Admin Questions
I offer four options:
1. Go through the first lesson which is free on my Youtube channel
2. Purchase the Opening to the Quran taster course to see if the course is for you. This gives you the first 10 weeks of the course and if you choose to continue and purchase the Connecting to the Quran course, you get 100 pounds off the Connecting to the Quran course.
3. Wait until September for new enrollment for the Connecting to the Quran one year course.
4. Purchase the course as videos for access to all the online material and work through it at your own pace
The course is thirty eight weeks with two one hour online revision classes on Friday and Sunday from 6-7pm.
If you purchase the course and go through it yourself, you would get unlimited email and Whatsapp support and if needed. You also can interact with the other students via an app we provide.
The full fee of the course is £450. Please note that there are no discounts available aside from the early bird price or if couples or parent and child join, in which case there is £50 discount each:
• Course book of 358 pages as a hard copy and PDF
• Video classes prerecorded
• 2 online revision classes every week on Friday and Sunday from 6-7pm UK time.
• Vocabulary app
• Unlimited email and Whatsapp access to the teacher
• Access to private community app
• Every year you get access to all the material and life classes again if you pay an extra 50 pounds at the end of the year
You can register for the course by clicking on the following link CLICK HERE
There is no minimum age but the student must be astute and have the self-discipline to follow the material and revise.
The course runs from September to July. There are no semester breaks in the year but there are breaks for the holdays and certain weeks where I have commitments. You can check the course outline on the course page for more information regarding the dates, breaks and holidays.
Not in principle. Payment must be made in one instalment when you apply for the course and have been accepted. Once we have received your full payment, you will be enrolled onto the course. However, if you can explain your circumstances over an email I may consider it if you set up a direct debit with your banks and commit to the payments for the whole year.
You receive a full refund less a £50 withdrawal fee if you withdraw from the course seven days after the semester start date. You will not receive a refund after the first week.
Attendance is voluntary. If you miss any classes, you can catch up by accessing the video recording of the lesson within the week online.
The students will be assessed after every five lessons with a simple review paper to assess their ability to translate sentences from Arabic to English that cover the grammar they have studied. These review papers are not mandatory to complete and they are completed at home in the student’s own time and submitted at their own convenience..
There is no refund for the course fee. In reality, you cannot fail on this course or lose out on learning regardless of what happens in the year since you will have access to all the recordings, downloads and email access regardless of whether you attend the classes or not.
General Questions
I have been teaching Arabic for over nine years in the UK to students who study it part time and have busy lives. Throughout those years, I have been writing the course material and refining it to the needs of the students. Most courses bring the theory first and the practice later. I focus on theory as little as possible and get the students practicing straight away through translating verses of the Quran or sentences based on verses and employing the vocabulary that appears regularly throughout the Quran. I stress more importance to familiarization of the material and vocabulary rather than memorization. I achieve this by constantly reviewing past material alongside the new concepts. I give a lot of importance to delivery, making you feel comfortable in the class by not picking you out, helping you develop positive learning habits and encouraging you through using positive affirmations, and eliciting the answers from yourself rather than giving them to you. I also provide a lot of supplementary material such as downloadable videos, revision classes, vocabulary apps and email access to me personally to support you. I have found this model the most effective approach over the years and each year more and more students are able to see the course through to the end and achieve their goal.
The course is focused solely on connecting to and understanding the Quran. There is no expectation on you to write or pronounce Arabic correctly. As long as you can identify and make out the words in Arabic, then that is sufficient to be able to study this course. The course focusses on translating from Arabic to English alone. Even when we translate, there is no expectation on you getting a perfect translation. The goal is that you understand the meanings that the words and verses convey in order to appreciate the language and not a perfect translation because the reality is that we cannot truly translate the word of God.
I really want you to try your utmost to read through the material before coming to the class and complete as many of the exercises in the lesson beforehand as well. This is not necessary but it helps you and the flow and pace of the class. In class, we will go through the exercises again together to reinforce the concepts and clarify any misunderstandings that you might have had. After the lesson, it helps to revise the grammar points and exercises within the first two days and then review the material and complete any unfinished exercises in the week for the next class in order to drill the points home. This technique is what I call the ‘Three Step Technique’ where you study before the class, in the class, and revise after the class within 48 hours of the lesson. I applied this method in my studies and I found that I never had to revise for exams because the concepts where drilled into my mind so strongly. Refer to the method of study document on the internet portal which you will have access to for further tips on making the most of the course.
