DLPT5 Familiarization Guide

I was surfing for Arabic resources this morning when I discovered this resource on the DLI website:

MSA DLPT5 Familiarization Guide

I've only skimmed it, but it looks like a good resource. It's 50+ pages and includes information on the test format and content, screenshots of what the test looks like, and a number of sample questions.

Introducing SimpleFlash

I generally use RapidRote for learning vocab, but it's missing a lot of features I would like. One feature I really want is the ability to simply watch words flash by on the screen... something like a screen saver. I want this for the following reasons: (1) My wife and I have a baby, so I spend a lot of time each day with no hands available (2) It would be nice to let vocab drills run in the background while I'm doing other work on my computer and (3) There is a lot of wasted time in the classroom when my mind isn't actively engaged with Arabic. I want a discreet way to study vocab during those times. Since I have a laptop in front of me all day, an automatic flashcard program would provide that.

Because I'm obsessive about undertaking new projects, and because I'm a hobbyist programmer, I went ahead and wrote a program myself. I call it SimpleFlash. It's quick. It's dirty. It has few bells and whistles. But it does exactly what I intended it to: it cycles through flashcards at a pace you determine, while you kick back and watch.



You can download SimpleFlash at this link. Note that you need Microsoft NET 3.0 or 3.5 installed for the program to run. This is usually included automatically with windows updates, but if your computer doesn't have it (you'll know if SimpleFlash gives you an error message when you start), you can download .NET 3.5 at this link. What is .NET? It's a sort of interface between a software application and Windows that does a lot of the hard, under-the-hood work. A lot of newer programs require it, so it's worth your time to download.

So how does SimpleFlash work? It's easy. Put your vocab words in Excel: one language in column A, one language in Column B. You can optionally put category names in Column C. Load the spreadsheet in SimpleFlash, and it will start cycling through your flashcards. There is a "Help" icon on the toolbar that gives you a few more details.

Enjoy. Let me know what you think, and let me know if you encounter any bugs.

How Firefox Can Help You Learn Arabic

I'm finally at a point in my Arabic studies where I feel I can engage with the news. I have enough vocabulary that I can muddle through many articles, at least on websites that use crisp, concise MSA like BBC Arabic. I'm still experimenting with strategies to build my reading fluency, but I've developed a pretty good workflow. It makes good use of some powerful, free technology available online.

ONLINE LANGUAGE TOOLS I USE

FireFox is my web browser of choice. It is open-source, which means of thousands of people are involved in its development and evolution. Hundreds of powerful plugins are available, which allow users to extend the browser to perform various tasks. I use two plugins to help with my Arabic.

Quick Translate (qtl) is helpful for translating individual words. If you highlight an Arabic word with your mouse, a popup appears with a translation. The quality of these translations varies--qtl is dumb about recognizing conjugations, and you have to be careful not to select attached prepositions or pronouns--but it works much of the time, providing me instantaneous feedback on words I don't know. qtl has other features I haven't explored. It has a clunky interface, so I limit its use to single-word translations.

FoxLingo installs a language toolbar in FireFox, which is tied to most major translation websites on the Internet. It has two main functions. You can click the "Webpage" button, then select the translation engine of your choice to translate the entire page. Depending on your preference, it will either open in a separate tab or a separate window. You can also highlight text and click the "Text" button to translate the selection. The translation also appears in a separate tab or window.

MY NEWS WORKFLOW:

At this point, my goal when I read the news is not to translate an article 100% accurately, but to look for main ideas, identify words I know in authentic contexts, and maybe pick up some high-frequency vocabulary along the way. I work mainly with BBC because it's easier to understand than Arab media, although I plan to progress to Arab media as I build my fluency.

It's important to understand this context. I would not use these tools if my goal was a 100% accurate translation, or if I was doing most homework assignments. These tools should never be used to circumvent real learning. But used in this specific context--getting immediate, quick-and-dirty feedback while focusing on my broader reading comprehension--I think these tools are powerful.

