Breaking the ‘False Beginner’ Cycle Learning Arabic — How to Start Making Progress Again
You are a false beginner if you have ever studied a language at any point in time, have some linguistic knowledge, but cannot use the language.
I recently published a post detailing an ever increasing situation holding UK Muslims back from enriching their lives learning Arabic (I suggest at least skimming through it first before reading this).
As a very brief summary, there are numerous intertwining barriers both logistically and attitude-driven preventing progress, thus rendering people with little to no practical language skills.
Resulting in, a large number of ‘false beginners’.
It is admirable when learners are determined to try again with a new language programme or teacher, yet when similar challenges sprout up again it leads to a vicious cycle of remaining a false beginner. Not only is it demoralising, but a deep sink for your time and money.
Being determined to try again is half the struggle, but there’s a right and wrong way to go about it, along with additional pitfalls unique to false beginners, in this post we’ll look at getting back on track whilst being aware of potential challenges.
Before going any further, I’ll assume the following of the reader:
- You can read the Arabic alphabet and produce the correct phonemes
- You either enrolled onto an Arabic language programme, which you did not manage to complete due to a personal or logistical barrier, or,
- You have completed an Arabic language programme, but do not feel confident to use the language, due to a lack of initial comprehension, revision, or exposure to poor teaching methods
With that, we’ll look at the possible challenges unique to false beginners re-starting their Arabic studies.
Possible Challenges:
Fossilisation
If you enter into a new Arabic Language Programme without a plan, or encounter similar challenges creating barriers to progress, your dwindling motivation, demoralisation, and lack of meaningful progress could begin to fossilise.
You will start to think you are inherently incapable as a learner. Whereas, really, you just need to readjust your approach.
Whilst it’s true students are responsible to manage time, resources, and motivation for success, it’s still just as possible for a learner to have a bad run-in being exposed to multiple programmes in a row presenting repeat, common barriers.
It’s important to remember whilst the dedication to not give up is an admirable step in the right direction, dedication to persist is not enough to ensure a higher chance of success the next time around.
A component of success is learning how to reflect on your past experiences. Later in the article I will detail how to plan your re-entry into studying Arabic, as a false beginner.
Fragmented learning
Naturally, when starting different Arabic programmes (or transferring to different materials), you will encounter different course structures, teaching methods, and focuses of learning. Leading to confusion and inconsistency (you know the saying, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’).
Fragmented learning hinders the development of a deep understanding, and confidence.
Essentially, setting yourself up to remain a false beginner longer than you’d like.
The learning process becomes disjointed making it difficult to pickup where you left off, or you may lose focus when covering familiar language. Regardless, struggling to follow a programme, or feeling bored sitting through familiar language doesn’t aid motivation.
Additionally, the lack of continuity makes it difficult to develop a solid foundation, jumping course to course, or resource to resource delays any real time for progressive, measured, language application. You might spend more time familiarising yourself with new materials, methods of teaching/explaining, than using Arabic.
Fragmented learning can create large gaps in knowledge, which could grow even bigger if such inconsistent learning continues. It seems contrary to what you’d expect by getting back into studying Arabic, but the lack of focus only hinders learners, if not managed carefully.
Overlapping repeated content, difficulty assessing your true skill level, and incomplete skill development are all by-products of disjointed learning.
There’s lots to pick out about fragmented learning, and many of the points raised could easily be multiple more subheadings here, but for the sake of reducing the length of this post, this will suffice to highlight possible challenges.
Consistency, focus, and mastering the basics with practice are key, all of which are impacted by fragmented learning.
A false sense of progress, and low momentum
Leading on from the above points, moving to a new programme or materials, as a false beginner, often means starting at either beginner, or low-level lessons. Your momentum is held back.
Should this be only your second attempt, or perhaps your third try starting a new program at a beginner level, it’s understandable that strategically beginning again with lower-level/beginner classes may be necessary.
Starting afresh can feel productive, but, the true measurement of progress and productivity is being able to use language. Moving between programmes, or materials carries a false sense of progress, similar to ‘shiny object syndrome’.
You may feel invigorated at the start, before the daunting realisation you’re revisiting familiar language but still can’t use any language knowledge meaningfully creeps in.
