Book 1 · For complete beginners

From your first stroke to your first sentence

Read With Me: First Steps teaches you to write and read the Arabic letters. They come in twelve little families, each with a story you won't forget. You trace every shape, hear every sound from a QR code on the page, and by the last page you are reading real sentences.

Get the book

$27One payment. Yours to keep.

Your personal copy and your listening link arrive by email within minutes.

Print it or use a tabletA4, 72 pages, made to be written in.

The Read With Me series

Book 1 · This bookFirst StepsFor complete beginners. The 28 letters, traced and heard, up to your first sentences.

Book 2Read With MeYou know the letters. Now read whole words with vowel marks, quickly and correctly.

Book 3 · Coming soonReading without vowel marksThe next step: Arabic the way it is printed in books, news and signs.

Starting from zero? Get Books 1 and 2 together for $48 (save $6)

Letters that come in families

Most Arabic letters share a body and differ only in their dots. So instead of 28 separate shapes, you learn twelve families, each with one picture to hold it in your head.

ج ح خ

The food family

Wrap your hand round a jar and twist the lid: that's the shape. ج has the honey inside. ح is warm breath on cold hands. خ is something stuck in your nose, so cough it out.

ر ز

The banana family

Rough day? Eat a banana: ر. Leave it on the table, and a bee lands on it: now it's ز.

ص ض

The whistle family

ص is a whistle, deep and heavy. Add a drop of water and it gurgles: ض.

Plus the boat, the toddler, the snake, the tall man, the mirror, the fez, the tall two and the loners. Each family gets a story page, a tracing page with numbered stroke guides, a sounds page and a words page.

One small step at a time

Nothing arrives before you're ready for it. Every new letter is used straight away with the ones you already know.

Trace the shape
Numbered arrows show where your pen starts. Then grey letters to trace, fading out, until the last line is all yours.
Add the sounds
Each letter with the three short vowels, then the same three stretched long.
بَ بِ بُ ← بَا بِي بُو
Read real words
Short words built only from letters you've met, with their meaning underneath.
Then everything else
Sukun, shadda, tanween, ة, ى, hamza, آ, لا, ال, heavy and light letters, and finally whole sentences.

Real pages from the book

The red marks are the vowels, printed in a different colour so your eye finds them fast. There is no transliteration anywhere: you learn to read the Arabic itself.

Part of the food family story page — **A family's story**Three letters, one jar, three little scenes.

Part of a tracing page with numbered stroke guides — **Your pen's turn**Follow the numbers, trace the grey, then write it alone.

Part of the first sentences page — **Your first sentences**Two and three words, read in one breath.

Just a peek. The other 69 pages are waiting in your copy.

A book you can hear

Every practice page has a QR code. Scan it with your phone and a native voice reads each letter, sound and word on that page, as slowly as you like. On the words pages you can also record yourself and get checked.

A4 pages to write in

letter families, each with its own story

listening pages, one QR code each

390+

letters, sounds and words read aloud

Who it's for

Adults starting from zero, and anyone who knows a few letters but never learned them properly.

This book is for you if

the Arabic letters are new to you, or still a blur
you speak some Arabic at home but have never learned to read or write it
you want to write by hand, not only recognise letters on a screen
you can give it 15 minutes a day; at one page a day you finish in about ten weeks

Skip it if

you already read voweled words with ease: go straight to Read With Me
you want grammar or spoken dialect: this book teaches the letters and reading only

Not sure where you are? Message our teachers on Instagram and we'll tell you.

اِقْرَأْ مَعِي

Finished? The next book is waiting.

The last page of First Steps carries a code for 20% off Read With Me, the book that takes you from spelling words out to reading them whole. Or save now: get both books together for $48.

Questions

I don't know a single letter. Can I really start here?

Yes, that's exactly who it's made for. The first page you trace is a single straight line, the alif.

Is it Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect?

The letters and sounds are the same in every kind of Arabic. The words in the book are everyday Modern Standard Arabic, the Arabic of books and signs.

Is this part of a series?

Yes. Book 1, First Steps, teaches the Arabic letters from zero. Book 2, Read With Me, trains you to read whole words with vowel marks. Book 3, reading without vowel marks, is on its way. Starting from zero? Get Books 1 and 2 together for $48.

Do I need an account?

No. You pay with your email address, and your book and your listening link come to that email. The link works on up to three of your own devices.

Can I print it?

Yes, and you should: it's a tracing book. It's an A4 PDF that prints well at home, and you can also write on it with a tablet and pen. The QR codes work from paper or screen.

Is Read With Me included?

Not inside this book. Read With Me is Book 2 and comes after First Steps. You can get both books together for $48 (instead of $54), or buy it later: the last page of First Steps gives you 20% off it.

The email didn't arrive. What now?

Check your spam or promotions folder for an email from Arabanion. If it isn't there after 15 minutes, write to contact@arabanion.com and we'll send it straight away.