We’ve been working on something very exciting behind the scenes, and we are so excited to tell you about it! We’ve created a 4-Week Study Planner for anyone learning Arabic, whether through a formal course or at home! Our Planner is is available at the Pink Jinn Souq, and will guide you to curate your own Arabic self-study practice that is perfectly tailored to you.
Packed with tips, resources and guidance, the Study Planner will help you create a focused, effective and fulfilling Arabic study practice, whether you are looking for something to support you through a formal course or you’re learning Arabic independently. With schedule pages, effective vocabulary-learning techniques, a list of all the resources you’ll need to support you and loads of guided opportunities for reflection, this planner is the best friend we wish we’d had when we started out with Arabic!
Perfect whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, the 4-week Planner isn’t a set curriculum, so no matter whether you’re a pro improving your Egyptian Ammiya, a longtimer branching out into Moroccan Darija or a beginner steaming through MSA vocabulary about the United Nations, our planner will help you build your own bespoke Arabic learning experience!
Get started right now with our top strategies for maximising your Arabic practice:
1. Find the most effective learning methods for you
There are so many different aspects to learning a language, so make sure you’re using a range of learning methods. Using different techniques and tools will not only keep your brain interested and engaged, will also be ensure you’re practicing all the key skills you need and getting exposure to the broadest range of vocabulary possible! For some great ideas, check out our blog post, 10 Ways To Learn Arabic At Home For Free.
2. Gather the best resources
In the past, life seemed a bit harder for Arabic learners. Bookshop shelves seemed full of French, German and Spanish resources with one lonely Arabic dictionary in the corner. Meanwhile, a certain language app with a confrontational owl mascot didn’t add Arabic to its repertoire until 2019, and the BBC showed European crime dramas but never Arabic programmes. And all to often, when you did find a good resource, it wasn’t even in your target dialect. But oh, how things have changed!
There are more Arabic resources out there now than one learner could ever hope to get through, so make sure you find the ones that work best for you! Try out different apps, hunt down YouTubers for content you actively enjoy and make the best of the big wide world of the internet. To get a helping hand, take a look at the resources page of our Arabic Study Planner to start building your own personalised collection of apps, books, podcasts and more.
3. Set your goals
We’ve all been there – sitting down to finally get some Arabic done in that time you’ve carefully carved out of your week, only to find you have no idea how to make the best of it. Especially if you’re self-studying, or learning online without a formal course, it can be hard to know exactly how to spend your time.
If you really want to make progress, it’s crucial to keep your language learning focused, efficient and fulfilling by setting clear and achievable goals, so when time comes to practice, you know exactly what to tackle first! Whether you’re just starting out, or have been learning Arabic for years, it’s always a good idea to take a step back and think about your goals. It’s far easier to stay focused when you have a clear goal in mind, whether it’s passing that exam, watching a movie without subtitles or just ordering lunch! Get help with setting your goals and sticking to them with the dedicated goal-setting pages of Pink Jinn’s Arabic Planner – it’s packed full of prompts to help you get clear on your own reasons for learning and Arabic and to create goals that are perfectly tailored to you!
4. Plan your week to make sure you practice regularly
Learning a language is far more efficient if you build regular practice into your routine, and even more so if you can make it a daily habit. Shorter sessions on a regular basis are much more effective than one long stint once per week – this is called distributed practice and it’s the key to the success of language learning apps like Duolingo! The 4-Week Study Planner will make sure that building regular Arabic practice into your week becomes second nature with targeted weekly schedules and goal reviews!
5. Optimise your vocabulary strategies!
The downside of choosing to learn a language like Arabic, especially if your mother tongue is a European language, is that you have precious few loan words to fall back on, leaving you with a mountain of vocabulary to learn from scratch. Without a strategy and regular practice, this can seem like an endless task with very little reward for your efforts. Take some time to optimise your vocabulary strategy (see our list of 7 tricks for learning Arabic vocabulary here) to make sure that you’re working smarter, not harder. Our 4-Week Study Planner has built in vocabulary pages with a specific learning strategy to keep you on track and progressing quickly!
6. Reflect and adapt
You’ve put thought into setting your goals, made sure you practice regularly and optimized your learning strategies, but don’t forget to check back, reflect and see how your goals are going! Regularly reviewing what you’ve been doing and whether your strategies are working well for you will mean you can tweak your methods and adapt your strategies (and it helps cut out procrastination too!). Use the reflection pages and prompts in the Planner to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t, to make sure you’re getting the most out of your time.
7. Celebrate!
Learning Arabic is anything but a quick process, and it’s so important to regularly look back and celebrate what you’ve achieved! It’s all too easy to focus on mistakes you’ve made or how much you’ve got left to cover, but having a little list of successes is crucial to keeping up your motivation and momentum, so make sure you regularly take stock and celebrate just how far you’ve come!!
If you’d like to maximise your time learning Arabic and try out our 4-Week Arabic Study Planner, just click here and don’t forget to subscribe to our Hump Day newsletter if you’d like 10% off!