Learning Arabee is all about making Arabic fun for kids (and their parents).
Methodology
After going through programs that teach vocabulary at the expense of grammar and others that teach grammar at the expense of vocabulary, we’ve come to think that learning Arabic is like learning to cook. Words are the ingredients and grammar and morphology are the techniques that we use to make those ingredients into delicious meals.
To cook well you need ingredients as well as skills. Before learning any techniques or skills though, you need to collect some ingredients to practice those skills on. There’s no sense in learning to chop or sautee if you don’t have something to chop or sautee.
So after learning the alphabet, we will start with building vocabulary — just enough so that we can start learning some grammar. Because collecting a bunch of ingredients isn’t really satisfying either. You want to put them together into delicious sentences so you can really enjoy the language and share it with others.
Switching gears on our metaphors here, we also have a theory of learning that we call the coat hanger theory.
You know those standing coat hangers that people have by the door? It looks like a little tree with short branches and no leaves.
Anyways, every new piece of information is like a coat.
If you want to retain it, you need to hook it somewhere on the coat hanger. If it can’t connect to anything, it’s just going to fall to the floor and you’ll forget it.
So as we learn new words and concepts, we’ll try to connect them as much as possible — either to things that you already know, or other things we’re learning or just to different activities so you can see these ideas in different contexts.
About Us
Learning Arabee was started by Rabab Toubar and Sawitri Mardyani. Meeting as roommates in graduate school at the University of Toronto, Rabab and Sawitri share a love of Arabic (even though their degrees are in the medical sciences … go figure).
Rabab was born and raised in Egypt. She is a native Arabic speaker from a big family known for their love of the Arabic language. Most of her father’s family are Arabic teachers, including masters in various Arabic scripts and calligraphy. Today, Rabab is a homeschooling mom of three girls focusing on Arabic and Islamic studies. She also teaches Arabic and helps develop Arabic language curriculum for middle and high school students at a weekend school in Ontario, Canada.
Sawitri was born in Indonesia and raised in Canada. After many years of studying Arabic through classes, software programs, audio lessons, books, and lessons from friends she can now read and understand Arabic text. Being able to understand the language of the Qur’aan and hadeeth brings her a deep sense joy and satisfaction, which she wants to share with others.
Rabab and Sawitri founded Learning Arabee to help families, especially non-native Arabic speakers, learn Arabic.
Get in touch!
If you have any questions, comments, recommendations, ideas or just want to say hi, send us an email at learningarabee@gmail.com.
We would love to hear from you!
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