بطاقات فلاش الرقمية لتعليم اللغة العربية
Audio-Visual e-Flashcards Directory
ABOUT
- About e-Arabic FlashCards
- About BYKI
- Introductory Video Tutorial
- Guided Video Tutorial (BYKI) : How to use the BYKI software
- Other Arabic Vocabulary eFlashCard Sets from BYKI’s list central
- Download
Click on the following slides to display further information
About BYKI
From Byki.com
Byki is a powerful and personalized language-learning system. It locks foreign language words and phrases into your memory so that you can recall them perfectly and remember them forever. Put simply: Byki works, it’s smart, and people tell us they can’t stop using it. But don’t take our word for it: download free language learning software, learn user-created lessons online,watch a video about Byki, or hear what real users are saying.
Introductory Video Tutorial
Click to access the tutorial
Guided Video Tutorial (BYKI) : How to use the BYKI software
Click to access the tutorial
DOWNLOAD
Register for and Download your FREE Language Software
Start learning a language in minutes.
Your free software includes a full working copy of Byki Express, plus a collection of lists to learn your chosen language.
It’s free and you can use it forever with no time or session limits.
We think you’ll like what you see and hear!
e-Arabic FlashCards Directory
Click on the following slides to display the flashcard sets available so far
From Byki.com
To speak a language, you have to know the words.
The long held assumption about learning a second language is that grammar is more important than vocabulary. Second language instruction has traditionally focused on teaching adult language learners grammatical knowledge: sentence construction, verb conjugations, singular and plural forms, noun-adjective agreements, verb tenses, etc. Linguistic research, however, has demonstrated that vocabulary is more fundamental than grammar (Lewis, 2002; Nation, 2001; Barcroft, 2004; Wilkins, 1972). Meaning is primarily conveyed through vocabulary. British linguist David Wilkins (1972) puts it this way: “While without grammar little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (p. 111).
Sometimes, just knowing a single word in a language can make all the difference. In his bookVocabulary Myths, Keith Folse (2004) tells a story about not knowing the right word. Having just moved to a rural town in Japan to teach English, Folse wanted to buy some flour. He’d learned the Japanese sentence pattern “Sumimasen, ____ -wa doko desu ka?” or “Excuse me, where is the ____?” and confidently set out on his mission to the local supermarket. Yet, even with this basic grammar, he was lacking the necessary knowledge: he did not know the word for flour. After wandering the store unable to locate any identifiable bags of flour, he spied one of his students outside. He ran outside and called out, “How do you say flour in Japanese?” Unfortunately his student replied “Hana” - the word for flower, instead of komugi-the word for flour. After being presented with chrysanthemums in the produce section, Folse left the store without purchasing flour. He reflects: “What I needed in that situation was one word: komugi. In this experience, I learned that vocabulary is actually more important than grammar” (pp. 19-22).
Declarative and Procedural Learning
Neuroscientists have found that the human brain has two memory systems: declarative and procedural. These two systems reside in different parts of the brain. The declarative system learns facts: words, phrases, history dates, capital cities, telephone numbers, etc. The procedural system learns skills (Ullman, 2005; 2006). The classic example of a procedurally learned skill is riding a bicycle. Acquiring declarative knowledge generally requires conscious effort and repeated exposure. Procedural skills, on the other hand, tend to be learned through doing or practicing.
For language learning, the brain relies on both memory systems. Vocabulary - in the form of individual words, longer phrases, and even short sentences - is learned and stored in the brain through the declarative memory system. Grammar rules can also be learned as facts. The procedural memory system, on the other hand, internalizes the skills of applying grammar rules without thinking about them (Ullman, 2005; 2006). We can think of language as consisting of declarative knowledge and procedural skills.
The larger your declarative reservoir, the better.
Sufficient, repeated, and meaningful exposure to a language creates a “declarative reservoir”. Words, phrases, short sentences, and other small chunks of language are “declarative items” stored in our declarative memory. Declarative items are short enough to hold in your memory. The sum of all the declarative items you know in a language is your declarative reservoir.
A large declarative reservoir is an advantage when you are trying to communicate. Just like purchasing flour in Japan, if you don’t know a certain word in a language, you will be unable to produce it when needed or understand it when you hear it. The more declarative items you have at your ready disposal, the more easily you will learn new items and function in that language.
