our response, so don't feel too bad if you do also. Another interesting tool is the Augmented Reality feature that lets you "speak" with a digital partner you can superimpose on your own environment. We don't know how much meaningful learning that offers, but it can't hurt to try it!

Costs

• Free guest account
• One-time fee of $149.95 ($99.95 with promo pricing) OR
• $27/month for 6 months ($19/month with promo pricing)

Budget-friendly

As you use your free Mondly account, you'll quickly see that most features require a paid subscription (most lessons beyond "Hello" , more than one Chatbot conversation, all of the AR capabilities). The good news is that these Arabic lessons are very affordable - but prices vary on a regular basis. Standard pricing is typically $9.99/month or $47.99/year to unlock just one language. Mondly usually offers an all-access pass for their entire language library, and more often than not it's "promotionally priced" at $47.99 as well. To make things even more mysterious, at random times we've spotted an even deeper discount: get all of Mondly's languages, forever, for a one-time fee of $89.99. There's no apparent rhyme or reason that would let you predict when one of those mega-sales is coming around. Thankfully, any of those prices are much more affordable than some competitors' Arabic lessons.

Don't ask for a refund

We're not sure why Mondly doesn't offer students any kind of satisfaction guarantee. Their rivals do, almost without exception. At least you're not going to be out more than $100 if you subscribe and then change your mind, but we'd still suggest starting out with a month-to-month plan to minimize the damage. You can cancel at any time, and we're pretty sure Mondly will offer you plenty of incentives to get you back.

Not the best, not the worst

Mondly's Arabic lessons have some pros and cons. They're affordable for sure and can be an entertaining way to get in some daily language practice. We also like having the chance to try out some back-and-forth conversations, even if the speech recognition software had a hard time understanding our terrible-for-now accent. On the other hand, Mondly is missing the structure and the tools that help students develop true fluency in Arabic. Students who are serious about learning the language will likely need a more traditional program and just use Mondly for review.