Teaching Arabic Step by Step

The Dal Program aims to gradually teach children from phonemic awareness to independent and fluent reading.

The series consists of the core scientific stages of learning to read in the Arabic language and is divided into the following three main stages:

1. Stage One: Preparation for Reading

This includes language awareness, linguistic discrimination, and the connection between the letter sound and its written form:

• Phonemic awareness

• Recognizing the sounds of the Arabic alphabet letters

• Practicing writing individual letters

• Auditory discrimination between similar letter sounds

• Visual discrimination between different letter shapes

Although phonemic awareness is a relatively modern concept and differs from other similar terms such as auditory discrimination, phonetics, and phonology, it specifically refers to the understanding that speech consists of a sequence of sounds—particularly phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can change meaning.

For example, the ear can distinguish between the words "قطة" (cat) and "بطة" (duck), realizing that the first word is made up of the sounds: /q/, /t/, /ah/ (ق ط ة), and the second of: /b/, /t/, /ah/ (ب ط ة).

Phonemic awareness refers to sensitivity to any sound unit, and therefore, involves linking each letter sound to its written form, practicing writing the letter, and connecting it with its spoken sound.

Children naturally learn to speak their native language, but even with significant speaking experience, they often don’t focus on the individual sounds they use. This is where phonemic awareness becomes important—it is the ability to understand and manipulate these sounds. This is crucial because written sounds form the foundation of reading and writing.

Children's phonemic awareness varies depending on their age and stage of learning. Easier tasks include identifying sounds, while more complex tasks involve segmenting words into syllables and manipulating them. By linking letters with sounds, children develop the phonemic skills essential for reading and writing.

2. Stage Two: Starting to Learn to Read

This stage includes:

• Identifying individual sounds in a word

• Segmenting and counting sounds and words

• Training on correct pronunciation

• Recognizing similarities and differences between letters, pictures, and drawings

• Enhancing visual and auditory discrimination skills

• Blending sounds together to form new words

• Learning new words through pictures

In simple terms, this stage focuses on the ability to:

• Sound out words

• Count the sounds in a word

• Isolate the beginning and ending sounds

• Recognize the individual sounds within a word

• Then blend those sounds to form new words

Phonemic awareness becomes most effective when it's applied in a meaningful linguistic context for the child.

For example, a single meaningful word (morpheme) can be connected to a picture that tells a story, helping the child understand meaning and link it to real-life events—similar to interpreting a silent story.

3. Stage Three: Expansion in Reading

This includes:

• Reading phrases or short sentences and simple linguistic structures that are easy to understand and build upon to form new sentences

The goals of this stage include:

• Expanding the child's awareness of the surrounding environment

• Increasing their spoken and written vocabulary

• Enabling them to form simple sentences

• Fostering a passion for reading

• Recognizing and reading sight words at a glance (words known by sight without needing to sound out)