BBC Arabic radio has a regular feature to teach some English language (اللغة الانجليزيه - lughata inglizia) to Arabic listeners. BBC also posts these audio clips on its website, along with accompanying written information. While intended for people learning English, these BBC features are useful the other way around, for learning Arabic, to hear the Arabic equivalents of the words spoken and how they are used in sentences.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/elt/newsid_7073000/7073727.stm (Segment from November 4, 2007)

In this segment, they discuss the words (كالمات) “prefer” (أفضل - afadil) which is a verb (فعل), and how it differs from the word “preference” (مفضلة - mufadila) which is a noun (اسم). For example, انا افضل الموز (I prefer bananas). Examples they use are music preferences, such as يفضل موسيقى الكلاسيكيه (yufadilu musica clasikia), “He prefer classical music”.

The segment also discusses the words “popular” (محبوب - mahbub) compared to “popularity” (شعبية - shabiya). For example, يتمتع محبوب (yatamatta mahbub) - “he enjoys popularity”, with the word used as a noun.

The segment ends with discussion of the English phrase, “to make your mind up”, using the Arabic word “to decide” (قرر - qarrara) and “decision” (قرار - qarar).