Lower Intermediate - Alien invasion

Great lesson and nice vocabulary contained! I have two questions today:
I assume that "they took pictures" would be (صوروا ), so why the alif is dropped in (صوروهم)? Could you also please indicate the conjugation of the verb (possibly in past and present tense), as I could not find it in the "Barron's Verb Bible"?
Secondly, the word (كذب) is being refered to in the lesson as plural, but the dictionary mentions the same word as singular.
And just now, a third question crossed my mind, is there an expression in arabic for "white lie"?
Thanks in advance for your help ;-)

Fine, I will take them one by one.
The Alif in (صوّروا) is called (alif attafreeq - differentiation Alif) which is used always after the (wow of plural و), and it is used to differentiate this (و) from another types. The Alif is not pronounced, and it is not original in the word, so it is actually not dropped in (صوروهم) rather it's been added in (صوّروا), hope you know what I mean.

Some of the conjugations of the word (صوّر):
He took picture - 9awwara - صوّرَ
She took picture - 9awwarat - صوّرتْ
I took picture - 9awwartu - صوّرتُ
We took picture - 9awwarnaa - صوّرنا
They took picture - 9awwaro - صوّروا

I take picture - u9awwer - أصوّر
We take picture - nu9awwer - نصوّر
He takes picture - yu9awwer - يصوّر
She takes picture - tu9awwer - تصوّر
The take picture - yu9awweroon - يصورون
...

The word (كذب) here describes the type of lieing, but it is dealt with as singular. It is just used in English in plural form, and we had to stick with it in the translation, but in Arabic it is singular and you probably can see (هذا) at the beginning of the sentence, which indicates it is singular.

We actually have the term (white lie) in Arabic too, I didn't know that it does exist in English to be honest. It is just the same words in English and Arabic: White lie كذبة بيضاء

Many thanks Ehab, very valuable explanations!

Yeah, thanks Ehab for the thorough explanation. It's interesting about "white lie" showing up in both languages...

Yes, soooo interesting indeed, Hexagonmoon! The German version of "white lie" would translate into "emergency lie" (Notlüge), which obviously does not translate into arabic or english!!!!
Keep it coming, I love these challenges ;-)

i tried to liston this lesson but did not open Can you please let me know why

Hussain, the lesson works fine actually, it is just your Trial subscription that gives access to all beginner lessons but not lower intermediate and above.

I’d like to add a brief comment on ﺸﺎﻫﺪﻮﺎ. As Ehab has pointed out, the alif at the end of the word remains unpronounced. The same peculiarity is displayed by verb forms like ﺃﻜﻟﻮﺎ (they ate). The waw-alif ending, which is a distinctive feature of the third person plural of past tense verbs, is known as “waw al-jamaa'a”. ﺠﻤﺎﻋﺔ (jamaa'a) means “group” or “association”.