You need to be reading more to get ahead in Arabic

“Millions of language students are trapped in vicious circles. They complain that they cannot understand what they read in the foreign language because they do not know enough words. So they do not read and they do not increase their vocabulary, and so they continue not to be able to understand. Then perhaps someone tells them how important reading is and persuades them to try again. So they sit down with their dictionaries, and they look up every single word that is new to them, and very often many words that are not new but that they 'want to be quite sure about'. At the end of three hours they have got through half a page in a book, or half a column in a newspaper. They do this for three or four days, and then give up in despair, oppressed by the tediousness of it all. They are convinced ­ quite correctly ­ that they do not know enough words to understand ordinary books and newspapers. As a result their vocabularies stay more or less the same size as they were, and they complain that they are making no progress. They either become permanently frustrated and depressed, or just give in and give up. And it all happens because they have spent more time with the dictionary than with the language itself.” (Source: Gethin / Gunnemark - The Art and Science of Learning Languages, p. 89)

Reading is unjustly maligned. Lots of students of Arabic pass through Amman, Jordan, where I'm currently based, and it's not uncommon to hear the refrain, 'I'm interested in learning how to speak, not to read and write.' This blog post is about how you should be reading, EVEN IF spoken is your ultimate goal. I hope I can convince you of this fact, and entice you with some of the ways reading will enhance your study and understanding of culture and history.

A large part of my book on getting out of the intermediate plateau in Arabic language learning is about the importance of reading.

Reading is the most useful activity to help an Arabic student stuck at the intermediate level. Even if your priority is to be functionally competent in a dialect, reading is still useful because it brings holistic improvements to your language abilities as a whole. The basic approach that I outlined in my book runs as follows:

1) Find good materials

2) Read lots of material at an appropriate level

3) Keep going and be regular

4) Cross-check for performance

Only the final point needs explanation. When you are reading lots of things in Arabic over a period of a few months, you may not be aware of how you are improving, or at what rate. For that reason, it’s worth putting in place some checks and points to review every month or two.

There are a number of different tactics we can use when reading, and I’ll get into the details of these below, but for now you should bear in mind that it helps to switch around the reading tactics that you’re employing every so often. At a very high level, you can shift from deep / intensive reading to wide / extensive reading. You can find ways to write and speak that will help you ‘activate’ the words and topics that you’re learning.

The primary benefit of reading is that it increases your vocabulary. After you’ve done a few years of Arabic study, you will probably realise that the way the language works (particularly the way the verb system supports how words are generated / derived) means you really need to work on your vocabulary if you’re going to emerge into the advanced levels of comprehension. Moreover, the size of this challenge — the number of words, that is — is such that whatever tricks or skills that got you this far aren’t going to be useful or efficient in surmounting the problem.

This is where reading comes in. If you can split the words you know into active and passive categories, reading is immediately helpful in increasing your passive vocabulary. (Active vocabulary are the words that you can produce easily in writing or in conversation, while passive vocabulary are the words that you can recognise when you see them in Arabic, but couldn’t necessarily produce or use them yourself). When you read books at the right level, you can figure out the meaning from the context. (This is how we learn new words and figure out meaning in our native tongues). This will rapidly increase your passive understanding of texts (and, to a lesser extent, things you hear). There is some transfer of these words into your active vocabulary, but that transition is not guaranteed and it usually takes a bit of extra work. This work usually involves writing of some kind.

At its core, the work of increasing your vocabulary comes down to how many times you are exposed to a particular word (or words). The more you are exposed to it, and the more contexts in which this happens, the better that will be for your ability to feel comfortable with the word. For example, if you hear the word for dish in a kitchen, a cafeteria, or in a restaurant, you will remember it when you have to order a meal at a restaurant.

From this perspective, reading is cost-effective and time-efficient. It is much faster to pick up a book and read it than to have to schedule a lesson, or distract someone from what they’re doing. You are also much more likely to find a varied stream of content by using written materials than if you solely rely on conversations or videos.

Being able to read is a valuable skill. Numerous studies have shown that your ability to be professionally useful in a language benefits far more from reading skills than spoken ability. Many people tend to discount reading from their skill set because they feel like it will take them too much time to learn how to read. And even though this book discusses listening and reading practices, reading is key to intermediate Arabic study. By not reading Arabic you are missing out on a great opportunity and a great way to distinguish yourself from your peers. Think what you could do and add to your work, career or discipline if your reading ability in Arabic was as good as that in English.

