How Lessons Work at Abobakr Academy
Every lesson is one student and one tutor on a video call. There is no class to keep up with and no fixed syllabus to be behind on. This page describes what actually happens, from the first message to the point where you can tell whether it is working, including the parts we would rather you knew before you paid for anything.
Getting started
- You tell us who the student isAge, and what they have studied before. Nothing at all is a normal starting point, and it is a cleaner one than an unfinished year somewhere else.
- We match a tutorThe match is made on the student rather than on whoever is free. A quiet seven year old and a thirty year old starting the alphabet need different people, and we would rather change the tutor in week one than have you decide in month three that lessons are not for you.
- A free trial lessonFifteen to thirty minutes. The tutor listens, then tells you what they heard and what to work on first. Details are on the free trial page.
- You agree a scheduleTwo or three fixed slots a week, in your time zone. Fixed beats flexible: a lesson with a permanent place in the week survives a busy month, and an ad hoc one does not.
- Lessons startThe first month is deliberately narrow. One skill, done properly, rather than a tour of everything the academy teaches.
What a lesson actually looks like
The tutor and the student are on a video call, with the page in front of both of them. For a beginner the lesson is mostly repetition out loud: the tutor says a letter or a word, the student says it back, and the tutor corrects the shape of the sound rather than the spelling.
For a student who can already read, most of the time goes on reading aloud. The tutor stops on the errors that matter and lets the small ones pass, because a child corrected on every syllable stops volunteering to read at all. Toward the end the tutor sets a small amount of practice, usually a few lines, and it stays small on purpose.
Islamic studies and Arabic lessons run the same way, with more talking and less recitation. Memorization lessons have one extra part: the student recites yesterday’s portion back before anything new is added, which is the step most people skip at home and the reason memorized surahs quietly disappear.
Between lessons
Practice is short and daily rather than long and weekly. Ten focused minutes on five days does more than an hour on a Sunday, and it is the version that actually happens in a house with other children in it.
If nobody at home reads Arabic, the practice you supervise is the listening kind. You do not need to know the letters to notice that your child stopped, restarted, or got faster on the line they have done forty times.
How you know it is working
This is the hardest part for families where nobody reads Arabic, so it is worth being concrete about the timeline.
The first clear shift in reading usually takes two to three months of consistent weekly lessons. Before that you are watching for smaller things: fewer stops on a familiar line, a letter that used to be guessed being said the same way twice, a child who reads without being asked twice. Our guide on checking your child’s Quran progress sets out the five minute check a parent can run without knowing any Arabic.
Give any change a month before you judge it. That applies to a new tutor, a new lesson length and a new time slot equally. Four weeks is roughly the point where a genuine mismatch stops looking like an ordinary bad fortnight.
Scheduling, rescheduling and time zones
Tutors teach families in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, so early mornings and late evenings are ordinary working hours here rather than a favour. Lessons run 30 to 120 minutes, though 30 to 60 is right for almost everybody. If you need to move a lesson, two hours’ notice is enough.
Paying
Lessons are paid in advance. Rates start at 9.50 USD per hour and fall towards 7.00 USD as monthly hours rise, monthly plans run from 34 to 84 USD, and siblings get 10% off. Unused lessons are refundable. The pricing page has the plans laid out in full.
If something is not working
Say so early. The two problems we see most are a tutor and student who simply do not click, and a lesson length that was set optimistically and is now being endured. Both are fixable in a week and both get worse if they are tolerated politely for a term.
We would also rather tell you when one to one is the wrong tool. A child who needs other children around gets something from a weekend class that a screen cannot give, and a confident adult reader who only wants vocabulary drilling can do that with an app for nothing. One to one is worth paying for when the skill is oral and the errors are inaudible to everyone in the house, which is exactly the case with recitation.
Common questions
Who are the tutors?
Egyptian, qualified, many of them trained at Al-Azhar. The faculty is described on our about page.
What ages do you teach?
From four to adult. Below about six, lessons are short and frequent rather than long.
What subjects can we take?
Quran reading and Tajweed, memorization, Arabic, Islamic studies, and school subjects such as maths, physics and chemistry for the same families. The course list covers all of them.
Can we change tutors?
Yes, and it is better done early. A mismatch in week one is a scheduling detail. The same mismatch in month three has usually already cost the student’s appetite for the subject.
How many lessons a week do we need?
Two or three for children, and two is enough to make progress if they are consistent. One lesson a week works for adults who practise in between and stalls for those who do not.
Do you teach memorization from the beginning?
Only alongside reading, not instead of it. A student who memorizes by ear without reading builds something that cannot be extended past what they have heard. Our memorization page explains the order we teach it in.