Language Learner's Journal: Leaving Qasid

[This is a continuation of Taylor's blog series where she details some of the week-in-week-out lessons that she learns through her Arabic studies and coaching work together with me. For other posts in the series, click here.]

After two-and-a-half intense months, I've finished my course at Qasid. Though this didn't always feel easy to see on a day-to-day basis, it's extraordinary how much students there learn over a short period of time. On my first day, I couldn't produce full sentences other than my go-to greetings and "I'm an American journalist in Brazil," and over the weeks there, comprehended and participated in discussions about women's rights, marriage customs in different cultures, literature, colonialism and occupation.

Even if it kicked my butt (or because it did), I leave with a great opinion of the school. Qasid's teachers are extremely well trained in how to instruct students in an immersive method – we only occasionally resorted to English words when, say, our teacher wanted to make sure we really understood a grammatical point at hand. My listening comprehension soared, as did my ability to read texts (each week's lesson in our textbook revolved around one or two native texts). Also, I had the great fortune of my class whittling down to only two students, which meant that for three hours each morning, my classmate and I were responsible for answering every question and participating fully in every discussion. So much opportunity to speak in a comfortable, mistakes-are-fine-and-expected environment turned me into something of a chatterbox, though my enthusiasm is several steps ahead of my accuracy.

Also, a delightful unexpected benefit about Qasid is that a group of students and teachers stay the afternoon there in their study halls. That meant that while I worked on my computer after class, I was often surrounded by chatter in Arabic, both teachers engaging their students in fusha and many students who were native dialect speakers chatting amongst themselves.

That said, after speaking with several other language students and journalist colleagues, consulting Alex, and thinking about my goals, I decided to switch tracks from my original plan to study two terms at Qasid and then move back to the U.S. for a summer language institute to instead focus on ammiya here in Amman. I work a part-time job to support my studies, while most Qasid students are full-time exchange students. If all students there were exhausted from their homework load, I was 150 percent so. Journalist after journalist tells me they wish they had better dialect skills and, not being someone who has a "good ear," i.e., I don't pick up much language without studying it in a methodical way, I think it will be important to focus on a dialect in a structured setting.

Still, I'd consider going to Qasid again in the future. In fact, I was part of a test group to try out a new study tool the are developing that would supply easy-to-access audio and videos to accompany texts and vocabulary we study in Qasid's textbooks. It looks like a promising way to bridge the gap between reading comprehension and pronunciation of the words in the text, i.e., I often recognize words in a text based on their consonants and long vowels but am mentally (and inappropriately) filling in a fatha each time I don't know the short vowels.

As for my next steps: I've enrolled in a twice-a-week ammiya course at Sijal and am already enamoured with the class. I tested into the advanced level, though the other students in the class are far ahead of me in dialect. That said, unlike with Qasid the first time around (when I asked to be placed down a level because I was having difficulty following the class), I felt comfortable sticking to this level since I indeed understand the majority of the lesson. I'll also be taking private lessons to complement the group course.

Another choice I've been happy with is that I've also moved to a far more happening place than my last home in Shmeisani, which has meant a world of difference in terms of just having daily interactions. I try to look up the words of things I'm looking for before I hit the streets (most recently, شمعة، سبانخ، و لوز بدون ملح). I find most people are very willing to speak with a foreigner in Arabic, though this sometimes involves my telling strangers who respond to me in English "بحكي الإنكليزية شيء، انا برازلية). I will reflect on the merits of this and some broader thoughts on expat language learning/daily usage in a future post.

I've also become a social media and technology ascetic, logging out of my accounts and using them only when something necessary is at hand. In addition to being an old soul who believes that technology is eating away at humanity and rewiring our brains like substance addiction, seeing the Facebook I see every day anywhere else in the world is not one of the reasons I came to Amman. It's pleasant to let my eyes wander while I sit in a taxi or service and try to speed read the signs around me before they're out of sight. I don't think I risk جهالة anytime soon – I read plenty of news (it's part of my job), but it's confined to a couple of hours of work a day, and then I'm free.

And as for that free time, another upcoming blog will be about independent study methods post-Qasid that I will develop with Alex to make sure I keep up the reading skills I learned there even as I switch into a dialect course.

