Dear All,
I have been intrigued with many topics and threads on this site.
When reading about the whole word/phonics debate, it reminded me of how easy the Arabic language is compared to the English language. In Arabic, every letter has a name and corresponding sound. And it is written the way it is pronounced and vice versa. There are some more complicated rules for reading the Holy Qur'an (Muslim's holy book that is classical Arabic text and is the of Modern Standard Arabic and the more water downed versions of dialects/colloquial Arabic) that take time to learn. However, it is logical based on the articulation points in the mouth that are very exact when orally reciting the Holy Qur'an, and less so when just speaking the Arabic language. As they say, there is a method to the madness.
When teaching children how to visually read and orally recite the Holy Qur'an, the names of the letters and sounds of the letters are learned first. Once they have mastered it is when the names and sounds of the short vowels (a, i, u) and the long vowels (aa, ii, uu) and two diphthongs (ai, au), are added in a systematic way.
Also, the pointing consistently is interesting, because when learning to visually read and orally recite the Holy Qur'an, the teacher and student always follow along the text with their finger rhythmically. Once they learn the rhthm and can follow along without pointing, it is used as needed. And when the child is old enough, they write the text to help memorize it.
And when listening to a professional reciter of the Qur'an, it is a heart moving experience; especially if you understand the words and the deeper meanings. Although there are medical studies have even shown that even if you do not understand the Arabic language, just listening to the Holy Qur'an recited actually lowers blood pressure and has an overall relaxing effect on the body. Amazing.
There are millions of people around the world that memorize the entire Holy Qur'an and many are children as young as 5. Memorizing means perfectly and without any mistakes - zero. Once children memorize the Holy Qur'an, then they will then study the meanings, both literal and very deep over time as their intellect develops. And then they will also study grammatical rules since comprehension and grammar affect how and when some of the rules of recitation are applied. When adults are learning to memorize the Holy Qur'an, the approach is different because the older you are, the more difficult is to memorize (compared to a child), but comprehension is better than that of a child.
Nonetheless, there are many adults who memorize 624 pages (Arabic only print edition from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - there are various printing houses around the world and some use different scripts that affect the number of lines and total number of pages) from about 2 years to 5 years; some more and some less.
And the result is that when children (and adults) memorize the Holy Qur'an, they perform better in school than their peers and are better linguistically as adults. Again this is because the Holy Qur'an is a classical Arabic text and the Modern Standard is based upon it - although adapted for our times. Essentially they are learning the most difficult form of the language and all lower forms are simple at that point.
Contrasting this to American methods of learning, I once read that rote memorization was how children learned poems, songs, books, and speeches in school on a regular basis. A lot of memorization. And one of the reasons was to help form the basis of understanding the rules of grammar without having the rules explained to them. At some point, this method of rote memorization was phased out in the system.
At any rate, I am glad to have read this topic because I now realize that the Qur'anic Arabic teaching/learning methods are essentially the same as some of the Native Reading techniques and can be used for both Arabic and English with my children.
Thank you so much for sharing this valuable information.
Sincerely,
Ayesha
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