The programs
48 programs, ready, in the order they are read.
1 · The letters — 9 lessons
All twenty-eight letters, one at a time and one shape at a time: the letter alone, and at the beginning, the middle and the end of a word — each with a word and a picture.
This program lets a child read no words at all, and that is deliberate: it teaches the letters and their shapes, nothing else. Reading starts in the program after it, which is why that one exists.
2 · The fatḥa — 7 lessons
This is where Arabic becomes readable: the fatḥa on all twenty-eight letters, and three verbs at the end of every lesson.
The letters are grouped by the words they unlock rather than alphabetically: from the first three letters of the alphabet a child can read nothing; from these six, three words.
ج ل س ك ت ب
3 · The kasra — 6 lessons
The same program with one mark changed, built on verbs that carry a kasra in the middle.
4 · The ḍamma — 7 lessons
The ḍamma in three places: in the middle of a verb, at the start of a passive one, and at the end of a present-tense verb — which is where a child meets it most.
5 · The sukūn — 8 lessons
The sukūn, and it is the first mark that makes everyday nouns readable: house, sun, star and rose all need one. Each lesson ends on an imperative and two nouns, and three practice lessons follow — the sukūn after a fatḥa, after a kasra, and after a ḍamma.
6 · The alif as a lengthener — 7 lessons
The first of the three letters that hold a sound open: the alif, which lengthens a fatḥa. The lesson turns round here — the word comes first with its picture, and then its letter is seen short beside long.
بَابُبَبَا
Six lessons, three words each and six words to read at the end of every one, then a practice lesson of fifty words.
7 · The yaa as a lengthener — 7 lessons
The same build with the next one: the yaa, which lengthens a kasra.
دِيكُفِيلُتَنِينُ
8 · The waw as a lengthener — 7 lessons
The waw, which lengthens a ḍamma.
نُورُكُوبُدُودُ
In its practice lesson a child reads two words together for the first time anywhere in the app.
9 · Practice on the letters and the lengtheners — 2 lessons
Four hundred words that teach nothing new: two lessons of twenty pages, ten words a page, and a game from the bag after every one. The first lesson is words of two and three letters, the second of four and five, and every mark and every lengthener stands side by side from the first page — so a child never knows which is coming, which is the whole point of a revision.
10 · The shadda — 9 lessons
A shadda is not a sound at all but two letters written as one, and that is what every lesson opens on.
بْبَبَّ
Six lessons of three letters, one with each vowel, then three practice lessons, one per vowel.
شُبَّاكُجَدِّيقِطُّ
11 · The taa marbuta — 4 lessons
A letter that is not one of the twenty-eight and that no program before this one shows. A child who has read the ten before it still stops at a ball, a tree and a car — and a very large share of the everyday nouns a four-year-old can name end in it.
كُرَةسَمَكَة
The word comes first with its picture, and then the letter is seen beneath it in the two forms it takes: standing alone after a letter that does not join forward, and joined to one that does. Which form a word takes is decided by the letter in front of it rather than by anybody choosing. A practice lesson follows, and every word of it is a thing a child points at.
12 · The tanwīn — 6 lessons
The three tanwīn, which is the doubled vowel that ends a very large share of written Arabic. A lesson teaches one of them rather than all three, because here the three signs are the lesson, and meeting them all at once is how a child learns none of them.
بَيْتٌفِي بَيْتٍأَكَلَ تُفَّاحًا
Two of the three cannot stand on their own: one follows a preposition and one follows a verb, so those lessons are two words rather than one — which is also what makes them drawable, because a picture of an apple cannot say which ending the word wears and a child eating one can. The third comes last, because it carries an alif that is written and not read.
13 · The moon al — 6 lessons
The word for the, which the shelf had never printed — so a child who had read the twelve programs before this one could read a moon and a house but not the moon or the house. Fourteen of the twenty-eight letters take it this way, with the lām heard and wearing its sukūn; fourteen swallow the lām, and those are the program after it.
