Study by subject
Arabic
In Arabic you memorise the alphabet, the shapes of the letters, vocabulary and word roots. Lumi asks them back until reading comes on its own, before your trip or your exam.
How to turn this subject into cards
Make one card per letter with its forms, isolated, at the start, in the middle and at the end of a word, and its sound. Then move on to one card per word with the reading and the meaning. Many words are built on a root of three letters, so note the root and the words of the same family. The trap is recognising a word as a general shape without being able to read it letter by letter. With Lumi you answer from memory before seeing the solution, and retrieving fixes more than rereading (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). Decide first whether you are learning Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect.
What you need to know by heart
- The letters of the alphabet, their sound and their four forms depending on position in the word.
- Long vowels and the short vowel marks such as fatha, damma and kasra.
- Basic vocabulary, with the gender of each noun.
- Three-letter roots and the words of the same family.
- The definite article ال and how it attaches to the word.
How Lumi helps you remember it
You teach your Arabic cards to Lumi, letters, words, roots, phrases. It forgets over time, like you do, then quizzes you right before you would forget. As your exam or trip approaches, the Mist settles over what you know less well and Lumi asks that first. You arrive able to read the letters and say the words, not only to recognise them.
Example cards
Three cards the way you would write them, with the answer Lumi expects.
How do you say thank you in Arabic?
شكرا (shukran).
What does مرحبا mean?
Hello (marhaba).
What does ماء mean?
Water (māʾ).
Example card
Try it, Lumi turns it into fill in the blank questions in your browser.
Arabic · teach this card to Lumi
Arabic is written from right to left. The alphabet has twenty-eight letters. Most letters join to the following letter in a word. The word كتاب (kitāb) means book.
Lumi’s question
Arabic is written from _____.
Pick the missing word
Answer right to light Lumi up
Its lamp fades when a fact slips away.
Frequently asked questions
- Standard Arabic or a dialect, which first?
- It depends on your goal. Standard Arabic is used for reading, writing and media, a dialect for everyday speech in a given country. Write your cards in the variant you are aiming for.
- How do I learn the letter forms?
- One card per letter with its four forms, and a real word for each form. Answer from memory, then let Lumi ask it again at longer and longer intervals (Cepeda et al., 2006).
- Do I need to learn the short vowel marks?
- At the start yes, because they help you pronounce. Everyday texts leave them out, so learn afterwards to recognise the word without them.
Read next
Sources
- Roediger, Karpicke (2006). Test-enhanced learning. Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3). doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
- Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, Rohrer (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3). doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
Teach this to Lumi
Give Lumi your arabic notes, it gives them back as questions at the right moment.