Suhaib Webb – Reading Arabic the Easy Way Class Starts Today
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Assalamu alaikum.
I hope everybody is doing really well. Welcome
to our first
gathering for our course,
Reading Arabic the Easy Way. Before we get
started, let's quickly just take a moment to
kind of center ourselves
and get in a relaxed
state, you know, because sometimes I understand that,
learning Arabic can be certainly very challenging. It
can be, you know, we've all had good
and bad experiences.
So this course is really designed for people
who are either
either new to trying to read Arabic or
people who may have had some really negative
experiences and just wanna kinda get
strong in their reading of the Arabic language.
It involves actually 3 components. Right? So the
first component is the actual text,
that we shared with you. You can find
the link in the Swiss course folder.
That book actually is written by my brother-in-law,
so I got some cheat notes too if
you need them.
The second thing are the videos that are
in the Swiss course folder, and I'm gonna
show you where you can kind of synchronize
all that work.
If you want to, I encourage everyone to
turn on their video screens, please. We wanna
get people involved. We wanna make people feel
welcome and part of a larger community.
Our brothers get the edger for being the
first person to turn on his video screen.
Great to see everybody here.
And the 3rd component is going to be,
this live session where we meet once a
week to really practice
and go over what we learned in the
text.
So let me show you something really, really
important,
and that is that this class
actually has a Google Classroom.
Most of us, our kids use Google Classroom.
You know what I'm saying? So now you
get to tell your kids,
baba and mama also have a Google Classroom,
which is kinda cool. Right? You know, it'll
get you some cultural capital with your kids.
If you look at this Google Classroom,
you're going to see the first note is
here. But what's going to be posted up
there probably by tonight is this, and this
is super, super
important. That is the syllabus.
Can you ever wanna see the syllabus now,
the Google document that I opened up?
Are you guys able to see it? Awesome.
This syllabus is really important because number 1,
it's gonna give you if you need to
reach out to me, if you need to
practice, if you need me to listen to
you,
I am
here to walk you through this journey.
Okay?
Number 2. So here is my email.
Please do not put this email out anywhere.
Keep the email to yourself.
Office hours. If you click on this,
it's gonna take you to a Calendly
page,
and you can set up
office hours with me that are available. If
you can't get in and it's like an
emergency,
you got it. Let me hear you. I
got your back. Just send me email.
The second thing also that's gonna be in
in here is the course description,
some of the goals of the course,
recognizing the Arabic letters, recognizing Arabic vows, beginning
to place letters together, beginning to read. Most
importantly, you wanna leave confident. Right? I I
don't want people to come into this program
and leave
feeling like
I can't do it.
There are some important materials that you might
need for this course. Number 1 is the
text reading Arabic the easy way. It's being
sold at cost. So
if anyone needs help purchasing the text, they
can also reach out to us. I can
see what we can do.
You're gonna wanna follow the videos found in
the reading Arabic course folder in the switch
in your switch that's Swiss dashboard.
You're gonna need, of course, something to take
some notes. We record all of these classes
and repost them also in the same,
SWISS dashboard under reading Arabic, the easy way
of the course, you'll find live recordings.
So you can go back and watch this
again.
Also, from time to time, I will be
vlogging for you just to give you some
motivation,
to share with you my story,
how it's not always easy.
And now, you know, I have 3 children,
so I learned Arabic when I was 20.
You know, I had $3
when I was 20. I have 3 kids.
Right? So as I tell my children, the
older you get, the more busier you become.
The more your responsibilities
grow.
So
from time to time, we'll put up some
things to keep you motivated,
keep you in the zone,
keep you kind of fresh. And also in
those blogs telling you, hey. Here's some good
resources you can use,
primarily free resources
that are gonna help you.
So I'm not gonna be asking you to
give me a homework every week,
but what I will ask you to do
is if you like,
you can record the lesson and put it
in our Google Classroom.
And you can and what I'll do is
make it as an assignment so it comes
directly to me so you're not putting yourself
on blast in front of everybody else.
So that assignment, you'll be able to either
audio record it or you can even record
it on your phone, upload it to the
Google Classroom, and then I'll be able to
give you feedback. Here's how you're
reading. Hey. Work on this. Work on that.
Participation is important. I appreciate when people have
their video screen on just because I feel
like it allows us to create a culture
for the classroom.