Why do Arabic fonts appear so small? (and how to fix it)

Anyone who's ever studied Arabic and attempted to increase their exposure to the language through the internet will have encountered this problem: Arabic fonts are always two or three sizes smaller than their English/Roman alphabet equivalent. This can make navigating the web a dispiriting experience. Most big websites take a lot of time and effort to get their browsing experience just right, with fonts that are appropriately scaled and optimised for reading. (Get a sense of how much thought goes into typefaces here, for example, at the New York Times.)

So why does this happen? At first I thought it was just a case of Arabic fonts being very much a sideshow in the what-doesn't-everyone-else-speak-english show that encompasses so much of Silicon Valley's design mentality. The most-used products are generally designed for an English-speaking audience, with people writing from left-to-right. Apple and Android's operating systems both work and function much better / logically when set to a Roman alphabet / layout. I happen to have my phones and computers set to an Arabic alphabet, and it's blindingly obvious that less thought went into designing the experience for such Arabic-speaking users. (For a more detailed explanation of some of the deficiencies of Arabic fonts, read this and this.)

What's worse, the consistency is subject to random change. To give one small example, iOS's 'Save to Evernote' dialogue box allows me to save articles from Instapaper into Evernote. (This is part of my somewhat laborious workflow for getting articles into DevonThink. Read here for more.) For years, I clicked a button in the right-hand corner to 'save', but a few months back they switched all the boxes around and now I have to click in the left-hand corner. The muscle memory is such that this is a hard one to fix. It's not the end of the world, but it still is an indication (along with the many other times this happens, seemingly without plan) of how little thought goes into this design and user interface work.

This is what the English version of Wikipedia looks like

Coming back to fonts, the real reason for why this happens has to do with the amount of vertical space that letters take up. Thomas Phinney of FontLab explained it clearly over on Quora when he wrote:

"Arabic letters have a smaller body relative to the extenders above and below, so the most common elements are smaller relative to everything else. Because the height of the font needs to more-or-less fit within the body size, Arabic looks smaller than Latin at the same point size."

There are three main approaches to solving this problem:

1. Deal with it. A lot of internet 'advice' tends towards this attitude. It's probably wise, but not especially practical for those early on in their studies of Arabic, nor even particularly practical for general audiences who want a pleasant reading experience.
2. Zoom in on the page. CTRL+ or CMD+ will do this on most browsers. Unfortunately, it messes with the rest of the design and functionality of the page, so you'll usually have a pretty unpleasant experience if you do this.
3. Install something to make the Arabic letters bigger. There are some scripts that will do this for you that you can have Greasemonkey (in Firefox) or Tampermonkey (in Chrome) handle. These two (here and here) seem to be the best known. I have tried both and couldn't get them to work. Needless to say, this is pretty fiddly and not at all ideal.

For now, it seems we're stuck with a poor browser and operating system experience.

UPDATE: Gerald Drißner (of 'Arabic for Nerds') suggested a Chrome extension, Huruf, which I have now installed and seems to work pretty well. Try that if you use Chrome!

Audio Courses with Language Transfer

For beginners, one of the most important tasks is to get a sense for how a new language sounds. You can do this by immersion and osmosis -- living in a country, perhaps -- but it's hard and you'll usually just get exposed to the same set of words and phrases: numbers, directions and greetings.

Another great way of hearing a decent amount of sounds and suitable materials is to quickly run through an audio-only course designed for total beginners. If your language of choice exists in Michel Thomas and/or Pimsleur, you can do those. They're a great way to get your tongue around the language. But they can be pricey, which is why I wanted to mention another option: Language Transfer.

These are free courses in eight different languages which follow a similar model to Michel Thomas in that they are recordings of a small group class in that particular language. The courses differ in how far they take you, but generally speaking they offer an overview of the grammar and some useful phrases and vocabulary.

If you're looking for a cheap way to get a start in something like German or even Turkish or Swahili, check it out.

Core Language Learning Beliefs

I have previously written about my core principles relating to learning. I contrasted fundamental principles and beliefs with the idea of 'life hacks'. Today I wanted to get more specific and write an initial set of core beliefs that motivate and shape both how I study languages myself and how I encourage others to do the same through my coaching work.

