Where is this Site Going?

Sorry I have not written anything in... well, a very long time. I am moving to Jordan very soon, so I'm spending almost all my time now preparing for the DLPT, studying the Jordanian dialect, and preparing for the move. That hasn't left much time to keep this site up-to-date. However, I'm pleased to hear from visitors that the resources here are helping them with their Arabic.

I do still have plans for the site. I am hoping to add a message board and wiki soon, so Arabic students can interact here and share resources. Also, once I'm through the DLPT, I plan to share some more of my own personal lessons learned on how to approach Arabic. I have a couple programming projects as well, which I hope to complete once I'm in Jordan. The most relevant one for my visitors here is an Arabic verb conjugation trainer. Users pick the verbs and the tenses they want to practice, and the software drills them. An early prototype picture is below:



I would like to encourage my visitors to get involved. All of us know that learning Arabic is hard--especially those of us who study in the intensive program at DLI. I want to make this website the ultimate companion for an Arabic student; I want to equip every student with the best ideas and resources to succeed at learning the language. I can't do that by myself. Here are some ways you can help:

1. Create topical RapidRote lists. Type up a list of good words, voice them with a native speaker, and e-mail them to me. I'll post them on the site, and for those who don't have access to RapidRote, I'll also post the vocab lists as Excel files. There are a lot of gaps in the vocab lists in the DLI curriculum. Students can create lists to help close those gaps.

2. I need help typing up verb conjugations. My verb trainer is almost fully functional, but I need to do a tremendous amount of data entry, typing up voweled conjugations of all the verbs I want to include. I also need a native speaker to create an audio recording of every conjugation. I would be thrilled if I could crowdsource some of this work to my visitors. If you're interested in helping, please e-mail me and I will tell you what to do.

3. Find authentic websites pertinent to each chapter of the DLI curriculum. I want to create a page with links to authentic resources relevant to each chapter. For example, the chapter on air travel would have links to various airport websites or ticket agencies. The chapter on natural disasters would have links to Arabic NGOs. You get the idea.