Teaching the alphabet to Arabic-speaking kids

Left to right, and where the book begins

Arabic runs right to left, and an Arabic book opens from what an English reader calls the back. So children open the English book from the end, start a line at the right-hand edge, or write a word from its last letter. This is not a reading problem but a direction problem, and it fades fast if you make the direction visible every day.

• Green dot, red dot: a green sticker on the left edge of every English page and every notebook line, a red one on the right. 'Start at green, stop at red.' Traffic-light colours every child already knows.
• Finger walk: before reading any word, the finger walks under it from left to right while the class says the sounds. At the board you do the same with a pointer, every time, for the whole first month.
• Two books, two directions: give each child an English booklet and an Arabic one and ask, 'Show me the first page!' Opening each from its own side turns direction into a game, and respects the Arabic instead of fighting it.

b, d, p, q: one shape, a new rule

In Arabic, letters that share a shape are told apart by their dots: at the start of a word, بـ تـ ثـ نـ يـ are one shape, and only the number and place of the dots separate them. An Arabic reader learns to look at the dots. English b, d, p and q are one shape turned and flipped, so the clue is direction, something Arabic never asked children to notice. And p is a sound Arabic doesn't have, so b and p get mixed up twice, by ear and by eye.

• Never in the same week: teach d early (it starts like c, round first, then the stick) and b at least two weeks later (stick first, then the round). Two different starting moves, and no chance to learn them as a pair.
• The bed: two fists, thumbs up, knuckles together. The left hand makes b, the right makes d, and together they make a bed with a headboard and a footboard. The word bed itself is spelled b-e-d, which settles any argument.
• Tails go down: p and q have tails that drop below the line, into the basement. Children trace each tail with a finger and say 'down to the basement' every time.

Capital letters are a new idea

Arabic has no capital letters. What it has instead is letters that change shape with their position: ه is هـ at the start of a word, ـهـ in the middle and ـه at the end. So children already accept that one letter can have several forms. English letters have only two, big and small, but the reason they change is new: not position in the word, but importance. Expect capitals in the middle of words ('bAt'), whole words in capitals, and names in small letters.

• Small letters first: books are made of small letters, so they come first. Capitals arrive later, two at a time, each matched to its small partner in a game of pairs.
• Capitals wear a crown: a capital is for a name and for the first word of a sentence, the important places. For the first weeks, draw a small crown above every capital on the board.
• My name, my capital: on each child's name card the first letter is a different colour. Writing your own name with a capital is the first rule children actually want to obey.

Vowels: from marks to letters

In Arabic the short vowels are marks (fatha, kasra, damma) that most texts leave out, and a good reader fills them in from context. English writes every vowel as a letter, in the middle of the word, and leaving it out changes the word. Children who read Arabic tend to skip vowel letters when they spell ('bt', 'dg') and to guess words from their consonants when they read. Arabic has three short vowels, English five vowel letters and many more vowel sounds, so a and u, e and i need extra ear time.

• The bridge sentence: 'In Arabic we often leave the vowel marks out. In English the vowel is a letter, and it is never left out.' Say it once, then point back to it every time a vowel goes missing.
• Red vowels: for the first months, every vowel the class writes is red. A word with no red in it is missing something, and children spot that before you do.
• One-vowel swaps: pat, pet, pit, pot; cat, cut. Change only the vowel card and read the new word. It trains ear and eye at once, and pet or pit is exactly the pair Arabic speakers blur.

Letter sounds before letter names

Arabic letter names mostly begin with their own sound: ba, ta, mim, nun. English names often don't help at all: w is 'double-u', h is 'aitch', y is 'why', and c is called 'see' but says k in cat. A child who learns the names first tries to read with them, and 'see-ay-tee' never turns into cat. Teach each letter's sound first (c says k, as in cat) and keep the names, and the alphabet song, for later.

Four lines instead of one

Arabic handwriting rides on one line: letters sit on it, rise above it and drop below it, and the school notebook gives one line per row. English print uses four lines, and a letter's height is part of who it is: h and n differ by height alone. Children used to one line write every English letter the same size, and l, t and h melt into one another. Arabic is also written joined up, so some children try to join English letters too.

• Sky, grass, roots: the four lines become a picture. Tall letters (b, d, h, k, l, t) reach the sky, small letters (a, c, e, o, n) stay in the grass, and tail letters (g, j, p, q, y) grow roots. Children sort letters into the three groups before they write them.
• Wide lines first: start on the widest four-line paper, with a dashed middle line, and narrow it only when letter heights are steady.
• Print, don't join: every English letter stands on its own for the whole first year. Joined handwriting can wait until the letters themselves are sure.
• Trace the class's own words: a tracing sheet of the words they have just played with (cat, dog, sun) gives handwriting practice a meaning.

New sounds need new letters

Some English letters stand for sounds Arabic doesn't have, so the child learns the sound and the letter at once. Everyone meets p (pig, not 'big') and v (van, not 'fan'). Depending on where the child grew up, ch and g may be new too. Standard Arabic and many dialects have no ch, so chair often comes out as 'shair', while children from the Gulf and Iraq, whose speech has چ, usually find it easy. G is an everyday sound in Egyptian speech (the Cairene ج of جمل) and much Gulf speech (قال said 'gāl'), but standard Arabic has no letter for it: borrowed words write it غ or ج (Google is «غوغل» or «جوجل»), and some children blur it with k or j.

• One picture per new sound: p pops a bubble, v is a buzzing vacuum cleaner, ch is a choo-choo train. The picture is the sound's home, and children point at it when they say it.
• Minimal-pair races: pig or big, pear or bear, chip or ship. You say one; children hold up the right picture. A round takes two minutes, and the pronunciation lab plays the same game on screen, with audio.

A two-week starting sequence

Ten lessons, with about fifteen minutes of letters inside each ordinary English lesson, for children of six and up who already read Arabic. It moves faster than a sequence for a child who has never read, because yours already know that letters stand for sounds. It follows the useful-letters-first order (s, a, t, p, i, n), keeps b well away from d, and builds the direction routines in from the first minute.

• Lesson 1: the green dot and the finger walk; the sounds s, a and t (s like س, t like ت). Read at and sat, finger walking left to right.
• Lesson 2: p, the new sound, with the paper strip and pig or big pictures. Build pat, tap and sat.
• Lesson 3: i and n. Build pin, tin, nap and sit. From today every vowel is red.
• Lesson 4: m and d (d starts like c). Build mat, man, dad and dip.
• Lesson 5: game day: letter fishing with all ten sounds, and the first capital: each child writes their own name, crown and all.
• Lesson 6: o and g, and four-line paper arrives: d reaches the sky, g grows roots. Build dog, got, pot and top.
• Lesson 7: e, and the pen or pin race. Swap the heart: pat, pet, pit, pot.
• Lesson 8: c and k, two letters for one sound. Build cat, can and kit, and sort the letters into sky, grass and roots.
• Lesson 9: u and r. Build cut, cup, run and rug, and tell cat from cut by ear.
• Lesson 10: celebration: read twelve words aloud, write your name, and sing the alphabet song as the reward. The letter b waits for week three, well away from d.