Not all of these beliefs are based in rigorous science, by any means, and one of the things I hope to return to is the extent to which my personal experience (i.e. 'the way I've always done it') has dictated these beliefs and choices about language learning.

I'll return to these over time to check whether I still agree with them. But for now:

1. Anyone can learn a new language.
2. The speed which you learn a new language depends on the approach you take, the amount of time you invest and the resources at your disposal.
3. Just fixing the approach (your attitude & your work plan) can transform your speed and your ability to learn.
4. (But), in the end, you have to invest the time. (Ideally, especially for total beginners, 1-2 hours per day, 5-6 days per week).
5. Beginning a new language is both the most fun and boring stage; fun because every day you're increasing what you can do at a really amazing rate and you always feel like you're improving, boring because there's very little creativity to learning a bunch of words and drilling semantic structures.
6. We live in a golden age of resources and opportunity. (This will get even better in the coming years, with computing power and applied linguistics producing custom materials to support your learning.)
7. If you only speak English, perhaps pick an easy language that's closer to English (like French) so you can gain confidence before biting off something harder like Arabic or Mandarin Chinese.
8. Students (mostly) want to speak as their first priority, but of all the skills, reading is a better and more useful focus.
9. Nobody can teach you a language; you have to learn it.
10. Confidence is key. Polyglots are confident about language learning because they've done it before and thus know that it is possible. (Conversely, most newbie language learners set the bar far too low in terms of their expectations of themselves).
11. Everyone is unique, but you should probably cover the bases in terms of what you study and how you study it.
12. Having professional capacity in a second (or third) language is probably the best way to distinguish yourself in the research and 'knowledge work' marketplace.
13. Life is a subjectively fuller and richer experience with more languages.

Language Learner's Journal: Keeping Pace

[This is a continuation of Taylor's blog series where she details some of the week-in-week-out lessons that she learns through her Arabic studies and coaching work together with me. For other posts in the series, click here.]

I had a low low and a high high in the same week, in fact, one day after the other. I hope that may underscore that preparation and, after that, confidence/stubbornness are the motors for getting new words and sentences out of my mouth.

On Monday, I wrote in my daily study log that I was tongue-tied and could barely get a complete sentence out in class. On Tuesday, I happened to be the only person to show up to class -- and thankfully, I was prepared, having read the night's text and done our homework on making the أمر (command) and using what seems to be a bit obscure but indeed nice use of the أفعَلَ to express admiration or astonishment, like, ما ألذّ هذه الكنافة. That meant for three hours, I was one-one-one a teacher in each class (and, in fact, with an additional instructor, since an observer/trainee came along too). And for those three hours, I was a chatterbox. I talked about a vengeful husband who cast a spell on his wife to turn her into a donkey (we were, if these are a set of familiar references to you, on the "1001 Nights" chapter of Al Kitaab Two), traded commands with my professor (!كلي الحلويات العيد الحب), and described the Seven Wonders of the World with our new قواعد.

I make many, many mistakes. I routinely use incorrect prepositions, mispronounce words whose consonants I know but whose vowels I flub, and fumble conjugations. Alex has said that speaking a foreign language is 80 percent a confidence game, which felt like what happened between Tuesday and Wednesday, which was not a time when I got 80 percent better at Arabic.

On that note, a few helpful tools that helped me hit a high note this week:

Daily study log: I mentioned this above, and as simple as it is, it is useful to reflect on highs and lows and how I'm spending my time. Alex made an excel sheet that adds up my total times spent reading, in conversation, etc, each week. It also keeps me a little in check because when I use a timer to log how long an exercise takes me makes me a bit more efficient and, say, not give into some mindless cyborg urge to check my social media or Whatsapp because... if I do, then I'll kick myself when I see I took an hour and a half to do a simple exercise.

Reverso: I had been asking around for dictionary recommendations, and Alex turned me onto Reverso. I've seen this site before but haven't consistently. In addition to a translation, it includes a list of sample sentences of that word used in context. Many of their examples are short and punchy and easy to absorb even when I just need to look up a word while I'm in the middle of a reading assignment.