Reading connects you to other people, generations and eras. It’s the easiest way to mind-read and time-travel on the market! If you’re stuck in a country outside the Arab-speaking world, this is how you can get in touch with people, their culture, their history, their entertainment and all sorts of other dimensions. In terms of efficiency, reading is at the top of the list in this sense.

Reading is a badge of competence, both in how peers see you but how Arabic-speakers perceive you. If you are able to confidently navigate the written word, you’ll have more opportunities, people will take you more seriously and you’ll have a generally better quality of engagement as a result. Given that the way to reach that is enjoyable and — all things being relative — not too time-consuming, it’s harder to see reasons why you wouldn’t want to be reading more.

If a command of dialect / spoken Arabic is important to you, or your writing, perhaps, reading offers a break from that skill work and affords great opportunity for cross-training. The words you learn while reading can and do transfer over to other domains.

Arabic written by professional writers (whether fiction or non-fiction) often has the unfortunate tendency to be very verbose, using multiple synonyms for a similar meaning. In fact, finding an obscure yet beautiful adjective is almost a badge of achievement for many writers, particularly in older generations. This makes taking the dive into authentic reading materials for language students much harder. Luckily, publishers have been busy at this and a large number of intermediate- to advanced-level readers are being released. This is good news as you can now easily bridge the gap between basic textbook sentences and authentic material, whereas this wasn’t as possible even a few years ago. (It wasn’t the case when I first studied Arabic, for example). There are also a number of useful technologically-enabled services which allow you to ramp up and gradually increase this difficulty level. Moreover, you can follow your interests much more, whether you’re interested in fiction, politics or history, there are appropriate materials available. When you don’t read Arabic, you’re actually missing out on this huge conversation and discourse which is happening right this moment - whether its on Twitter or in op-ed columns - and which has been happening for as long as there have been Arabic speakers and writers.

Reading is an incredibly flexible skill to practice. You can do it almost anywhere, using physical books or digital materials. It works for short as well as long time slots, and, best of all, it’s fun! Particularly when you’re working on extensive reading, you can really lose track of time when reading a good novel or following whatever blog covers the topic that really interests you.

[This is the first in a series of posts on the importance of reading in learning Arabic. The next post will summarise an academic study of the role of reading in bringing students up to the highest levels of achievement in their Arabic proficiency.]

Language Learner's Journal: Independent Study

[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.]

For some Arabic students (myself, certainly), when we first start to learn about the diglossia in Arabic, we feel somewhat cheated, like, "I signed up to learn a language, and now you're telling me that I need to learn some second, shadow language if I'm actually to use it?" It's like the rug is pulled out from beneath our feet, like we'd be studying Shakespeare and are frustrated to find that real people actually speak Singlish. Colleagues who work in journalism/research repeatedly encouraged me to study dialect, which led me to leave my last fusha course for an ammiya one at Sijal. 

Happily, it doesn't feel nearly so intimidating as I once imagined when I turned on some ammiya YouTube videos and despaired that a year in MSA classes seemed to do me no good. Indeed, the listening comprehension and vocabulary I learned at Qasid feels like a swiss army knife I now use to pick a new lock. Also, another useful tool from my MSA classes – an extreme comfort with not understanding many of the words I'm hearing but still staying engaged and hanging on for the ones I do.

On a related note, Alex has encouraged me to keep up independent reading even as I'm in a course that largely focuses on speaking and listening. That's another skill that I appreciate from my time at Qasid – the willingness to dive into a text, even when many of the words are ones I don't recognize, and look for the keys that will give me some clue about it. I'm a pen-and-paper learner, so I've been printing out media articles and reading them through twice, no dictionary, then underlining words I don't know and making my best guess at what they mean. 

For example, this week I read one in the Huffington Post about scientists questioning whether we need to drink eight cups of water a day. The piece mentioned drinking a sufficient amount of water so that "البول" is "واضح اللون أو خفيف الصفرة." I didn't know that first word, but I was delighted to know exactly what it was as soon as I read the rest of the sentence. I'm convinced that process of discovery is a powerful learning tool, more so than having translations readily at hand to answer our doubts as soon as we have them. 

Also, having a bit more free time, I've been able to take advantage of events going on around me to get extra-classroom contact with the language. I sat in on a Sunday morning lecture from an Al Jazeera filmmaker who produced an extraordinary documentary, "The Boy Who Started the Syrian War." His discussion afterwards was well above my level, and I only got the outlines of what he was saying, which is still far more than I would have gotten just three months ago when I came to Amman. It was still, of course, a very useful experience. For example, he used the word نظام always when I was expecting him to say حكومة, which led me to ask and confirm with my teacher that it seems to be used like we say "regime" in English, or, a disdainful/pejorative word for a government. 

