My house in the Desert!

I am going to do a little picture of each member of my teaching team. I have decided to do a little post for each teacher on the team. I feel that we have the best teaching team that could have been assembled and that we will see some wonderful success because of the individual efforts of each member of the team. There is not a teacher that I feel like is less efficient then the rest, each one brings to the team something different and unique. I look forward to each different hour with each one. I want to thank you all.

Got to practice Listening!

I need to practice listening, I cannot stress enough the importance of listening. I don't think I was able to understand anything we went over today until it was explained to me word for word. I am going to really try and spend some time tonight and work on my listening. I think I am going to have to go into the school a couple of times a week in the evening for some extra help. I need to go over the things that we have gone over in class sooner and more often to make sure I ingrain into my wee little brain those things I was suppose to learn the first time! If there are any suggestions out there, let me know, I am open to anything that will help.

Oh, by the way this mustache belongs to another great teacher who requires perfect pronunciation or at least near perfect. I really appreciate it and look forward to his classes knowing he will require it of me.

Listening

We have a great teacher on the team with a mustache just like this one a little, and I wanted to pay tribute to him and all the hard work he does for us. I know he has done a lot of work as he has his own web page that is a great resource for learning more arabic and also to see a little about the area, cause he has some pictures on there that he took. He is an awesome teacher. Thank you. He always tries to help us in listening for what we know and not for what we don't getting caught up on one word. Great words of wisdom!

THE IDAAFA!

Today's trauma was all about the Idaafa, which has been this ambiguous idea and term that has had no foot hold up until today. Now I am not saying that it is clear as crystal yet but I am making some headway. What the idaafa is to begin with is the noun phrase in which there is only one noun that is really being talked about and all the other nouns just refer to this one and help describe it. The example in the book is "the office directors car..." In this example both office and director just modify the car. There are several rules that determine how the idaafa is properly said. Here are the rules:

The idaafa consists of two or more nouns. If the last term of the idaafa is definite, the entire idaafa is definate. The first noun will never have an alif lam in front. The first term of the idaafa can be in any case required by the use of that word in the sentance. All terms other than the first term Must be in the genitive case. The only term in an idaafa that can have nunation is the last term of the idaafa, and it will only have nunation it it is indefinite. Once you come to a term with an alif lam or a pronoun suffix, you have reached the end of the idaafa.

Now what really gets tricky is when there are adjectives that modify any of the terms of the idaafa cause they are not part of the idaafa but must agree in gender and in other ways to the noun in the idaafa.

It is not the theme!

The leg idea will not be seen a lot but I did this one early on and wanted to add it in today.

I think I need to start of by apologizing to those in the class that I miss led with the term "equitorial", I don't think this is even a word. The word I was trying to say was "equational." It is the sentence where the subject and the predicate are the same thing just being described differently, so the verb or more specifically the "to be" verb is omitted in the present tense. I do like these although it is a little strange to not have a verb. I guess I'll get use to it.

Not too exciting.

A great day, not that I felt like I learned a lot, but I finally got the clearance to ride my motorcycle to class and that is a great felling. I took the required course, passed with flying colors. Now I am across the brick wall. So I think that it is appropriate to illustrate the felling I have had with regard to my transportation with this illustration. Now in relation to the Arabic, it is moving slow. I am not sure I get the whole Idaffa thing and I know I am not spelling that right. I will try to put more about what I am learning in the future to help myself more than anything.

I must Draw!

I thought I would start to post a few of my doodles and then let you know that learning arabic is just as much fun as learning chinese was when I was here the first time around. I am getting the work done but along with it comes a few nights of little sleep and a few headaches. I hope to do some more drawing to relax.