Beyond knowing the right words, a large declarative reservoir also enables fluency. Research has found that language consists of frequently re-occurring “chunks” - stock phrases, idioms, and common expressions - and that, in addition to individual words, we all store a large number of these chunks in our declarative memory (Lee, 2004; Nation, 2001; Sinclair, 1991). These chunks are the building blocks of language, allowing us to reduce the processing time needed to produce fluent speech or writing. Rather than constantly referring to grammatical rules to express every idea anew, people tend to draw on pre-constructed chunks, stringing them together into longer sequences according to what chunks tend to go with what chunks (McCarthy, 1998; Nation, 2001; Pawley & Syder, 1983; Sinclair, 2004).
The tendency to rely on chunks explains the puzzle of why only a small portion of grammatically correct expressions sound “native-like” (Pawley & Syder, 1983; Nation, 2001). Both “Please pass the salt” and “I request that you hand me the salt shaker” are grammatically correct, but only the first expression sounds native-like because “please pass the __” is a high-frequency chunk. One study of adult second language learners, before and after language immersion, found that memorization of these longer, frequently occurring sequences of words explained their increased fluency (Towell et al, 1996).
Less obviously, but just as important, for adult second language learners, research shows that initially acquiring a declarative reservoir complements and facilitates grammar instruction, saving time and effort (Nation, 2004, p. 336). The saving of time and effort occurs because the larger our declarative reservoir, the more grammatical patterns and exceptions to grammatical patterns we can readily recall.
In other words, a large declarative reservoir is absolutely crucial for effective language learning and fluent communication.
Why Byki Works
Based on all this research, the best starting strategy for any language learner would be to quickly memorize a large number of frequently-used words, stock phrases, and common expressions. That’s exactly what Byki enables you to do. Byki is specially designed to help you quickly build a declarative reservoir in the language you are learning - with perfect recall.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barcroft, Joe. (2004). Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: A Lexical Input Processing Approach, Foreign Language Annals, 37 (2), 200-208.
Folse, Keith S. (2004). Vocabulary Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Lee, Namhee. (2004). The Neurology of Procedural Memory. In John H. Schumann, Sheila E. Crowell, Nancy E. Jones, and Namhee Lee (Eds.), Neurology of Learning: Perspectives from Second Language Acquisition (pp. 43-74). Lawrence Erlbaum.
Lewis, Michael. (2002). The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and a Way Forward. Boston: Heinle.
McCarthy, Michael. (1998). Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics. Cambridge University Press.
Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Pawley, A. & Syder, F. (1983). Two Puzzles for linguistic theory: nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In J. Richards and R. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and Communication. Longman.
Sinclair, John. (2004). Trust the Text: Language, corpus and discourse. Routledge.
Towell, R., Hawkins, R., and Bazergui, N. (1996). The development of fluency in advanced learners of French, Applied Linguistics, 17, 210-233.
Ullman, Michael T. (2005). A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective on Second Language Acquisition: The Declarative/Procedural Model. In C. Sanz (Ed.), Mind and Context in Adult Second Language Acquisition: Methods, Theory, and Practice (pp. 141-178). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Ullman, Michael T. (2006). Language and the brain. In J. Connor-Linton and R. W. Fasold (Eds.), An Introduction to Language and Linguistics (pp. 235-274). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wilkins, David A. (1972). Linguistics in Language Teaching. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Further Arabic Vocabulary eFlashCard Sets
click to access
click to access
Read what our previous students and visitors say about our the eFlashcards Sets
CASAW Students, Universities of Edinburgh, Manchester and Durham, 2009-2010
“I’ve also been using the vocab flashcards. Flashcards are my favourite way of learning new vocab so having lots of them online rather than having to make them myself is brilliant!! I like them because I find that the ‘test-yourself’ element is fun and keeps me engaged for much longer. Being able to slow down the speaker is also really good as sometimes it is difficult to pick out the separate sounds at normal speed. Having the extra features of being able to test your speaking and writing abilities also makes these far better than traditional paper flashcards”
The flash cards are user friendly and cover an appropriate range of topics, from what I can see at all levels. I’m also a fan of the software you use to make the flashcards interactive. Thanks.