قَمَرُالْقَمَرُ
Every lesson page is that contrast: the bare noun on one side and the same noun wearing the article on the other, so the only thing that changes in front of the child is what was added. Not one new drawing was needed — the fifteen nouns are the first Arabic program's own, because what this program teaches goes in front of a noun, and the nouns could therefore be chosen from what was already drawn.
14 · The sun al — 6 lessons
The other half of the moon al, and the pair is the point. In front of fourteen of the twenty-eight letters the lām is not heard at all: it wears nothing and the letter after it doubles instead — and a child who had read only the moon al would say the lām out loud.
الْقَمَرُالشَّمْسُ
So every lesson page is two rows, the moon word above the sun one, and the top row is always a word the moon al taught — revision rather than something new to decode. This one comes second because the moon al needs only the sukūn while this needs the shadda as well, so a single program would have taught half of itself twice. ظ appears in one word and nowhere else, which is honest rather than short: noon and a shadow are not things a four-year-old points at.
15 · The hamza and the alifs — 10 lessons
The last of the letters. The fourteen programs before it teach the twenty-eight letters, their four marks, the three lengtheners, the shadda, the taa marbuta, the tanwīn and both halves of the article — and then stop one step short. The hamza on the line, on the wāw and on the yāʾ, the madda, the alif maqsura and the small alif written above a letter are printed nowhere on the shelf, so a child who finished all fourteen could not read water, or on, or this.
مَاءُعَلَىهَٰذَا
The three seats come first and together, because they are one sound on three chairs and a child who meets them apart learns three letters instead of one letter and a rule. Then the madda, then the two alifs that are not alifs, and last an alif that is written and never said at all. That is the only lesson on the shelf where a letter wears no mark, and the bareness is the lesson.
16 · Reading sentences — 11 lessons
The last program on the shelf, and it teaches no letter and no mark: everything in it has already been taught, and this is where a child finds out they can read. «9» proved a child could read four hundred words; nothing anywhere on the Arabic shelf had ever asked for a line, and reading a word and reading a line are not the same skill.
Eleven lessons. The first is «أكثر ٢٠٠ كلمة في القرآن», then ten lessons of ten pages, and every page is three lines — three hundred sentences. No content word is said twice in the whole program: 595 of them, each once. That is also why there is no continuous story: a story names its people again and again, so every page is one small scene instead.
Punctuation is taught here and nowhere else on the shelf, one sign per lesson: the full stop, the comma, the question mark, the exclamation mark, and the guillemets for someone speaking. A game from the bag follows every page without exception, because there is nothing to teach and the reward is the whole of the rhythm.
English — 1: The letters — 9 lessons
A to Z, three letters a lesson: the capital then the small one, with the same word in both cases — A/Apple then a/apple — because one letter wearing two shapes is the thing being taught.
English — 2: Sounding out a word — 10 lessons
This is where English becomes readable: the five short vowels against the consonants a child already has, in the order a, i, o, u, e — and e last, because a young child confuses it with i.
Three words a lesson with their pictures, then the same three with none, then two pages of six words to read — and a sentence at the end of every lesson, which is the first punctuation anywhere in Tamayuz. Every lesson on this shelf also carries a row of words met earlier, and every program on it ends on a lesson of reading practice.
English — 3: Letters that don't say one sound each — 9 lessons
ff, ll, ss and zz; then ck; then sh, th, ch and wh; then ng and nk; and tch and dge last. Each is taught as one letter rather than two, because that is what it is.
The reward puts the gap exactly there and offers the two letters on their own beside the pair — the mistake the lesson exists to correct, and safe only because the picture names the word.
English — 4: The e at the end — 8 lessons
a_e, i_e, o_e and u_e, then all of them inside longer words, then _ce and _ge. The e at the end says nothing itself and changes the vowel in front of it.
So the gap sits on that e, and the wrong answers are a and o — either of which gives back a short word the child can already read. That is the lesson.