Here's how I tackle a news article. I pick an article that looks interesting, then use FoxLingo to open a parallel English translation in a separate window. I work through the article a paragraph at a time. I initially read each paragraph without any technology aids, just to see what I can understand. After that, I make a second pass through the paragraph, making generous use of qtl to look up individual words I don't know (or should know, but have forgotten). After that, I check my understanding against FoxLingo's English translation of the paragraph. I actually bought a separate monitor, which I can plug into my laptop to get a dual-screen workspace: English on one side, Arabic on the other.

The benefit of this is that I can cover a lot of territory in a short amount of time. With my Hans Wehr dictionary, it might take me half an hour or an hour to plow through a single paragraph. With FireFox, translation feedback comes almost instantly, allowing me to cover an entire article or two in that amount of time. The velocity of learning is probably increased tenfold.

IN SUMMARY

Online language tools certainly have their shortcomings, and like any technology, must be used properly. Students must know both their strengths and their limitations, and they must be careful not to use the technology as a crutch. With that said, these online resources are powerful tools for any language student to have in his or her bag of tricks. As a person who is ruthless about managing my time and always searching for ways to be more efficient, I appreciate how much these online tools have accelerated my learning process.

Activity Idea #1: Verb Practice

Because my Arabic class consists of adult learners (including a former teacher), we have a good idea about how we learn best, and we often suggest activities to our teachers that we think would be helpful. I will continue to post some of our most useful activities, in case other Arabic students want to employ these ideas in their own classes.

As I was reviewing old vocabulary this week, I realized that I'd probably never spoken 2/3 of the verbs I've learned in real sentences. It's easy to fall back on the same verbs all the time--going, eating, arriving, taking--but it takes a lot more intentionality to use verbs like accompanying, decreasing, or cooperating. As the months go by I feel like I'm falling farther and farther behind with my verbs. Even when I can recall a verb perfectly as it appears on my flash cards, I can't quickly conjugate it and use it in a sentence on-the-fly.

To address this problem, I decided to initiate a new activity in class. I used RapidRote to print flash cards of every verb we have learned in the course so far (several hundred). I put them in a bag on my desk. Each of the four students in my section drew a verb before class started. Their goal was to use that particular verb in a sentence (as naturally as possible) during class. As soon as they used their verb, they drew a different one. There was aspect of competition involved--who could use the most verbs?--but the real goal was simply practicing verbs we rarely use. The exercise worked well. We each used eight or nine verbs in a three-hour period. We had to stretch to make some verbs work in relevant sentences, but we had fun and most of our teachers seemed to appreciate the effort to learn.

This is an easy exercise to set up, and it runs in the background--there's no need to devote class time to it. Simply integrate it into your day. We plan to continue this exercise as long as we're finding it helpful.

Online Resource: Aswaat Arabiyya

One of the best online resources I've found for practicing listening is Aswaat Arabiyya ("Arabic Voices"), produced by the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas. The site contains dozens of free, high-quality video clips, categorized by skill level.

That last part is crucial; it's easy to find authentic material online, such as streaming Arabic TV channels, but most of those materials are too difficult for a new Arabic student. I tried listening to some of these advanced materials early on in my course, just to get an ear for the language, but I ultimately decided that I was getting very little return listening to passages where I didn't know 90% of the vocabulary.

With Aswaat Arabiyya, you can listen to passages in your own skill level. You won't know everything, but as you grow in the language, you'll know enough to understand a good amount of each passage. I can return to the same clips over and over as the weeks go by, and find myself understanding more.

My only critique of this website is its technological problems. I don't like the video player it uses. If you pause and try rewind a clip--something a student will frequently do--the player will sometimes "break" and go silent and/or black, until you reload a different clip. Also, according to information on the website, each clip is supposed to have accompanying pre-listening and post-listening activities and questions, but the pane where these are supposed to appear is blank.

Despite those shortfalls, this is still a good resource every Arabic student should check out.

Resource Review: Olympus DS-40 Digital Voice Recorder

Learning a foreign language is a decidedly non-technological enterprise. Too much reliance on technology, or embracing the wrong kind of technology, will undermine the learning of a skill that is primarily about face-to-face human communication. With that said, the right kinds of technology can make the process of learning a foreign language significantly easier.

