Choose the Level that Fit your Journey

A single “level” hides the thing that matters most. A child can understand a great deal of spoken Levantine and still be unable to read a single word. Putting one grade on that child tells a parent almost nothing, and tells a teacher le

So we track five skills separately:

• Listening Comprehension
  Understanding spoken Arabic — in your family's dialect

• Speaking & Conversation
  Holding a conversation — in your family's dialect

• Reading & Literacy
  Understanding written Arabic — in Modern Standard Arabic

• Writing & Expression
  Producing written Arabic — in Modern Standard Arabic

• Arabic Script Mastery
  Decoding and handwriting the Arabic alphabet — the foundation that opens reading and writing

A real child's profile looks like this:

• Listening B1
• Speaking A2
• Reading A1
• Writing A1
• Script Stage 2

That is a picture a parent can actually use. It says: she understands us, she is finding her words, and she is just beginning to read.

The script strand — the barrier nobody talks about

For heritage learners the Arabic alphabet is usually the biggest obstacle, and it is almost completely separate from how well a child speaks. A fluent little speaker can be a complete beginner at reading, and that is normal.

We track script through five stages before it folds into reading and writing:

1. Stage 0 – Pre-literacy

   Right-to-left orientation, and the Arabic sounds that have no English equivalent

2. Stage 1 Letters

   All 28 letters, their sounds, and the dots that tell similar shapes apart

3. Stage 2 Joining

   How letters change shape depending on where they sit in a word

4. Stage 3 Vowels & fluency

   Short vowels, and reading vowelled text with confidence

5. Stage 4 Independence

   Reading unvowelled text — the point at which real Arabic opens up

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• How a child moves up a level

  Every level is made of clear “I can” statements — for example, “I can understand simple instructions from my teacher”, or “I can read a short vowelled sentence aloud”. There are 99 of them across the framework. Your child’s tutor marks these off as they are achieved, in the lesson report after each lesson. When a child has achieved around 80% of the statements in a skill, that skill becomes eligible for a level-up.

• A teacher then confirms it. Always.

  Progress is never awarded automatically by software. A qualified human being who has taught your child decides that they have moved up.

  We believe that is worth more to a parent than any algorithm — and it is the reason an Arabibi level means something.

• Ages and stages

  Arabibi is built first for heritage children of roughly 6 to 14, and the framework is designed around how that age learns. We also teach teenagers and adults — the same five skills, the same levels, the same dual-strand approach, with content chosen to suit the learner.

  We also teach teenagers and adults — the same five skills, the same levels, the same dual-strand approach, with content chosen to suit the learner.

• Where we are honest with you

  The Arabibi Framework is version 1.0. It is anchored to an internationally recognised scale, it is built on an explicit and defensible position on Arabic's diglossia, and it is designed from the ground up to be validated by specialists and to support accreditation in future.

  That validation is work we are doing now, not a claim we are making today. When it is complete, we will say so here.