on 02-Jun-2017 (Fri)

De- spite the fame gained by naq¯a - id . poetry in the Umayyad era, many as- pects of it are still ambiguous. Unfortunately, many of the scholars who have dealt with such aspects have arrived at their conclusions through a rapid treatment of only some of the accounts mentioned in various classical works. A considerable number of these studies neglect other accounts that seem to reveal important data concerning many aspects of the naq¯a - id . poetry. In addition, in most cases they refrain from an- alyzing complete poems in order to support or disprove the conclusions they had extracted from the accounts. Such a method of analyzing and discussing the material at hand is insufficient. It is imperative to pe- ruse all the available accounts and to make a profound analysis of each one, since each account may shed new light on the naq¯a - id . poetry and the naq¯a - id . contests. In addition to the accounts, analyses of the po- ems themselves are very important, since they examine the reliability and credibility of the prose accounts.

The court poet al-Buhturi (d. 897) composed an unusual, but intense poem. In it, he leaves behind haughty patrons and the urban setting of Samarra and ventures out to the ruins of a Sasanian palace at Ctesiphon, 24 miles south of Baghdad famed for its sole remaining ruin, Khosrow's Arched Hall, or Iwan Kisra.

Compared to many other countries, in terms of total instruction hours from primary through lower secondary education, the United States ranks among the highest

The two principles are contradictory, because the former calls for intervals between repetitions small enough so that the item may be successfully recalled, while the latter, on the other hand, recommends using longer intervals. It can be inferred, therefore, that in an efficient learning strategy, items should be reviewed just when they are about to be forgotten.

In a comprehensive review of nine flashcard programs for learning vocab- ulary based on spaced repetition, Nakata (2011) notes that while, in general, such programs are developed in a way that maximizes vocabulary learning, they all have some room for improvement.

The limitations outlined above, along with the lack of research into the psycho- linguistic adequateness and comparative practical benefits of different spaced- repetition algorithms, prompted the authors of this paper to develop a new computer-based tool for vocabulary learning.

The system was designed to generate custom exercises (activities) for the students,

The system allows the instructor to enter custom wordlists (called “lexi- cal themes”) based on his or her curriculum,

The system employs an adaptive tutoring algorithm developed by one of the authors.