For the past few months we have been making a lot of progress developing new curriculum for Arabic.
The initial question was this: Which Arabic to teach?
The decision, after much discussion with many teachers and students: our QTalk curriculum materials will be in  Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). 
 With MSA, you can gain proficiency in a form of the language that will be understood (for the most part) wherever you go. MSA is used in writing and in formal speaking. You will be able to read the Arabic alphabet, and you will build a foundation for expanding your Arabic language proficiency in any direction.
MSA is somewhat simpler than Classical Arabic (CA) or Quranic Arabic used for prayers and sacred texts, but the structure of MSA and CA are the same.
So with this perspective, QTalk offers MSA curriculum. Please consider MSA as a place to begin. Then, when you meet Arabic speakers from different regions, as you engage in conversation, we suggest you listen and learn from each native speaker, and don't be surprised if someon corrects you and tells you to use a different word, than the one you learned in your QTalk Arabic class. 

Our goal is to help everyone learn to think speak, read and write in Arabic. using our amazing QTalk visual teaching method.
Please, we want to know what you think!

Laura our director at Tribeca Language is now blogging about how to reinforce language learning at home, and other topics that would probably be interesting to readers of this blog. We think that homeschool parents, private tutors, and even social groups of language learners who are assisting one another, can benefit from many of Laura's tips.

http://laurastipsforlanguagelearners.blogspot.com/

Laura is writing mainly about things the parents can do with their children, but if you read the techniques you can easily adapt to any age group. Also she provides examples in Spanish but you can apply to any language you happen to be teaching or helping another person with.

In our daily lives we can become isolated, the term is called "cocooning" with our media and electronic devices. As always we just want to encourage you to jump in and start talking, talking, talking - but not in a vacuum, not just repeating after a computer. Please, find some real, live person to talk with. It's really the only way you will be able to attain fluency in your new language and by the way, it's good for your overall health and well-being, too!

The K12 global language education conference season has been a whirlwind so far: WNYFLEC, CSCTFL, TESOL, NCLC, and NECTFL are the key events we were able to participate in.

We loved getting out of the classroom and out of the product development lab, talking with hundreds of educators from different geographical regions, different kinds of schools and across multiple different global languages including English (ESL and EFL).

Every member of our QTalk leadership team was able to attend at least one of the conferences. We came back and put our heads together and said, "Okay, we are doing the right things and we just need to keep doing them better and faster, to put the right tools into the teachers' and students' hands."

Thank you to all who talked with us, and if you completed a registration form or left your card with us, please know we will be following up in the next day or so, if we have not already emailed and/or called.

Pictures speak so much louder than words.