What can I do if I cannot read Arabic at all?

Three things, and they are the three that matter most: a fixed time, five minutes of listening a day, and one question to the teacher a month. None of them require you to read a word.

How can I listen if I cannot correct?

Correcting is the teacher's job. Your job is attendance and attention: a child reading aloud to a parent every day practises far more than a child reading alone, even when the parent cannot judge the Tajweed.

What should I ask the teacher each month?

What my child gets wrong most often, and what we should do at home about it. A teacher who cannot answer that specifically is not listening closely enough.

Should I learn to read alongside my child?

Some parents do and enjoy it. It is not necessary, and it should never become the thing that has to happen before the child's lesson can.

Can I use an app to check them?

For the words, sometimes. For the sounds, no. The pairs of letters that go wrong are exactly the ones an app is least able to hear.

Is it a problem that nobody at home speaks Arabic?

No. Almost none of our families do. It only becomes a problem if it is used as a reason not to listen to the daily reading.

Helping Your Child With Quran When You Cannot Read Arabic

The short answer

You do not need to read Arabic to move your child's Quran along. The three things that matter most are yours to give: a fixed time, five minutes of listening a day, and asking the teacher one question a month. Correcting the Tajweed is the teacher's job, not yours.

By Nauman Ahmed, Founder of Live Quran LessonsUpdated 6 November 20262 min read

The three things that are yours

A fixed time

The same slot every day, guarded like a school run. Children who read at random times read less, whoever is teaching them.

Five minutes of listening

Ask your child to read yesterday's line to you. You do not need to know whether it is right. Being listened to is what makes a child practise.

One question a month

Ask the teacher which stage your child is on and what the next one is. That single question keeps a class from drifting for a term.

Things that help more than people expect

Sit in on a lesson now and then. You do not have to understand it to see whether your child is reading or watching.
Learn the names of the stages — letters, joined letters, harakat, then the Quran — so you can follow the conversation.
Play a recitation your child likes in the car. Ears learn before mouths do.
Ask the teacher to teach in Urdu if that is the language you follow, so you can hear what is being corrected.

Things that are not your job

Correcting pronunciation from a YouTube video you half remember. Testing your child on rules you were taught differently. Quizzing them the evening before a lesson so they perform well for the teacher.

All three come from good intentions and all three make a child tense about reading. Hand the correcting back to the teacher and keep the part that only you can do, which is making it ordinary at home.

Talk to us about your child's plan

My child reads the Quran but does not understand it

The question that comes next.

What happens in a first online Quran lesson

What you will see if you sit in.

Helping Your Child With the Quran When You Cannot Read Arabic