Being someone who spends plenty of time in the kitchen (because organic vegetarian food doesn't make itself, at least not anywhere walking distance from me =) I'm a big podcast fan. Alex's on Jordanian ammiya is great listening for me at my current level – when I tried this just a few months ago, it was beyond my grasp. I also like the BBC Arabic service and DW's current events discussion panel. 

And repeating what I wrote in my last post – an upcoming post will be some reflections on accents and errors and embarrassment and the ways we as language learners judge ourselves (and others? I hope not. I indeed only judge myself when it comes to foreign language ability, which may point to, as Alex says, how much language is a confidence game). I'm on a scale between sheepish and chatterbox depending on what situation I'm in, and I've been chewing over what it is about a given situation that makes me feel either of those ways.

[To learn more about coaching with Alex, click here. To learn more about 'Master Arabic', a guide for intermediate-level Arabic students, click here.]

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.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Guinea Pigs

Followers of my Goodreads account will recently have noticed a flurry of activity: I read six books about guinea pigs over a period of two or three days.

The reason for this is that I'm staying in a house that has recently come into possession of a guinea pig and I became curious. What kind of an animal was this? Where did it come from? How smart was it? What were the key points to bear in mind when looking after a guinea pig as a pet?

What follows are some notes on the various books I picked up. I am unaware of a synoptic guides or bibliographies of guinea pig care practices. I looked for them online a few days back, but nothing stood out. I've ordered the books here by how complete I found them.

• Sharon Lynn Vanderlip - "The Guinea Pig Handbook"

Probably the best handbook for guinea pig care (formatted for Kindle) available on the market. I can't speak to books that are only available in paperback. In any case, this is an extensive guide to food, behaviours, and even a history of the various breeds. Highly recommended as a one-stop shop for anyone who has just brought a guinea-pig into their lives.

• Gerry Bucsis & Barbara Somerville - "Training Your Guinea Pig"

A strong overview of how to train guinea pigs. First half of the book is a pretty extensive how-to / first-time owner information, so it's nice to have that all in one place.

• Holly Lloyd - "Guinea Pig Care Secrets: Kids Guide to a Happy Guinea Pig"

Useful tips, despite the length. Sensible advice for a first-timer. Written for children to be able to read as well as adults.

• Kate H. Pellham - "Guinea Pigs: The Essential Guide To Ownership, Care, & Training For Your Pet"

Quick but to the point.

• Sarah Yee - "Guinea Pigs Owner Handbook: The Complete Beginner's Guide to Guinea Pig Care and Facts"

Useful. Didn't blow my mind. Very basic and short.

• Julie Rach Mancini - "Guinea Pigs"

Short. Simple. Basic overview. No depth to it. Suitable for children, perhaps.

Walk Around the Block

People increasingly live in cities. There's a good chance that if you're reading this, you live in a city. That's good for exchanging ideas and stimulating opportunities, but it often means we don't get as much movement as we'd like or as would probably benefit us.

So here's a little trick I've used for the past three or four years. First off, you shouldn't be working uninterrupted for much longer than 45-60 minutes at a time. When you take a break from work, get up and move your body. Ideally, leave the house or place where you're working, walk round the block or the building. That shouldn't take you much longer than 5 or 10 minutes. If you're working for 45-minute segments, it's an ideal amount of time and it'll refresh you physically so that your next session isn't hampered by waning energy levels.

Try it out and let me know how you find it...

Three Podcast Recommendations

I've been walking around more this past week, and have added some new listening material into my podcast quiver. So if you're interested in something outside your usual information diet, give these three a try:

• Slate's Stranger Than Fiction. Conversations with science-fiction authors about the intersection of their writing with technology and the contemporary world. This podcast is no longer produced and there are only 6 episodes (dating back to 2013).
• Pod Save the World. Conversations with people who were involved in American foreign policy decisions. This is part of a series of new podcasts put out by some former Obama-government staff members (aka Crooked Media). The foreign policy discussions are often interesting and they offer behind-the-scenes glimpses of how certain deals were made. So far we've heard about the Cuba and Iran deals made under Obama.
• Arms Control Wonk. A discussion podcast about nuclear weapons. It's a fairly opinionated glance at some pretty down-in-the-weeds topics relating to nuclear security, particularly from the US perspective, but given that North Korean nuclear weapons are likely to be a big deal in 2017 this is a useful one to follow.

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.