English — 5: The r after the vowel — 6 lessons
ar, or and ore, er, ir and ur. An r after a vowel changes it, so the vowel no longer says what the child was taught - the first time on this shelf that one letter changes another.
And er, ir and ur all say the same sound, with nothing a child can hear to tell them which is written. So those three are the wrong answers on each other's boards: the mistake a child actually makes is the one the reward asks about.
English — 6: The long sounds — 8 lessons
The long sounds written as two letters: ai and ay, ee and ea, oa and ow, igh and ie, oo and ew. This is the program that does most for a child, because after it almost every word in a picture book is one they can work out.
What it leaves out is deliberate: ow as in «cow», ea as in «bread», and oo's second sound as in «book» are all «English 10». Teaching two sounds for one spelling before a child trusts the first teaches that a spelling cannot be relied on.
English — 7: A word with a piece added — 8 lessons
-s, -ing, -ed, -er and -est, and un- and re-. A piece added to a word the child already reads - the first time on this shelf that a longer word is not a harder word, because one word they know becomes four.
The gap in the reward is not on the added piece but inside the base, and that is the program's own claim made into a board: what goes on the end changes nothing about how the rest is read.
English — 8: Words with more than one part — 8 lessons
Compound words first, because their two parts are two words the child already reads, then the two-syllable patterns: rabbit, napkin, tiger, apple. It is the first program that teaches no spelling at all - it teaches where a word comes apart.
A longer word stops being a harder word: a child who reads sun and reads set reads sunset.
English — 9: The same sound, written another way — 9 lessons
One sound written more than one way: f and ph, c and k and ck, s and ce, j and ge and dge, a_e and ai and ay. And qu is taught here at last - it was nowhere on the shelf, so «queen» could not be read although the first program draws one for Q.
The wrong choices in the reward are the sound's other spellings - «fone» for phone - because that is exactly what a child gets wrong, and the picture is what names the word.
English — 10: The same letters, another sound — 10 lessons
The other way round from the program before it: one spelling, two sounds. ow in snow and in cow, ea in bead and in bread, c in cat and in city, and g, y and oo besides. Every one of those second sounds was held back on purpose until a child trusted the first.
And the lesson is the trying, not the rule: a child who reads cow wrongly, hears that it is not a word and says it again has done the thing this program teaches.
English — 11: Reading, not sounding out — 5 lessons
This program teaches nothing new - no grapheme, no picture, no letter game. 150 sentences, three to a page, every word in them one of the ten programs before it has taught.
And no content word appears twice in the whole program - 295 of them, each said once. That is what makes it a proof that a child can read rather than an eleventh lesson.
English — 12: The words we just know — 7 lessons
The English shelf ended at «English 11» with a child who could decode splash and squirrel and still could not read a line of a picture book, because almost every line of one holds to, of, was, you, they or said. So this program teaches no spelling at all: it teaches the words a child is simply told, six a lesson, each with a page of its own.
Lesson 1 is a rule rather than a list — one vowel at the end of a short word says its name, so he, she, we, go and no were never irregular. And the comma and the exclamation mark arrive here, in a line built out of the words each lesson has just taught; nothing anywhere on the shelf had printed either of them before.
English — 13: The other vowel teams — 6 lessons
«English 6» taught ten vowel teams and «English 10» gave three of them a second sound. Seven were taught by nothing at all — ou, oi, oy, aw, au, ey and ue — and that is not an edge case: without ou a child cannot read out, house, round or cloud; without oi and oy, neither boy nor toy nor coin.
The wrong tiles are the other spelling of the same sound. house is drawn with ou, ow and oi beside the hole, and that is the program in one board: the sound really is written both ways, «English 10» taught ow, and nothing a child can hear says which one a word uses.
English — 14: The letters that hide — 6 lessons
Two things a child cannot work out by sounding a word out, and both are in the first hundred words of a picture book. A letter that says nothing — kn, wr and mb, as in knee, write and lamb — and a vowel that is long where it looks short: old, find, wild, most.