Frustration and feeling overwhelmed.
All of the above can roll into a growing sense of frustration, feeling overwhelmed. After unsuccessful past attempts, putting more money and time into trying to improve your language skills but seeing little progress, or increase in confidence is a serious demotivator.
Now that we’ve identified some potential challenges for false beginners to be aware of, we can move on to planning your re-entry back into studying Arabic. Whether you realise it or not, even if you have little to no practical language use, the fact you have had some exposure puts you in a good position.
Getting back on track, and finding stability:
Gather all your resources
This is the most important step to breaking out the false beginner cycle.
Your resources are the cornerstone of the progress you make from this point onwards. Just as much as course-hopping is detrimental to progress, material-hopping is too. So, you should know exactly what you have to hand, and why (Some of this advice is repeated from my previous post).
What you need to gain stability and start afresh the right way:
- Loose-leaf paper, and a ring binder. Avoid bound notebooks. The idea is to make a modular note taking and storing system. The largest bulk of your notes will be vocabulary, and some examples of summarising key grammar points in your own words.*
- Arabic Verbs & Essentials of Grammar by Wightwick and Ghaffar. Start at chapter 20 for a quick crash-course on basic grammar.
- 80% 0f Qur’anic words by Dr. Abdulazeez Abdulraheem. This is a very cheap, and small booklet. It’s a useful vocab bank to refer to, and has many useful commonly used pronouns and prepositions in clear tables.
- Choose to own either a set of Gateway to Arabic by Imran Alawiye, or the Madinah Books by V. Abdur Rahim (Rahimullah). If you choose the Madinah books, I recommend the Madinah Arabic Reader version.
- The Hans Wehr, or the Oxford Essential Arabic Dictionary: English-Arabic.
- This video here by The Legacy Institute [37 minutes]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAXlhXk-4p8&list=PL_BsY303SrQJUoro_QwdTiLmmuxSJq0Qr&index=1
That’s it, you don’t need much else to get you revising the basics, and the above recommended books are great to fall back on if you ever forget something or need a refresher. Whilst I recommend purchasing the physical copies, you can find PDFs for most of those books.
Now, leading on to the second most important point,
Make self-studying your foundation
The absolute basics for the vast majority of Arabic language application is all found in The Ten Lessons of Arabic by Abd al-Salam Kidwai Nadvi. It will not take you long at all to go through the book and even attempt a few example activities.
Gateway to Arabic by Imran Alawiye, or The Madinah Books by V. Abdur Rahim (Rahimullah) are more than enough to give you some measurable sense of progress. Both sets of books also have many useful accompanying videos on YouTube. Imran Alawiye creates videos going through his books, and LQ Toronto with Asif Meherali covered the whole Madinah book series.
My personal opinion is Muslims, especially living outside of Arabic speaking countries, should primarily focus on reading comprehension.
This is the easiest skill you have control over self-studying, which you can consistently practice in your own time.
Focussing on reading skills increases your vocabulary and grammar knowledge, which in turn will be readily available for activation if you ever progress onto developing communicative skills.
The Mindset for Self-studying
By encouraging self-study, I run the risk of sending you down another path of challenges. By relying on yourself to build your Arabic foundations, you are at the mercy of your own levels of motivation and ability to make progress. So, I am not encouraging you solely to self-study to learn Arabic (unless you are disciplined enough).
The purpose behind encouraging self-study is because there is a lot you can learn on your own to maintain momentum.
Much of the basics, the foundations, can be understood with the aforementioned resources.
I would still encourage you to find a teacher/programme and aim to complete it for the sake of structured learning, meeting other students, having a mentor, and motivation.
But, by reframing your approach to ground the very basic foundations by your own efforts, you stand a better chance of navigating a programme despite any logistical or methodological challenges it may present.
So, the mindset for self-studying should be as follows:
- Your self-studying is only one part of a long term process. You will always be a student of the Arabic language no matter what level you reach. Whether that is through self-studying or with a teacher, both approaches will overlap.
