Arabic — From the lectures

This page keeps the parts of the recorded lectures that sit outside the grammar/vocab syllabus — background stories, the teachers' motivation and teaching method, course-admin asides, and the reading-passage & comprehension exercises — so nothing the Sheikhs said is lost. The exam tests grammar & vocabulary (verb-choice, odd-one-out, question words, error-correction, add-2-words), not these asides; the exam-relevant depth — decision rules, lecturer example sentences, extra vocab — lives in each lesson's 📹 Lecture tab. Arabic was co-taught: Sheikh Riyas took the odd units (1, 3, 5, 7) and Sheikh Irfan the even units (2, 4, 6, 8), plus one Ṣarf-revision session by Sheikh Akram. Tag ▶ §m = section m of that video; Vnn is the chronological sequence index across the whole course (the gaps in each lecturer's run are the other lecturer's videos).

Sheikh Riyas odd units 1 · 3 · 5 · 7, plus reading & revision sessions

V01 Unit 1 (Greetings) — reading a story to learn verbs

Method opener: the unit is launched by reading a short story to feel out past-vs-present verbs (faʿala / yafʿalu) before any rule is stated — story first, grammar after. ▶ §1
Demonstratives هذا / هذه are introduced in passing inside the reading. Otherwise a vocabulary/reading warm-up — little outside the syllabus. ▶ §1

V02 Unit 1 (Greetings) — demonstratives & gender

Use مَن for people, ما for things (ʿāqil vs non-ʿāqil): man hādhā? = "who is this?" for a person. ▶ §72–§73
Yes/no answers begin with naʿam or lā: hal hādhā qalamun? → naʿam… / lā, hādhā daftarun. ▶ §69–§71
Mostly demonstrative drills (هذا / هذه, tāʾ marbūṭah → feminine) + WhatsApp-correction logistics and "write it repeatedly" homework. ▶ §44–§47, §74–§79

V03 Unit 1 (Greetings) — the question word كم

صورة (ṣūrah) = picture / image / form — a vocabulary aside. ▶ §7
Gender doubt with هذا vs هذه: how to pick the demonstrative from the noun's gender. ▶ §14
Closes with a repeated-reading method note and number-practice 1–10 homework to WhatsApp in for marking. ▶ §11–§13, §15–§17

V08 Unit 3 (Housing) — the verb سَكَنَ & residence vocab

Feminine names end in ة: Fāṭimah, Khadījah, Ruqayyah — the tāʾ marbūṭah marks them feminine. ▶ §49
The adjective follows & agrees with its noun: شَقّة (f) → جَميلة (f); a masculine noun → جَميل. ▶ §77–§80
The bulk of the session is the سكن conjugation, the tenant/landlord dialogue, and homework — taught content, not digression. ▶ §3–§24, §32–§57

V10 Unit 3 (Housing) — drills & matching

Mostly drills: relative vs interrogative ما, the verb urīdu ("I want"), room/furniture vocab, and matching exercises (including a long silent/garbled stretch the transcript could not recover). Little outside the syllabus. ▶ §35, §42, §60–§61

V11 Unit 3 (Housing) — "I want…" + composition

A grammar-and-practice session: urīdu + accusative object + adjective agreement, كم + singular accusative, then a house-composition and handwriting exercise. Mostly drills; little background material. ▶ §20

V12 Reading — Aḥmad's family at home

A free-standing reading session (not tied to a unit): the "Aḥmad's family at home" passage, harvesting place words, motion verbs and Unit-2/4 family vocabulary from context. Read for vocabulary; nothing tested beyond the words themselves. ▶ §1

V14 Reading — "Muḥammad the student" (Story 2)

The "Story 2" reading session: "Muḥammad the student" — new vocabulary, verbs of motion, and a morning-routine passage worked through line-by-line. A reading interlude between the grammar units. ▶ §1

V17 Reading — graded passages (al-ʿArabiyyah li-n-Nāshiʾīn)

Reading from al-ʿArabiyyah li-n-Nāshiʾīn: a boy who needs a bicycle, and an Indonesian student at Madīnah — used to drill vocabulary and prepositions. A reading-practice session, not unit-anchored. ▶ §1

V18 Revision test before Unit 5 (Units 1–4)