The second had been refused by «English 2» and «English 5» since the day they were written, so a child who applied «English 2» read cold with the vowel of cot. Its lesson shows no letter page at all: old is not one letter, the app’s own cut does not make it one, and a board whose hole sat on it would teach something false.
English — 15: More pieces on the end — 6 lessons
«English 7» taught eight pieces and stopped. The four it left out are the ones that turn a thing into a quality — -y, -ly, -ful and -less — and nothing on the shelf let a child read sunny, slowly, helpful or useless.
The hole still sits inside the base and never on the piece, which is «English 7»’s own claim made into a board: what goes on the end changes nothing about how the rest is read. Every taught word’s picture names the base — the sun for sunny, the spoon for spoonful, the tooth for toothless.
English — 16: Reading what people say — 4 lessons
Nothing anywhere on the shelf had ever printed a pair of quotation marks, and most of a picture book is somebody talking. It teaches no spelling and no word: every page earns a game from the bag, and what it drills is reading a line that somebody says.
Four marks, one lesson at a time — somebody says one thing, then two people talking, then a little story, and then the apostrophe that makes can’t, don’t and I’m readable — which the shelf had printed on no page at all. It could not have been written before «English 12», because a conversation is made of to, of, was, you, they and said, and «English 11» had none of them.
Français — 1 : Les lettres — 9 lessons
The same program in French, A to Z, and the twenty-six letters only: é is taught in «Français 2» and è and ê in «Français 8», and a child meets all three inside the words long before that.
Français — 2 : Les premières syllabes — 6 lessons
The five vowels and the four consonants a child can hold — l, r, f and j — then ou, the e that says the sound in le and je, and eu. The order is the French ministry’s own progression for a first term, and nothing is taken from it but the order and the inventory.
A consonant’s page shows it against each of the five vowels in a row, and then the syllables are read on their own: la, lo, ri, fou, jeu. It is the first program on this shelf where a child reads rather than names a letter.
Français — 3 : Les consonnes — 6 lessons
«Français 2» taught the four consonants a child can hold. These are the other ten — m, n, p, t, d, s, b, v and z — and ch, the one consonant pair a French child meets on every page.
A word here may end only in a letter that is said or in a silent e, which is why its words are lune, robe, vache and vélo and not chat: every piece of chat is spelled out of what this program teaches, and a child who has not met «Français 4» reads it with the t.
Français — 4 : Les lettres muettes — 5 lessons
This is where spelling a word out stops being enough. French writes letters at the end of a word that it does not say, and no rule of spelling reveals which: the silent e first, then s, then t, then d — tapis, chat, nid, pied.
The hole sits on the silent letter itself, and the three tiles are the three silent finals this program teaches. It is the one reward on this shelf where the question the board asks and the thing the lesson teaches are the same: which letter is at the end that you do not say.
Français — 5 : c, k, q, g — 5 lessons
One sound, four letters. French writes the sound of c as c, as k and as qu — canard, koala, quatre, masque — and a child meets all three in their first week.
Only the hard values are here: c before an e or an i says something else, and so does g, and both of those are «Français 10». And qu in a French child’s word never carries a w sound — quatre is not quouatre — which is the opposite of what the English shelf teaches.
Français — 6 : Les voyelles nasales — 6 lessons
This is where French stops looking like its letters: on is not an o and then an n, and nothing about the two announces the sound they make together. It is the single biggest step on the shelf, and after it the words a child says every day open — maman, mouton, lapin, bonbon, jardin.
Five vowels, and the m form of each — the same sound written before a b or a p, as in lampe, jambe and timbre — sits on the same two pages as its n form, because that is one rule and not five lessons.
Français — 7 : oi, au, eau — 5 lessons
The nasals were two letters making a sound neither of them says. These are two and three letters making a sound one of them already says — au and eau are both the o of auto — and oi, which is not a vowel at all. After it a child reads bateau, oiseau, chapeau and voiture, which is most of a picture book.
au and eau have a lesson each rather than sharing one, because they are not one rule with two spellings: eau is overwhelmingly at the end of a word and au inside one, and a child who learns that has learnt something they can use.