- You should focus on making progress through a textbook, instead of aiming for complete comprehension. Progress begets eventual comprehension, even if it doesn’t all make immediate sense when you first move onto a new lesson.
- Focus on process goals instead of outcome goals. It’s not about reaching a final destination, remember, you will always be a student of Arabic. Make goals such as, “each week I will work through five pages of the Madinah books”, or “each week I will learn 10 new words”.
- Remember, there is no time limit. You are not racing anyone. That’s the beauty of a self-study routine. Keep your efforts sustainable.
- This will become a part of your lifestyle and identity.
Skip the evaluation stage
It’s tempting to think you have to self-evaluate your level of knowledge before getting back into learning Arabic. Skip this.
That sounds counterintuitive, but accepting you are in a position where you need to tactically start afresh is a better starting point, because it removes all the friction of trying to self-evaluate your knowledge.
What you can try is starting a later book in your chosen series to gauge how much you can understand. If you’re struggling to understand the language, keep going back a book until you feel it’s a suitable level.
Once you determine your starting point, as you work your way through, your language knowledge will reactivate, whilst filling any knowledge gaps.
Whatever you previously learned has not completely left you, it just needs to be reactivated, allow that moment of reactivation to come gradually and naturally.
Realise you don’t need all four language skills equally
Some programmes attempt to teach all four language skills (which for many is unsustainable unless you are committing a lot of time, over a period of time). Developing all four skills, to a usable level, requires a strong commitment from both teacher and student.
Conversational skills require a partner of a similar level to regularly practice with (which can be facilitated with online tutor services these days), writing is a whole different ball-game of cognitive function, needing to recall spelling, along with the thinking process to express yourself in a non-native language is quite taxing. Listening skills are a close runner up to reading skills with the plethora of Arabic audio content available in multiple formats. The only possible challenge being varying accents.
If you can become comfortable with at least one language skill independently, that is a huge success.
How to Choose a Course, and The Mindset
Now we’ve established how you can get your feet back on the ground, we can focus on finding a new course/teacher. This advice may differ depending on where you live, as opportunities will obviously vary.
In the most ideal world, I’d recommend studying face to face with a teacher and other students. Alas, that is not always possible.
Online courses are of no shortage these days, which is both a blessing and curse — the amount on offer means either experiencing analysis paralysis, or any cowboy can set up a course as an overnight institute for quick cash.
Wherever you find a teacher, try to check:
- The teacher’s track record. If they are a grassroots effort, is this their first time offering lessons, or do they have experience? Grassroot efforts have lower chances of success if it’s the first time running. So try to check this.
- The book/teaching method they intend to implement — this isn’t a big deal but it can give you an idea of what to expect.
- What skills/learning outcomes the teacher hopes to focus on.
If you can find a course offered by an established institute, from my experience these have a higher chance of completion by the teacher, and the students tend to be a bit more dedicated (as opposed to online grassroot efforts).
The mindset for studying a programme is much the same as self-studying;
- Your teacher and peers are one of many useful means to an end.
- Despite any challenges or barriers, a dedicated teacher is still better than going at it completely alone (again, unless you are very disciplined or have acquaintances who can help).
- You will always be doing some level of self-study/revision throughout your journey, so (very hypothetically), if worse comes to utmost worse and the programme suddenly ends, or you need to leave for whatever reason, you still have some resources and studies to keep you busy progressing.
- Have the resolve to complete the course even if you are covering some familiar language. Completing a programme with a teacher is an achievement, and helps to gauge your current level of understanding. Speak with your teacher to let them know you’ve studied previously and self-study. Build a connection.
- Make Istikhara and trust Allah.
The fact you are here reading this article is a step towards making a difference. Learning a language, like any other skill, is not a linear process. Anticipate the highs and lows, embracing the challenge.
As long as you focus on consistently using whatever is available to you, you will make progress in your Arabic studies.
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*Even if you have ample materials with printed vocabulary and explanations, I still encourage making your own notes to feel engaged with the process. You will also need to begin growing your own vocabulary bank as you progress. I recommend keeping a section dedicated to words you struggle to recall the meaning of. If however you feel re-producing grammar and vocabulary content by hand will hold you back from re-starting your studies, use your own discretion.