The flash cards are amazing- they really test you and don’t let you move on to the next level (e.g. writing out the Arabic) until you really are ready. I found them really fun and easy to use, pleasant to look at and you can slow down the pronunciation and listen as many times as you like. They have already really helped to fix new words in my head.
The other thing I have looked at are the flash cards which I particularly like since they give me an authentic pronunciation of the word. I worry that when learning my own flash cards I might learn a mispronunciation but I don’t have to worry about this which the e-flash cards.
I enjoy the flashcards because I actually use physical flashcards in real life sometimes to learn languages/facts, so this is very practical for me
I like that you can use the flashcards different ways (for example, reading from front to back,
or vice versa), this is very useful for committing the vocabulary to memory
Unlike paper flashcards, I really appreciate that the e-flashcards have audio, this ensures that pronunciation is correct
Again, I enjoy that you can go back to the e-flashcards as a reference point
It is also very organized, aesthetically I don’t have to worry about hundreds of paper flashcards all over the place when I can just access them all on-line.
Feedback from anonymous visitors, Jul 2009
Just wanted to let you know, your work on byki.com is great! Very clear pronunciation. I am now crawling through that listing of colloquial Arabic words&expressions.
Shukran, wa layla sa3da! ;)
Feedback from Doha Kudsi, Language Consultant, Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, May 2009
Thank you so much for sharing your great resources with us. I am, for sure, will be using them in my teaching as they are accessible, clear and covering a huge range of topics and vocabulary I have hardly seen anywhere else.
You have done a great job!!!!
I am certain your students have benefited and progressed a great deal from this valuable support and developed their Arabic rapidly. I am really grateful for your update, and thankful for your role in giving the teaching of Arabic a new modern dimension.
- eFlashcard Set (How to say Thank you in Arabic)
- eFlashcard Set of “Commonly-used Colloquial Words and Expressions”
Feedback from anonymous visitor, Mar 2009
Thank you. I’ve been visiting Byki site for quite a while now, and I’ve found that your lists are way above all others. I find your lists extremely useful, and I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate them and to thank you.
CASAW Students, Universities of Edinburgh, Manchester and Durham, 2007-2008
“These work for me – the audio aspect (Mourad speaking) is very useful”
“Very accessible, useful with pronunciation”
“Extremely useful, quality stuff, well done!”
“Excellent way to practise pronunciation and recall of vocabulary”
“I think it is great to have a combination of reading and listening”
“Very useful program, it decides what the next card is so you don’t fall into the trap of remembering which card comes next as with traditional flash cards”
“Visually they help us to remember the core vocabulary with the ‘Knowledge Steps’. Aurally, they are invaluable, as we can hear a native speaker’s pronunciation of the words. The ’slow’ option is useful. It’s already excellent.”
“Flashcards (+podcasts) were the most useful e-learning resources provided – very clear, easy to use and ideal for vocabulary retention”
“Digital Flashcards were very useful and effective”
“The extra vocabulary were useful to enable us to expand our vocabulary”
“We love it – plenty of useful vocab, especially the m-learning pod-casts.”
“Very happy with flash cards – having the audio and interaction is excellent”
Abdel, June 2008
“Mr.Diouri, I found your digital flashcards very useful.I will definitely use them with my students.Thank you for your efforts. you are invited to have a look at my blog: http://speechfreecorner .blogspot.com/
Sincerely,”
If you would like to recommend a set of vocabulary to be designed into and included as an eFlashCard set in the directory, send us your vocabulary list(s) using the form below.
Name of the eFlashCard set
Suggested categories for the set
Attachment : Vocabulary list in English and Arabic (preferably vocalized)
The way the eFC directory is now organised is very user-friendly. A good improvement!
Bismillah Wa Alhamdulillah wa Usalaa Alaa Rasoolillah SAW
JazzaKallah Ho Khaira wa Ahsan al Jazaa….May Allah Allmigty bless you generously to have made it easy for us to learn the Language of God Words (Quran), The Language of Prophet Muhammad (Sallaho Alahe Wassalam), And the Language of Qabar, Barzakh Yaoumal Qiayama And Jannah.
Wassalamualaikum