I know 960 words, have created around 200 LingQ’s and am currently around the 20th mini-story for MSA.
I don’t know whether I should prioritise reading more and more mini-stories, or focus on revising and strengthening my current vocab.
I would highly appreciate any advice/tips
Do not feel obligated to master every word in a lesson before moving on. If you have read and listened to a lesson a few times, have understood the general meaning, and it is no longer holding your interest, move to new content.
I would advise reading more, you will see those same vocab words in new contexts as you read more which will build stronger connections. You will start to see which words pair with عندي as opposed to those that pair with لي. By seeing those vocab words in new phrases, you will develop a better more comprehensive understanding of those words, and their varied usages. That being said, reviewing your previously read stories after a few days or so is a good idea also otherwise it can all fall out of memory, In my experience.
بالتوفيق إن شاء الله
Hey, you and I should know each other, as I am starting Arabic from scratch, using the Ministories almost exclusively. What I’ve been doing is just plowing forward – using my intensive method of writing out each sentence by hand four times, listening to each sentence at least ten times, etc. A single Ministory is like 4-5 hours of studying for me. I am up to No. 35 now.
I will tell you, I have gone back, and they are super easy! Like, I just did Nos. 11 and 12, and yeah, I had to click to see a few words, but overall they were quite all right.
So, maybe build up a critical mass of Ministories that you’ve really studied, and then go back. The Ministories are a solid A2 foundation, and for a language as much of a beast as Arabic, 250 hours to build an A2 foundation sounds about right. But I will tell you, half-way through my foundation-building process, going back and having the early ones make sense really does give me a sense of accomplishment.
I would suggest doing both ‘intense’ study (e.g. revision and sentence by sentence) and reading new unseen material. Listening to the same content several times will also help, both with and without accompanying text. Arabic is a beast. To continue the journey the trick is to try to find material that hits your sweet spot with new vocab or to alternate between material you find easy and material you find hard. Youtube is a great resource but can be hard to find MSA unmixed with colloquial. The arabic library at lingq is not very good at all compared to other languages at lingq. Hardly any books and limited material generally. Essential to build your own library with things you import into lingq. Kids MSA material can be useful early on and relatively easy to find. https://hindawi.org has a great collection of MSA books (some audio), including a lot of translated books from English (intermediate to advanced level).
PS: Easy Arabic bible is great for building vocab. It is one of the few sources where you will find the vowels marked.