Course-meta: a short revision ikhtibār over the four studied units before starting Unit 5. ▶ §2
Exam-format walk-through: a number/letter matching task; "pick the suitable word for each category" (munāsib — write only its number); and a read-the-paragraph + 7 true/false comprehension item. ▶ §6, §12, §14
How to judge an item right/wrong from the text; stating your age — tens (ʿishrūn / thalāthūn) + ones, e.g. sittah wa-ʿishrūn sanah (digits acceptable); and the pair تُحِبُّ "you like" → أُحِبُّ "I like." ▶ §15–§16, §19, §21

V22 Unit 5 (Food & Drink) — vocabulary & meals

طلب root aside: yaṭlubu / ṭalaba = to request/order; طالِب (student) = "one who seeks." ▶ §111–§112
آخَر (ākhar) = another / other; اليَوم الآخِر = "the Last Day." ▶ §129–§132
The session is dense food/drink vocab + a man yaʾkulu / mā tashrabu dialogue; a TOEFL-exam plug and scheduling chatter sit alongside it. ▶ §1–§15

V23 Reading — "Reema and the Three Bears"

A graded-reader story session: ريما والدببة الثلاثة ("Reema and the Three Bears") — used to drill adjectives, verbs of motion/sitting, and prepositions. A story interlude; read for the vocabulary, not for the exam. ▶ §1

V24 Unit 5 (Food & Drink) — the dual & the prohibition لا

A grammar-led food/drink session: the dual, the imperative, and the prohibitive لا الناهية ("don't…"). Mostly drills; little outside the syllabus beyond the worked examples. ▶ §1

V25 Unit 5 (Food & Drink) — sentence structures & negative commands

تركيب (tarkīb) = a sentence pattern/structure — these are finite in number, unlike the unlimited sentences (jumal) you can build from them. ▶ §2–§3
In ordinary speech the full case-endings are simplified (al-māʾidah, not al-māʾidatu). ▶ §15
Preposition contrast بـ ≠ مِن: mādhā taʾkulu bi-l-ghadāʾ? uses بـ, but mādhā taṭlubu min aṭ-ṭaʿām? uses مِن. ▶ §18–§19, §49
Worked prohibition pairs (lā taʾkuli ṭ-ṭaʿām, lā taghsilī l-malābis…); and a modern aside: ذكيّ = clever → هاتف ذكيّ = "smart phone." ▶ §33–§43, §75–§77

V26 Unit 5 (Food & Drink) — pronoun & listening drills

Pronoun (ḍamāʾir) drills plus reading-and-listening matching practice. Mostly drills; the proper name Zaynab and several example sentences are flagged in the transcript as ASR-garbled. Little outside the syllabus. ▶ §1

V27 Unit 5 (Food & Drink) — sentence-building

Food, drink & sentence-building: verbs, question words and matching exercises — the lecturer running the very odd-one-out / fill-in task-types the exam uses. Mostly drills; no real outside-the-syllabus material. ▶ §1

V33 Unit 7 (Study) — root د-ر-س & classroom words

Teaching method, stated plainly: learn the unit through its ʿibārāt (usage sentences); grasp whole sentences in context — e.g. unẓur ilā al-lawḥah — before the grammar; every lesson opens with a ḥiwār (dialogue). ▶ §4–§8
Words with a second sense: مادّة = subject (academic) and matter / raw material (science); جَدوَل = timetable and a brook / water-channel; لَوح / لَوحة = board, as in اللَّوح المَحفوظ "the Preserved Tablet." ▶ §15–§16, §18, §41
Culture note on صَفّ: Arabs (and Sri Lankan Muslims) use it for a classroom, a prayer-row, and the rows at a wedding — many such words are borrowed from Arabic; فَصْل is the technically-distinct "class." ▶ §24–§26
Knowledge words: عِلم covers study/knowledge — ʿilm as-siyāsah (political science), ʿilm al-ijtimāʿ (sociology), ʿulūm al-Qurʾān; ثَقافة = culture/cultivation → muthaqqaf "an educated man," and the school subject al-thaqāfah al-islāmiyyah bundles tajwīd, Qurʾān and ḥadīth. ▶ §28–§29, §32–§35
Book aside: Ibn Kathīr's history البِداية والنِّهاية ("The Beginning and the End"), spanning creation to the sīrah. ▶ §42–§48
Naming culture: Arabs give masculine-form maṣdar words as girls' names — Ilhām, Inṣāf, Ikrām (a maṣdar is a verbal noun: alhama → ilhām, akrama → ikrām). ▶ §69–§74
Hadith aside while glossing العامّ vs الخاصّ (general / particular) and al-mudīr al-ʿāmm "general director": الدِّينُ النَّصيحة ("religion is sincere counsel," Tamīm ad-Dārī). ▶ §75–§78
Schooling & civics: the College / A-Level contrast (al-thānawiyyah = secondary); تَربية = education/upbringing → وِزارة التَّربية "Ministry of Education"; Hijri months Muḥarram → Dhū al-Ḥijjah listed; exam months Shaʿbān / Ramaḍān. ▶ §59, §84, §91–§93