My wife and I recently bought an Olympus DS-40 Digital Voice Recorder. I figured I would need a way to record my classes in Jordan, because I most likely won't understand everything I hear the first time. The money was well-spent; the recorder is proving to be a valuable tool to help with my Arabic learning.



Amazon.com sells a number of different voice recorder models. I bought this one because the price was reasonable ($110), it's small, it has strong user reviews, and it has all the features I was looking for. I won't go into the details (you can read the Amazon.com page), but I'll share a few highlights.

The device has 512 MB of onboard memory (enough to record 136 hours), organized into five folders. You can easily browse and record new sound files in any of these folders. Clips are recorded as .WMA files. When you plug into a computer, the device acts like a thumb drive or a digital camera--you'll see five folders with your sound files in them. Every time you start and stop, the device creates a new clip, so it's quick and easy to segment and organize your work. The unit also has small but ample speakers, so you can playback sounds and listen to them. With a single button-press, you can slow down the playback--a helpful feature for any Arabic learner. The unit has three gains you can toggle with an external switch: dictation, conference room, and auditorium. My only regret is that the unit doesn't record directly to MP3, but this hasn't posed a problem; it's easy to convert the format if I need to. The device runs on two AAA batteries. I don't know how long battery life lasts, but my wife and I have been using ours for both recording and playback for six weeks without changing batteries. The recorder has other, more advanced features, but I haven't felt a need to explore them.

So how do you employ a digital voice recorder in your learning? My wife and I have a Jordanian tutor who works with us twice a week on dialect. He usually prepares a new model dialog for us to use during each session. We have him record each dialog as a separate audio file. Also, if we encounter a particular category of words--such as times, or ordinal numbers--we ask him to record a list of words. The recorder is so quick, easy, and natural to use that we can make an audio recording in seconds. We now have a large library of organized dialect clips. I use my PC to rename the files something sensible. We use one of the five folders to store our organized dialogs and word lists, and a second folder for "work in progress." When we travel around--driving in the car, walking along the beach--we can bring the recorder to play back and practice our dialogs.

The unit is perfect for a classroom environment. Set the gain to "conference room", hit "record", set it on your desk, and you're done.

Another way to use the device is to record yourself speaking. Sometimes I like to listen to a passage recorded by a native speaker, then read the passage myself, trying to match the pronunciation. When I record myself and play back the two recordings side by side, I'm usually horrified; but after a few more times through the passage, I usually see a vast improvement in my pronunciation.

A digital voice recorder is a simple but elegant piece of technology that provides good value to a language learner. I'm sure I'll rely on mine even more once I'm in Jordan.

Typing in Arabic

If you plan to do a lot of writing in Arabic, or even just create study tools like digital flashcards, it's worth learning to type. Setting up Windows to handle Arabic is not especially difficult, but it's a bit tricky at first, and you can use a number of helpful tricks to make the process easier. You can find a detailed list of instructions at this website, but these basics should get you going:

1. Enable Arabic in Windows: This is the first step and varies slightly between Windows XP and Vista. Go to Control Panel and find the icon "Regional and Language Options." This will open a dialog box, where you will find a tab that allows you to add or change keyboard input languages. Select "Add" and choose one of the Arabic keyboard layouts. It doesn't really matter which one; I have been using the Jordanian layout and it seems to work fine.

2. To Toggle Between Languages: once you've installed Arabic support, you'll notice something new has appeared on the bottom-right of your screen: the letters "EN", which stand for English. If you click on this, you can switch to "AR" (Arabic) and back. Note that each program will "remember" what the active keyboard is; if you select Arabic in Microsoft Word and then switch to Internet Explorer, the current language will switch back to English.

3. Pull up the Windows on-screen keyboard: now that you have Arabic support installed, you need a way to type in Arabic. In Windows XP, go to Start-->Run and type "osk", which stands for On-Screen Keyboard. A virtual keyboard will appear on the screen, which displays characters for whatever language you selected in step #2. Simply use your mouse to "type" in Arabic.



