Believe it or not, there are apps for more than just playing games, watching movies, streaming TV and sharing photos.

So, instead of hunting Pokémon all day, take a tiny break and learn some Arabic.

Research shows approximately 75 billion apps were downloaded in 2015, which means there are awesome apps for everybody, including Arabic learners.

As a matter of fact, there’s absolutely no shortage of Arabic options in our app stores. The problem is only that there are too many apps—and too few that teach the right type of Arabic in the right ways.

One key mistake that many less-than-excellent apps make is not considering that Modern Standard Arabic has nonative speakers—it is primarily used for reading, writing, academic purposes and delivering the news, but it’s not anybody’s first language or conversational language of choice.

Plus, many developers are new to the language learning game, and continue to make rather silly mistakes in terms of spelling, pronunciation, grammar and so on, as they don’t have quite enough knowledge to teach the Arabic language in all its difficulty and complexity.

Luckily, FluentU took over the task of selecting the crème de la crème of Arabic apps for you! We’ve only got the best and brightest lined up here, so you don’t have to fret over what to download.

Here in this post, we’ll look at some of the best Arabic learning apps to help you sharpen your Arabic skills at any level.

Before we move on, let’s figure out why you should learn Arabic with apps in the first place.

Photo by Rohit Tandon

Benefits of Learning Arabic with Apps

Arabic learning apps have several advantages that set them apart from other learning tools. Here are just a few!

The freedom of choosing when and where to learn

The idea here is that you’re free to choose when and where to learn. For example, if you’re too busy to spend time taking a language course, then learning with apps is the best choice. This way, you’re learning with a personal teacher who follows you everywhere you go—cool, isn’t it?

Given the fact that there are no hard deadlines, you’re less likely to be stressed. There are no teachers who will bombard you with successive lessons, exercises and homework when you’re not ready to move on just yet, so you can be certain you understand each lesson fully before progressing.

The quick and easy access

Instead of carrying heavy textbooks and dictionaries with you everywhere, you can use two or three apps instead. For example, if you wanted to use a word in the past tense, you can just pull your smartphone out and find it at your fingertips, rather than taking three large tomes wherever you go.

The lack of a scary price tag—they’re all free (or cheap)

While learning apps have traditionally been offered for free, many developers have recently started charging minor fees. According to a Fiksu study, the average cost per app in May 2015 was $1.89, which means that most paid apps are significantly more affordable compared to language courses, which can cost up to hundreds or thousands of dollars.

So now that you know the benefits of learning with apps, you might be asking, “How can I find the best learning app for me?” We’ve got you covered there too.