Time matters: Even a few extra hours a week need to be taken into consideration. I've decided, for the time being, to stop casual meetings I had been arranging with an language partner each weekend. One, I get a lot out of speaking to my teachers after class and with my fellow students, which I do twice a week when I stay for an extra conversational section at Qasid. And two, I was spending a lot of time getting to and from the weekend exchanges, loitering over ordering tea and trying to find cafes where without much smoke or noise. Exchanges for students at our level can be little disorienting without clear rules and intentions for what we will do, and Alex backed me up when I said I felt like we weren’t getting much out of our time, saying that he, too, didn’t usually find language partner arrangement to work well.

Time matters (2): Time also matters in the long run, and, after consulting with Alex several times, I changed my plans for how I will spend the next several months. I realized I would fear feeling overwhelmed or incomplete if I went to an intensive summer Arabic program in the United States, which is largely in fusha and starts in June. I also decided to leave Qasid after this term to focus exclusively on Ammiya in a new course and in private lessons. Alex's advice and answering my many questions about how to include and prioritize dialect in my language learning were invaluable to making that decision, even if he also made many arguments in favor of the summer program, which I plan to keep on my radar for a future summer.

I feel at peace with that choice because I've already been studying fusha for a year and a half, and I don't expect it to slip away from me if I still find ways to practice what is important to me. I've been speaking Portuguese for ten years and I still learn new things (the other day, "você parece estar comendo a sua língua," or, "you look like you're eating your tongue" – you look like you're having trouble expressing yourself); Spanish has been with me for half of my life and the same is true. Rather than honing my sights on some sort of “Well now I’m finished" endpoint, which the summer program had been in my mind beforehand, I’m reminding myself that language, like exercise, is useful to us precisely because we don’t are not trying to "finish" with it.

How to learn a language without a teacher

A key belief at the foundation of my language coaching work has always been that teachers aren't needed to learn a language. Younger people and students of mine seem to understand this far more readily than people who grew up in a culture where 'learning a language' meant taking a course or enrolling with a teacher.

I was very pleased, therefore, when I discovered that someone else had given a talk on this topic at last year's Polyglot Gathering. Lýdia Machová offers 'Language Mentoring', which is essentially the same idea as the language coaching that I do. I found the talk fascinating as a fellow practitioner, but I think there's lots of wisdom there for anyone seeking to study languages outside the classroom. Indeed, the whole point of the talk is sort of that 'outside the classroom' is in fact the place where language learning should mainly be taking place.

Some people, she explains, want to be taught a language, but what she tries to do in her work is show them how to learn. It may sound like a semantic difference to most, but it is crucially important.

Nobody can teach you a language. You have to learn it yourself. Wishing otherwise is to avoid the fact that real work has to happen when you're learning a language. This is a hard lesson for many to hear, but it is certainly something I stress to all new students I work with: you have to do the work.

Check out the rest of her talk for more on this solid approach to self-study and why working with a coach can help boost your language-learning efforts.

[For more information on working with me to learn a language, visit languagecoach.io/coaching. If you're learning Arabic, check out my new book, Master Arabic.]

'Master Arabic' is Out Today!

I'm very pleased to announce that 'Master Arabic' is (finally) released and available for direct download. I've been busy finalising various small details relating to the text throughout January and it's great to have it finally out and in the world.

If you haven't already had a chance to check it out, visit this link to learn more about what the book contains and what extra materials come alongside the book as part of the premium edition.

I'm particularly pleased with how the online resource guide turned out (with over 300 resources listed). I continue to add to it each day, too, so this is a ever-growing resource in and of itself.

As always, if you have any questions about learning Arabic or about the book, please do get in touch on twitter or via email.

Language Learner's Journal: Deepening My Studies

[This is a continuation of Taylor's blog series where she details some of the week-in-week-out lessons that she learns through her Arabic studies and coaching work together with me. For other posts in the series, click here.]

An encouraging friend said to me recently that learning a language is like peeling back the layers of an onion. I’ve been studying at Qasid for a month now, and her comparison helped me take stock of what’s happened since then – on a given day, often I can’t call up a specific new fact to tell you that I learned and mastered that day, but indeed I am learning, a lot. This week I gave a twenty-minute presentation to my class that I doubtlessly would have been incapable of doing before I started this program.