I know sometimes it's not possible, so don't
it's not like I'm gonna call you out
if your your screen is not on. But,
you know, it it does make people, I
think, feel more comfortable.
I'm not really worried about classroom discipline, but
you never know. Nowadays,
we got the Duck Dynasty taking over the
capital. So it's all kind of stuff, you
know, happening nowadays. Who knows, man? But more
importantly is the syllabus.
And I I imagine this taking 4 sessions.
Like, everything that we wanna cover will take,
like, 4 sessions. And from there, we wanna
get you into Tajweed, and then when you're
into Tajweed,
have you start reading the Quran.
So this is our first session that's gonna
last till April. And what you're seeing here
is the syllabus, and then it says text.
So these are the page numbers that you
wanna be covering this week. Like, this is
what you wanna be living with. This is
what you wanna be hanging out with.
And what video do you wanna watch in
the Swiss course folder is video 1.
And let me make sure you know
where to find
these videos because I know sometimes it gets
a little,
confusing.
But let me show you
here.
No. I don't want that. I want this.
Yeah. This is what I wanna show you.
So let me
So we all know this page. This is
the Swiss page.
We actually are moving to an app. So,
hopefully, by Ramadan,
you can have all this stuff on your
phone or on your iPad or any kind
of handheld device.
This page will still be here, but we're
we're able to control the app a little
better, so it's much more organized.
But if you go on to my dashboard,
you're gonna see all the courses that are
available to you. Your $9.99
bundle
includes all this stuff. So don't worry, like,
oh god, if I click on this, I
have to pay more.
We don't have any hidden fees.
So here's our course folder. As you can
see, I'm not a very good student. I
have completed
0%
of this course.
But if I click on it,
I'm going to see number 1, the introduction
video.
This is kinda how the vlogs will be
to keep you motivated, to keep you encouraged,
to give us some practice
in a cool way. I may offer you,
like, a little vocabulary,
you know, just with the letters that we're
learning so you're able to learn it that
way. Then here's a link to the textbook
that we're using. I don't know how many
of you actually have the book. It's really
cool. Like, I wish that I had this
kind of text
when I,
learned Arabic.
Here's the live information.
So the class schedule and then the link.
So every Sunday, you just can come here
and click on this. It'll automatically bring you
here.
So you don't have to worry about anything.
And then this is something that I hope,
is really helpful. I've actually recorded, like, lessons
of the entire book.
And I'll also add lesson plans to this
so you could see it as lesson plans
because I know my degree is in education.
Sometimes it helps people see kind of the
logic of the lesson.
So, for example, what we're gonna talk about
today, here's a lesson.
So if I go back here and I
see video 1,
here's video 1.
So this is, like, what you wanna watch
this week. You can go forward if you
wanna go forward,
but be careful because my experience is when
people go too far forward, they get confused.
And and and I tried to pace this
out in a way that keeps in mind,
like, like, I like to tell my kids,
I got bills. I was like,
I got things to do, man. So I
can't necessarily have the same time that my
children have. So I've tried to pace this
in a way that will allow you to,
like, learn slowly and pace yourself.
But these videos, I think, are probably the
most important thing.
Because our time here together is going to
go over the content and then ask some
of you to practice and engage, give you
an opportunity to ask any questions that you
have.
But this is really where you're gonna find
the core of the lesson.
Because in an hour, we're limited in what
we can do.
I also
feel like this live session is going to
be a means for us to build a
rapport and then also allow you to, like,
kind of review in a different way the
material that's audio recorded here.
That makes sense. So, again, if you go
to this quiz dashboard,
you're gonna see the classes. And sometimes there's
something I need to tell you. Sometimes it'll
say, like, a 100% is done.
Keep looking because, unfortunately, even when we upload
new lessons, it won't tell you there's if
you've already done all, like, all all of
them. It'll say a 100
percent done. So you're gonna click here.
Here's the introductory video that tells you how
to use it.
Here's the link to the book.
Here's the live session information, including the schedule.
I will put the syllabus up here by
tonight.
And then I'm going to by the time
this is done,
at least for this semester, you're going to
have at least 50 to 60 lessons
that you can listen to or watch.
Are there any questions?
I'm looking now at the chat box before
we get started.
Any questions about this before we jump into
today's lesson?
Amazing.
Let's also do a quick,
I think we have, like, 41 people here.
So doing introductions may be a little difficult.
I'm sorry.
But what we do try to do sometimes
is like a body, mind, and heart check-in.
Body,