Why do I feel that learning how to read the script of a language is so underrated? Most popular apps focus of different aspects of "fluency", grammar, and vocabulary, but not specifically how to read and write languages written in foreign script (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew ... etc). In Arabic in particular, I see many approaches try to teach Arabic with romanization into Latin characters, which is pretty inconsistent to say the least. Otherwise, teaching the alphabet and the script is either too implicit in the learning approaches and is assumed to be learned while learning other things, or too explicit, dedicating whole sections or learning modules just to learn a single letter.
In my case I am a native speaker of Arabic but I live in the US. I have been trying for many years to get my kids (14 and 11) to read and to write in Arabic (they already understand and speak reasonably), but it hasn’t been working. I tried many things: in-person programs, courses, apps, books, flash cards, and many other things, and it either didn’t work, or worked very marginally.
So, this summer, I have worked specifically to address this: just to make something to get the kids to identify the letters of any given Arabic word and sound it out. I built a small app/web page in a quiz-style, so that they can practice on it for 10 minutes a day. Interestingly, in less than a week, and without any other resources, they were able to reach very high accuracy at the app and to actually start to read many things in Arabic; e.g. the menu items in Arab restaurants, Facebook posts and memes, and WhatsApp messages ,etc. I think this is encouraging, and I’m happy that they can finally start to read in Arabic. Of course there are many things still to learn, but I think this is a good start.
I'd like to share this app with you, I suppose it can work well for both kids and adults wishing to learn how to read the Arabic script. It is still in an early version so I really appreciate any feedback!
Here is the link to the app (it is free):
https://champolu.com/apps/alif-laam/
And here is a video explaining it:
I’d be excited to see other people starting to learn how to read in Arabic. I hope it will be effective and fun for you :)
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via Learn Online English Speaking
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