Speaking has been my biggest hurdle, and I’ve put a tip of Alex’s into practice over the past two weeks — to find five minutes a day to speak without stopping. I’d like to do even more than that, and Alex also suggested prompting myself with a picture and talking about it for an additional five minutes. But for the time being, the former is all I’m capable of fitting in between class, work, and homework. I’ve been meeting with one of my fabulous Qasid teachers and try to recap the day’s news for her, since I write a global newsletter each day and those events are fresh and relevant to me. We’ve gone over the Gambian electoral standoff, Donald Trump and the #MuslimBan, and the Chilean wildfires in recent days.

In general, I’ve also been taking up anyone on the opportunity to speak — the same teacher asked if I’d be a practice student for her to become an oral proficiency certifier, which meant we had a 45-minute one-on-one conversation, while another instructor offered to stay with students after our evening ammiya course to have a purely conversational section. To strengthen my speaking muscles, in the presentation I mentioned above, I went with Alex’s “planned spontaneity” approach rather that write it word-for-word ahead of time. I chose a topic that is easy for me — the history of Arab migration to Latin America — and wrote down a list of words I wanted to use during it, like تراث (heritage) and بارز (prominent), and glanced over my list between my powerpoint slides of pictures.

The next step I’d like to put into practice is getting more comfortable using the verbs I know and conjugating them correctly without having to pause and think them out. I see that I have my go-to words that I use the vast majority of the time that I speak, and I’d like to resist getting into a rut.

As per the advice of a teacher, I’ve also been incorporating an extra nice exercise into class — I keep a running list of the vocabulary I come across in class that are new to me (on my list now: مطابق, identical, الفرد, individual, مرادف, synonym) and, when our teacher prompts us to write a few sentences using whatever new grammatical concept we’re going over, I glance through my list and try to use a word or two. It helps me resist the tendency to rely on my go-to words. It’s nice because I have an easy time learning obvious picture vocabulary — like animals, food, etc — whereas I need to pay better attention to words that are a little more abstract.

Also, very nicely, since I have a midterm coming up that will cover five chapters worth of vocabulary, I’m feeling appreciative that Anki’s spaced repetition methods means that material is still in the cards I see each day. As per Alex’s encouragement, I’m pausing to come up with mnemonic devices for words that don’t stick easily for me. This is something I did routinely when I studied at a more leisurely pace and that I’ve left behind as I feel a little breathless.

Alex has also been helping me think about my next steps after Qasid and finding the balance that’s right for me between speaking/dialect and reading/writing/fusha. I’ll share more about that once I finalize my next plans.

I’m still as pooped as I was when I wrote my first entry, but whenever I catch myself veering into a self-indulgent pity-me territory, I do stop to remind myself: I may be having little in the way of leisure time these days, but, indeed, I did live in Rio de Janeiro for six years. And when I was in Rio, I dreamed of the day I'd be able to throw myself into my studies.

Actual Fluency

I was interviewed by Kris Broholm on the Actual Fluency podcast last week. This was a real pleasure to do, since I've been listening to that podcast more or less since it first started.

You can listen to the interview/episode here. Our conversation was fairly wide-ranging, covering topics like whether to start Arabic by learning the spoken or written form first, how to learn languages when there isn't much in the way of materials available, and what kinds of meta-skills I've found useful in my own language learning journey as well as that of the students I coach.

How to learn a page of verbs

Someone sent me a list of verbs that they were hoping to memorise. They wanted some tips and suggestions for different ways to approach the task. You can see part of the image above. Verb, translation and a sample sentence where the word is used in context.

Arabic verbs are unique in that they often share a similar / familiar rhythmic pattern (da-da-da), so it can sometimes feel like they're all the same.

I sent him the following suggestions and thought it might be useful for others so I'm reposting it here. For verbs, it helps to attack from multiple angles simultaneously.