4. Consider buying: either (1) Arabic stickers for your keyboard or (2) an Arabic keyboard. If you plan to do a lot of Arabic writing, you don't want to strain your eyes trying to use the on-screen keyboard. I spent the $30 for an English-Arabic keyboard and don't regret it a bit. It has both English and Arabic characters on the keys and simply plugs into a USB port. My only complaint is that the diacritical marks (which are accessed with the SHIFT key) aren't labeled, but it didn't take long to memorize where they were. Amazon.com sells a variety of stickers and keyboards.



5. Consider buying: the Microsoft Word Arabic Language Pack. For $24.95 you can download this pack online and install it in a few minutes. The pack gives you the ability to convert Word to an Arabic interface (menus, dialog boxes, etc. in Arabic), which I do not intend to use. More importantly, you'll get Arabic spell-checking and grammar-checking. The grammar-spelling is useless to me right now, because I can't understand the feedback it gives me. The spell-check is difficult to use, because the "suggested alternatives" are small and hard to read. The biggest benefit is the angry red underline that appears when I spell something wrong. It gives me instantaneous feedback and tells me to go get out the dictionary. Just as in English, the spell-checker will only catch some of your mistakes, but it's one more tool that's nice to have on hand.

My Best Practices for the First Months at DLI

A huge part of learning any foreign language is finding the right strategies. My Arabic class at DLI had a lot of initial frustration, trying and discarding strategies that weren't working. After a few months we felt we'd developed some good strategies. I thought it would be a good idea to preserve some of this knowledge institutionally--to pass on our "lessons learned" to future classes. Below is something I typed up and shared with two classes that followed us. These are my personal best practices for my first months at DLI.


#1: Use RapidRote from Day 1! It's boring, but it works, and unlike paper flashcards, it has sounds. There is no substitute for hearing new words repeated over and over by a native speaker. The best students in our class all use RapidRote; the ones who don't have a much more difficult time with vocabulary. You can download a free copy from Joint Language University. Go to Joint Language University and create an account. Visit the Resources page, then click the link for CL-150 Transparent Language. You will be redirected to a site where you can download the most recent version of RapidRote and several dozen Arabic wordlists. Note that the current version is 4.0. Last time I asked, my MLI only had version 3.7 available, but you can obtain the newest version at the website above.

My technique: it takes me 4-6 days to learn a list. Repetition is essential. I spend 2-3 days at the "Recognize It" level, then 2-3 days at the "Produce It" level. I usually spend several more days after that practicing at the "Produce It" level. When I'm reviewing old vocab, I use the "Test" feature, which takes you through a list much more quickly. You can also use RapidRote to print paper flashcards.

#2: Learn the vocabulary list for each chapter before starting that chapter in class. If you don't know the vocab, you will flounder through every exercise. If you do know the vocab, you'll feel confident and every exercise will help cement the vocab in your long-term memory.

My technique: because it takes me 4-6 days to learn a list, I begin learning new lists several days before we hit that chapter in class. Personally, I prefer to learn vocab 2-3 chapters ahead. It helps with comprehension, because the textbook passages tend to include a lot of vocabulary from upcoming chapters.

#3: Develop a strategy to take down new vocab that appears in class, and develop a strategy to practice it. The glossaries in each chapter only contain about half the vocab you'll need to learn. You'll encounter dozens of other high-frequency words--both in the textbook and in class that you'll be responsible to learn. It's frustrating, but you'll need to find a good strategy to learn this vocab.

My technique: I keep a laptop open in class and enter new words directly into RapidRote as I encounter them. When I have enough new words, I sit down with an instructor to have him/her record audio for them.

#4: Learn grammar. The curriculum teaches very little grammar, especially early on, so I suggest consulting outside resources (I highly recommend Arabic Verbs & Essentials of Grammar) or asking your teachers to schedule more grammar instruction. You should also start using the grammar books the DLI provides.