There is no such thing as a weak memory. There is an untrained memory, though. Throughout the course, I give tips on how to improve your memory and retention of the material. The problem we have throughout our educational system is that we are shown ‘what to learn’ but not ‘how to learn’. Much of the course focuses on ‘how to learn’. My focus is on familiarizing and not memorizing because the material is constantly reappearing throughout the course and each lesson builds upon the other. I also provide a lot of regular reinforcement in order to move the new information from short term memory to long term memory and the vocab apps also help a great deal.
You will have vocabulary tests each week where you will be given ten words to memorize and these words will come up weekly in the exercises to reinforce them. It helps to memorize a few words a day from the vocabulary sheets. I do not focus on memorizing too much, though. Once you have memorized it for a week, you do not have to go back to it, because you will see the vocabulary reappear in the texts. I believe that one should familiarize and not focus on memorizing. It does not help to constantly go over lists of words. It is better to see words in a context within a text. That way, you remember the words far better. People who have good vocabulary are generally people who read a lot. The emphasis in the course is to get you reading independently as quickly as possible so this can be achieved. This requires that you regularly read the Quran so that you expose yourself to the grammar and vocabulary we cover in class. Reading the Quran is most effective way to assess your progress and motivate you throughout the course.
I focus more on keys rather than memorizing tables. I do not expect you to memorize long lists of verb tables. If that is the way you study, than you can do so, but many people learn best through finding patterns and constructing keys to rely on. That is how I help those who struggle with memorizing.
I wrote the course book myself because I could not find a book out there designed for people studying Arabic part time and which focused purely on connecting to the Quran. You will have access to a hard copy and a PDF of the book so you can go through the lessons when you are on the go.
I offer voluntary assignments after every five lessons so that I can assess your progress. These assignments are done at home and you are simply required to translate seven sentences which cover the grammar points you have studied previously. There are no questions about grammar in the assignments. I just want to see that you know how to translate accurately. You can submit them whenever you like. The course is not target driven. This one year course is based on giving you the keys to open up the wonders of the Quran and it is a life long journey where you will constantly be recapping what you have learnt from past lessons. You put in as much as you want, and no matter what, everyone comes away after the year with a much deeper understanding and love of the Holy Quran.
Every class and revision lesson is videoed and put on a portal online so that you can download it at your convenience for lifetime access. The videos are mobile friendly, so you can follow the lessons even when you are out and about or travelling abroad. This means that you always have the opportunity to catch up. Some people, due to commitments, fall behind but I always encourage them to attend the classes regardless because we are always revising previous lessons through the verses we study and when the other students are going through the current lesson, those that have fallen behind can attempt a lesson they are comfortable with and I give them the support they need.
Most Arabic courses have a huge dropout rate due to the intensity of the material and the expectation on the student to memorize and retain a lot of information. Al-Hamdu Lillah, this year I had over 60% of the students attend until to the end of the course. This does not mean that the other students dropped out from the course because many chose to follow online from the comfort of their home. This is a big achievement in language learning and this is due to the extra support I give through access to the videos and the ability to download them, online revision classes, vocabulary app and email support. Every year, I am looking for ways to support the students more and this year I have designed the course so that we go at an even more comfortable pace for everyone. My goal is to eventually reach a point where I have over 90% of the students attend the classes through to the end.
The reality is that you cannot drop out of this course because you have access to all the videos and resources regardless of whether you attend the class or not. You can always go through these videos at your own pace and contact me if you have any questions. However, my aim is to help and support you all so that all of you can keep up with the material and attend class.
I do not recommend doing so. This course is demanding and the more you put into it, the more you get out. Once you finish this course, you will find that it will enrich and enhance the experience of any other Islamic course you take.
Many people make the mistake of riding on their initial motivation and excitement for studying a new course. This initial exciting will fade for some and it is then that you really need to dig deep to find your true motivation for studying Arabic. Reading Quran regularly will motivate you as you will see how much you are picking up each week.
Jack Canfield says in his book the Success Principles: ‘It’s natural in the achievement of any goal to come upon obstacles, to feel temporarily stuck on a plateau. This is normal. Anyone who has ever participated in a sport or practiced a martial art knows that you hit plateaus where it seems as if you are making no progress whatsoever. That’s when the uninitiated often quit, give up, drop out, or take up another hobby. But the wise have discovered if they just keep practicing, eventually they make what feels like a sudden leap to a higher level of proficiency. Be patient. Hand in there. Don’t give up. You will break through. The principles always work. Get started.’
That depends on you. Some of my students only put in the bare minimum of three hours a week including the class time and they still kept up with the class whilst others put in up to five extra hours.
By Lesson Fifteen you will be translating sentences purely from the Quran and by Lesson Twenty you will have an understanding of the majority of the elements of an Arabic sentence.