• Make sure you understand the meanings
• Make sure you know how they sound. (Use Forvo or check with a native-speaker if there's any confusion)
• Go through and say them out loud. Take time with each word, saying it out loud a number of times. Get a sense of the physicality of the word
• (Ideally, add them in Anki, though that's more for long-term preservation rather than short-term passing a test etc)
• Look up each word on Reverso Context. The online dictionary will give you a translation and then a bunch of different examples of other sentences using that word or verb. Look to see how it's used. Study the examples and try to identify what is unique about the word - its meaning may not be exactly translatable into English/French.
• Look up each word on Tatoeba. Repeat the same steps as you did for Reverso Context in the previous suggestion.
• Go to Google News and type in the word in Arabic. Take a look at the examples that come up. Copy them out onto a piece of paper if you feel like the language is interesting.
• Try using them in a sentence out loud. First repeat the sample sentence given in the example. Make sure you understand how the word is used in the context of that example. Then make a sentence of your own that uses the word. Say it out loud. Make another sentence.
• Write two sentences for each of the words. Try not to go through the list in order. Either do every other word, or pick at random. Point is, don't get used to going through the list in order, since that'll only make you good at remembering the list rather than the words on their own. (BONUS: Post these sentences to Lang-8, get corrections and make Cloze Deletion cards on Anki so that you're not just learning from single word cards, but you're learning words in context.
• Do Back Translation with the sentences you've just had corrected on Lang-8. First translate them into English on a new sheet of paper / file on your computer. Then close the original Arabic sentences and see if you can translate the sentences back into Arabic from the new English sentences. This will really test your command of the vocabulary and phrasal structures you just learned. You can do this in writing or just orally.
• If you have problems with spelling, use Iverson's lists: Take a blank piece of paper - A4 is good (or whatever the US equivalent is) - and write a list of the words you have to learn today on the left side of the page. Try not to take up too much space. Maybe it's 20 words. Write them down on the left side of the page. Then take a ruler or draw a line alongside that list and to the right of the line, (perhaps in a different colour pen), write the translation of that word. Do that for all the words. If you don't know the word, then the memorisation image/association hasn't stuck, so you can look up the correct answer and make sure that your association sticks this time. Once you've completed this first test, take another piece of paper (or, better still, something thicker like a book so you can't cheat) and cover up the first column. Now you only have your answers to look at, and you should draw another line and then write the translations. (i.e. translating things back into the original language). Do all the translations for the list, then check whether you got them right. Then you should repeat this until the entire piece of paper (both sides) are covered with translations back and forth. If you write small-ish, you should be able to get a good 6 or 7 rounds of translations/testing in (if not more). Perhaps don't do all of these sessions at once. Do one side of the page in one go, and then leave other sessions for later in the day (for reasons I'll explain now). Once you've taken the time to make the sound association, write down the list of words that you're learning that day on the page as described in my blogpost. Do one round of translating them. Then during the day, every so often, do another round, translating the words back and forth etc.

There are other ways you can practice words, but this is probably enough to get started with. You don't have to do all of these steps, though if you get through them all I pretty much guarantee you'll be better off than doing none of them!

Language Learner's Journal: Adjustments at the Deep End

[This is a continuation of Taylor's blog series where she details some of the week-in-week-out lessons that she learns through her Arabic studies and coaching work together with me. For other posts in the series, click here.]

I'd be lying if I said this wasn't a hard week for me. Our homework load is heavy at Qasid, and it means most days I go straight from class to work to homework. On a big picture level, I'm trying to keep my head above water by maintaining perspective that studying is a privilege and it's not every adult who has the flexibility (thanks to the nature of freelance journalism and independent contracting) to go back to school.

On a more detail-oriented level, a few strategies are making me feel more orderly about my studies. One of my recurring issues that that I often feel so deep into tedious grammar that getting homework done is less about comprehending the subject and more like squirming like sightless creepy-crawly that by trial and error finally happens upon ground level. That doesn't do me much good, so when I see that feeling coming on, I try to stop and find a resource, like my grammar book to remember some basics, like what's the actual meaning of the pronouns I'm using or what again are the meanings associated with each verb wazin. If I'm going to take an hour to write out verb charts, I can take an extra ten minutes to make sure I understand, even if it's a fleeting understanding, each line I'm writing.