Français — 8 : è, ê, ai, ei — 5 lessons
One sound and four spellings, and the sound is the open e of mère, fenêtre, maison and reine. «Français 2» taught é, which is the closed one; this is the other half of the French e.
The accents arrive here because the program’s own name needs them, and no others follow: â, ô and ï stay out, which is why bateau and chapeau are on this shelf and gâteau and château are not.
Français — 9 : h, ph, th, x — 6 lessons
The consonant spellings that do not say what they look like: a silent h, ph saying the sound of f, th saying the sound of t, x saying two sounds at once — and gn, two letters neither of which says any part of the sound in montagne and champignon.
The last lesson is one fact rather than three: French writes the same ending three ways — papier, nez, jouet — so it spends a page on each of them.
Français — 10 : c, ç, g, ge — 5 lessons
The same letters, another sound, and it is the French answer to «English 10». c has said one sound since «Français 5» and here it says another; so has g — and nothing changes but the letter that follows.
ç and gu are the two halves of one trick: the cedilla softens a c where the letter after it would have kept it hard, and a silent u keeps a g hard where the letter after it would have softened it. A child who has met both has the whole rule.
Français — 11 : ain, ein, ien — 5 lessons
The nasals of «Français 6» with a letter in front of them. ain, ein and aim are the same sound as the in a child has had since «Français 6», written three more ways, and oin is that sound with a w in front of it. After this, every nasal in French is one a child has met.
ien is taught as what it is rather than as a fourth spelling: chien is an i in front of the en a child already reads, so the page shows the whole shape and the hole sits on the i.
Français — 12 : ill, ail, eil — 5 lessons
The sound French spells seven ways. The ending of fille, soleil, abeille and grenouille is written ill, ail, aill, eil, eill, euil and ouil, and which one a word takes depends on nothing a child can hear.
So each lesson is one vowel and its two endings — travail and médaille, soleil and abeille — and a child who has read both pages has the rule: at the end of a word one l, inside a word two.
Français — 13 : Les consonnes doubles — 6 lessons
Two letters, one sound, and that is the whole lesson: pomme carries one m and balle one l. Every word on this shelf had carefully avoided a doubled consonant until here, which is why pomme, poisson and ballon were missing from a shelf that had drawn all three.
A doubled m or n has a second job, and it is why this program comes after «Français 6»: it cancels a nasal. bonne is not bon with an e on the end, and pomme is not nasal at all.
Français — 14 : Les dernières lettres muettes — 5 lessons
«Français 4» taught the four silent finals a child meets first. These are the rest — a silent p and c, a silent g and x — and with them a French word has no ending left that can surprise a child who sounds it out.
The plural is here because it is a silent letter and not because it is grammar: chats is read as chat and oiseaux as oiseau, and nothing on this shelf had ever shown a child a last letter that is there only to be counted.
Français — 15 : Lire — 5 lessons
The last program on the French shelf, and it teaches nothing: no spelling, no picture, no letter game, so every page earns a game from the bag. Three sentences to a page, with everything the shelf has taught side by side and nothing to warn a child which is coming.
The last two lessons are where a child meets somebody speaking, laid out the way a French book lays it out: the guillemets for speech inside a sentence, and the dash at the head of a line for each new speaker. No content word is said twice in the whole program.
Français — 16 : Les accents — 5 lessons
The shelf taught é, è and ê and stopped, which left â, ô, î, û, ï and the vowel y taught by nothing. Five lessons: one for â, one for ô, one for î and û, one for ï and y, then fifty words to read, every one of them carrying a hat or a y.
A circumflex changes nothing a child has to hear, and that is the lesson: the wrong answers on every board are the same letter without its hat, so the question is only ever which one is written here. The tréma is the one that does change something — maïs is said in two pieces, not one.
The last lesson ends on « Il y a du maïs ici. », which is the commonest thing anybody says in French and which no page in the app could print until this program existed.