#5: From Day 1, start memorizing the following grammar tables: (1) personal pronouns (2) possessive pronouns (3) demonstrative pronouns and (4) present/past tense conjugations of basic verbs. Don't wait for the curriculum to teach you. If you learn these early on, you'll be miles ahead of the course. These are all explained in Arabic Verbs & Essentials of Grammar.

My technique: I made flashcards for the personal pronouns, the word "bayt" (house) with all the possible possessive pronouns, and all the conjugations of the verb "kataba" (to write) and drilled on them endlessly. I also spent a lot of time practicing writing out full conjugations for some common verbs. You'll need to learn these eventually and the curriculum only teaches them piecemeal; I think it's much better just to sit down at the beginning of the course and memorize them all at once. Once you learn the alphabet, they're not difficult; learning them just takes time.

#6: Learn the basics of how Arabic roots and "measures" work. Ask your teachers early in the course to explain it. When you learn new verbs, pay attention to what measure they are. This is all covered in Arabic Verbs & Essentials of Grammar. The curriculum takes approximately 4 months to walk through the ten measures, but there's no reason you can't learn the basics all at once, early in the course.

My technique: I learned the root system before I started at DLI by reading some basic grammar books. I also memorized the ten measures early on using flash cards. This made it much easier to memorize verbs and much easier to understand conjugations.

#7: Experiment with study strategies that work for you. A huge part of this course is finding the right strategies, and every student is different. You need to be continually evaluating your study habits to assess what's working. If a strategy isn't working, don't drag it on; try something different.

#8:Take ownership of your learning. As you learn what works and what doesn't, you can negotiate with your teachers to tailor your in-class time. We've had our teachers toss the most useless exercises, and we've had them add other activities that we preferred. For example, we requested extra grammar hours beginning with the first week of the course. We also added speaking hours (see next point).

#9: Especially for FAOs, push for extra speaking hours. The DLI focuses primarily on reading and listening, not speaking. This is unfortunate for FAOs, who will be spending a lot of time in the Middle East actually talking with people. Our class requested an hour of speaking a day, which is well above the DLI norm of 2 hours a week. As a result, the administration tells us our class speakers better than classes which are months farther along.

#10: Each night, try to read/listen to at least some of the long passages that will appear in the next day's class. You will have time to absorb far more than you will in class, and you'll feel confident and prepared in class.

#11: Focus on Listening. This is the hardest skill, so make sure you're spending time outside of class practicing listening. Every chapter has 10-20 "Supplementary Listening Material" (you'll find them on your iPod). These are difficult—usually more difficult than the material in your textbook—but in my experience so far, they are representative of the difficulty level you'll find on the tests.

Welcome to My Journey Through Arabic

Who I Am: I am a full-time student of the Arabic language at the Defense Language Institute (DLI). I began classes in early summer of 2008, so I am still new to the language. Prior to that my only experience with the language was learning the alphabet and a small amount of vocabulary and grammar using commercial products. In addition to my full-time studies of MSA, I meet with a tutor twice a week to work on the Levantine dialect (the dialect of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine). In the spring I will move to Jordan, where I will spend 27 months living and studying.

What this Blog is About: Learning Arabic is hard. The attrition rate for Arabic programs is high, and of those who stick with it, it seems that few ever really learn the language well. Unfortunately, good Arabic resources are hard to come by online, and the persistence of defunct educational philosophies and shoddy learning materials set many students up for failure. I believe it is possible to better equip students to learn Arabic. I also believe in the power of Web 2.0 technologies that allow people to take a collaborative, bottom-up approach to tackling complex problems, so I decided to start this blog to share my own journey through Arabic, my lessons learned, and maybe even some advice here and there for other Arabic students. Eventually I would love to build a true community website where Arabic students could bring their combined experience together, but for now, the blog will have to suffice.

Who this Blog is For: I hope other Arabic students will benefit from reading about my own experiences. I hope Arabic teachers will gain some insights into what works and what doesn't in the classroom. I hope "users" of Arabic speakers (for example, leaders in NGOs, business, or the military) will gain some insights into the challenges their language-learners face, and gain some ideas about how to train them.