Some of Alex's tips have helped me make more of the time I have in the classroom and independent study:

• Sped up my anki card-making by using the cloze template and by challenging myself to have fewer clues (i.e., not searching for pictures or a perfect simple sentence with a new word, but mostly using the Al Kitaab and Qasid's Ammiya course's sample sentences and audio). This has meant a lot -- it means I maintain a lot of my Al Kitaab and Ammiya vocabulary from my supplementary course in my day-to-day reviews. Also, I notice many of my classmates using Quizlet, and it is indeed tempting when we are short on time. Al-Kitaab vocabularly has already been uploaded many times over so I could download a premade deck, but usually it's just in translation (i.e., an Arabic-to-English flashcard with a single word on each side). Making my own Anki cards certainly takes time, but I get a lot of reading and listening done in the process.
• (A note on Al Kitaab: A high point for me is continually realizing that the textbook is well designed and routinely feeding back to me vocabulary I've already seen. I study each chapter's new vocabulary by looking through their sample sentences in the answer key / read aloud in the audio CD; even if I think I don't understand a sentence at first glance, about three-fourths of the time I am able to figure it out if I read it again or listen to their slow, deliberate pronunciations. Gabriel Wyner talks about the power of the "ah-ha!" moment in language learning, or, straining a bit without any outside help from a translator and finally being able to call up the meaning to a word to which you've been exposed. It may sound simple, but it means in practice: Don't run to a dictionary each time I don't understand a sentence. And it's been key to how I've been able to keep recognising a good bit of our new vocabulary which would otherwise be like pouring sand into a sieve, given the volume of work we do.)
• When I have trouble speaking in class, "plan spontaneity." My teacher starts each class by asking each individual student how their days have gone and what they have done; I'm using that as an opportunity to come up with any sentence slightly more interesting than, "I did homework" and try to put a new verb into practice. Also, when time permits, I glance ahead to the exercises on our syllabus for the next day so I can have an idea of what they are about as soon as we open the page to them.
• Setting a stopwatch to see how long my homework is taking me and tracking my time spend on various language learning activities each day (reading, writing, watching TV/videos...). This doesn't necessarily speed me up, but it does, if I'm pooped out by the end of the day, give me a sense of how I spent my time after class and work. As Alex predicted, I'm spending the vast majority of my time on reading and writing exercises, which is fine at this stage, though I want to change that in the future.
• I paid extra attention to the ten verb forms and the patterns used to derive other parts of speech (like the masdr, the ism fael, and the ism mafaul). My initial instinct had been that it was nice to appreciate these patterns but that it would certainly be a mental overhaul to try to systematically memorize them. Alex called the wazin the base of the Arabic language, and even if I don't have them memorized, I am seeing that recognizing some common patterns and being able to derive meaning from them is useful (like, "this is the masdr, it looks similar to a conjugated verb but it's a 'verbal noun' and is often coming where I expect a conjugated verb.")
• Plan language exchanges with topics and questions beforehand. I meet with a friend from my weekly running group for English-Ammiya exchanges, and we chat throughout the week on Facebook about what we'd like to talk about. It means everything to have a compass to guide us through what the other may be saying.

[If you're interested in coaching for your own language study, click here to find out more information.]

Language Learner's Journal: Introducing Taylor

[This is a guest blog, written by freelance journalist and (Arabic) language student, Taylor Barnes. I'm working with Taylor to get her up and running as quickly and effectively as possible, and I suggested she might want to write about her learning progress along the way. She'll be posting here every week or two.]

Rio de Janeiro is an unusual place for an American journalist to begin studying Arabic, but at least it made my beginning steps in this challenging language deeply associated with laughter and leisure. Brazilians of all ages have a habit I admire of seemingly always being in a continuing education cursinho, be it studying German twice a week or enrolling in online courses from the Justice Ministry about drug policy. (I did this once along with a colleague in the Brazilian media, though I can't say I finished it.)

I lived and worked in Brazil for six years. There, I watched in myself what it meant to become fluent in a new language as an adult – I could take phone calls from strangers, have a store sign come into my visual field and not be able to not read it, hear kids prattling and usually make sense of it. When I began to contemplate a move to a new region, I was delighted to find a very affordable new Arabic course offered at Rio's Lebanese Consulate. My Brazilian teacher there was enthusiastic about developing a communicative approach to teaching the language, so we studied songs, watched kids' TV programs, and wrote plays about animals and princesses while we glossed over things like case endings and conjugations for pronouns like antumaa and huna. We called ourselves the habibinhos, a word so adorable in Portuguese that it makes us sound like we're in diapers. After an enormously challenging day of doing addition and subtraction with Arabic numerals, one habibinho said that we may never learn this language, but at least we were delaying our onset of Alzheimer's.

