I've been reading Wikipedia articles in Arabic, using Readlang's pop-up dictionary (I find that when I don't have to switch tabs it takes me much longer to get tired or bored, it's great how far technology has come!). I've made sure to read articles on similar topics - first I read the article on Pakistan, and now I'm reading the article on India (so words like
nuclear,
diversity,
poverty,
Indian Ocean and so on are repeated), and then from there I've also done the first couple of sentences on the articles on Gandhi, civil disobedience and nonviolence. I'm not noting down any vocabulary or doing any flashcards, I'm just trying to get as much reading in as possible.
This does a couple of things:
1) I more easily pick up vocabulary related to words I already know. For example, since I know the word diet (غذاء) it's been easy for me to remember the word malnutrition (سوء التغذية), especially since it occurred in a sentence along with "poverty" and "corruption".
2) Seeing words used in different contexts helps cement them in your memory. So I've managed to remember the word "nuclear" from expressions like الأسر النووية (nuclear families), قوة نووية (nuclear power) and أسلحة نووية (nuclear weapons).
3) It helps repeat words that I have tucked away in my passive vocabulary: I've noticed a lot of the time there'll be words where I'll go "oh yeah, I know that word" (words like reforms الإصلاحات or power قوة). I also get that feeling when I'm rusty in a language and go back to it, so hopefully the more I do this the less I'll have that feeling and these words will become part of my active vocabulary.
4) I don't have to worry about whether a word is common enough to be put into flashcards, or if the Urdu/Punjabi/Hebrew equivalent is too similar for me to bother trying to memorise it. If these words come up enough I'll acquire them naturally.
5) I'm getting exposed to the Arabisations of many placenames, cultural concepts, names of historical figures and ethnic/religious groups (Gandhi, Baloch, Sikh, ahimsa, Sanskrit) that I wouldn't otherwise bother with.
I think I might try and do a similar thing with the news: I'll read a news article, and then instead of reading another article on the same site I'll Google one of the key words in the headline and see if I can find an article on a similar event. So it'd be better to follow reading about, say (I'm making this up here), a general strike in Lebanon with reading about a general strike in Tunisia in 2010 than picking another article from the first page of the same site or trying to follow the news daily.
I'll also keep working on Glossika to make sure I'm not forgetting about speaking and listening.