When the stars aligned for me to move and be able to bump up my Arabic studies, I chose the Qasid Institute here in Amman for its intensity, immersion classes, and communicative approach to teaching. It's kicking my butt. Two weeks in, my head is not yet above water.

We have class for three hours a day and at least as many hours of homework, and I work a part-time job to pay for my studies. On top of that, I'm starting an Ammiya supplement at Qasid twice a week. While my classmates often have university studies of Arabic under their belt and are comfortable speaking about the Syrian war or identifying whether a verb in mansub or marfua, I'm struggling to speak about anything beyond my daily life (family, friends, food and animals!).

I thought a lot about my motivations before I left my comfortable and lovely life in Rio to chase a goal that may lead me down a rabbit hole. I've spoken with many friends and colleagues who studied Arabic at some point, and I hear repeated stories of dissatisfaction. It's important for me to define clear goals and make meaningful progress toward what fluency means for me – I've decided that means communicating with a variety of people in a new language and reading the kind of texts we see in daily life, like a newspaper article or a Facebook post.

This time in Amman is unlike any other in which I've been a student: I chose to leave better pay, professional reputation, and satisfying work in order to work toward a new goal. It makes the move more compelling since I feel a strong sense of ownership, but it also raises the stakes. If I took my time, money, and left my friends and family, this is no longer just a leisurely hobby.

Rather than just study Arabic, I've dedicated significant time to studying how to learn a challenging language. In my independent study, I use many methods that will be familiar to followers of Alex's blog and podcast, like Anki spaced repetition flashcards and learning new words in context or in stories. I also use many of the tools laid out in Gabriel Wyner's Fluent Forever, like using Google image searches to try to discover the meaning of unknown words without translation and finding native speaker pronunciations through sites like Forvo. I am also a very big fan of TalkInArabic.com's videos and transcripts for Ammiya/colloquial practice.

I'll be working with Alex as a coach over my upcoming months as I study at Qasid and meet weekly with a conversation partner I've picked up here in Amman. You'll see my blogs on a weekly or biweekly basis, and I hope you see some forward movement in them. Expect upcoming posts to be shorter and more technical.

Even if I said this is no longer just a leisurely pursuit, I also don't want to lose that quality that I said I admire in Brazilians – taking small sips of a new subject just because it's interesting and novel, without having a deadline or an endgame. At our orientation at Qasid, one of our administrators said that Arabic learning is a marathon, not a sprint. I'm an athlete, and that comparison felt spot-on.

And in that spirit, I'm ending my introduction here with a selfie I took at the Rio Summer Olympics with my favourite athlete, American marathoner Meb Keflezighi. It wasn't an easy selfie to get: I was exhausted from work during the games (thank to Ryan Lochte), but gathered enough awakedness to get up early on the final Sunday of the event to watch the men's marathon. I used my press pass to sneak into the cool-down area after the finish line in Rio's samba stadium and approached the legend himself to ask for the picture. It was worth it. 

ClozeMaster: learn words in context

Clozemaster is a service I discovered recently while researching the resource guide for my new book, Master Arabic. Clozemaster is intended to be a next step for students who have mastered some of the basics of their language of study. It teaches the language through a game where you identify the missing word. Here's what one of their tests look like, for example:

You can see that it has a space where a word is blocked out. Four options are available below, from which you have to choose. Of course, number two is the correct option and by clicking it you move onto the next question.

The sentences are taken from a wonderful open-source project called Tatoeba. Tatoeba is a collection of sentences and translations which are curated and gathered through crowd-sourcing.

Clozemaster hooks into the corpus of sentences available in Tatoeba and serves up tests ordered by how commonly the word is found (i.e. its frequency ranking).

If you're wondering why this is useful, it helps to know a little about how we best learn vocabulary. The gold standard of vocabulary acquisition happens through context. You learn the word when it is used in a real sentence or scenario, and where you derive all sorts of clues from the words around it. This is how we learn words when we're growing up, and it's how we continue to learn words and concepts in adulthood.

Clozemaster, therefore, is a great tool for someone who has mastered the basics of grammar in their language of study but who wants to grow their vocabulary further. At that stage, it doesn't help to learn words in isolation like services like Memrise have you doing. Instead, learn through reading, or learn through services like Clozemaster. The service is free and would be ideal for someone who's just finished Duolingo in a particular language (for example).