V34 Unit 7 (Study) — the third dialogue & كان

نِهاية = the end — Ibn Kathīr's البِداية والنِّهاية recalled again, with a note of what the book covers. ▶ §10–§11
Two senses of حِصّة: a school period and ḥiṣṣah min al-māl = a share of wealth. ▶ §14
Sisters of كان: amsā "became (in the evening)," aḍḥā "became (in the forenoon)," bāta "spent the night" — the kāna-family verbs that double as time-of-day markers. ▶ §73

V35 Unit 7 (Study) — 2nd-person verbs & the imperative

"Just a grammar example, not an endorsement": the form ishrab al-khamr is used only to illustrate the imperative. ▶ §25
Verb-form realism: only about four verb patterns are in common use; Form III means "two parties acting together" — dārasa = to study jointly → mudārasah, like jāhada "he strove." ▶ §36, §38–§39

V36 Unit 7 (Study) — "Najaḥa Ṣādiq" + counting nouns

Example-sentence aside: "I took my son to the mosque" — a person vs a thing as the object. ▶ §16
وَسَط (wasaṭ) = middle, and by extension "balanced / moderate." ▶ §31

Sheikh Irfan even units 2 · 4 · 6 · 8, plus revision, exam-prep & closing reading sessions

V04 Unit 2 (Family) — kinship vocab & the family tree

Seerah aside: the Prophet's ﷺ family tree is drawn out — ʿAbdullāh, Āminah, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, al-ʿAbbās, Ḥamzah, Abū Ṭālib, Ṣafiyyah, and the daughters Fāṭimah / Ruqayyah / Zaynab / Umm Kulthūm — to practise the kinship words on real people. ▶ §26, §30–§36
ما هذا (what is this — things) vs مَن هذا (who is this — people), with the mā shāʾ Allāh blessing dropped in as etiquette. ▶ §6

V05 Unit 2 (Family) — the third dialogue (a dawn scene)

The family unit's third dialogue is a Fajr-time scene (wuḍūʾ, the muṣallā, going to the masjid) — which is why prayer vocabulary appears here even though it is still Unit 2 (Family), not the Prayer unit. ▶ §1
Otherwise drills on the demonstratives and the al- / tanwīn (definite vs indefinite) distinction. Mostly drills; little outside the syllabus. ▶ §1

V06 Unit 2 (Family) — Q&A & turning past→present

Ṣarf aside: the three past-verb weights faʿala / faʿila / faʿula, and turning past into present with the يـ / تـ prefixes (ḍaraba → yaḍribu). ▶ §34–§42
Answering a مَن question extends naturally: relationship → name → profession — hādhā wālidī, huwa muhandisun. ▶ §44–§55
Pronunciation note: full ending Saʿīdatun vs the pausal Saʿīdah (the tāʾ marbūṭah). The full مَن-set is run through: man hādhā / hādhihi / anta / anti / huwa / hiya. ▶ §78, §80

V07 Unit 2→ — picture-based Q&A

Picture exercises: building ayna X? → huwa fī al-Y across six pictures (manager/office, student/class, son/playground, grandfather/house, mother/room, father/masjid), then the feminine set (the answer shifting هو → هي). ▶ §7–§12, §14, §26–§32
Grammar aside: مُصَلَّى (muṣallā, a maqṣūr noun) takes no kasrah — its ending is invariable. ▶ §20
Feminine verbs in the answers — tudarris / tufakkir / taṭbukh. ▶ §35–§40

V09 Unit 2 (Family) — possessive suffixes + a self-test

The possessive-suffix system in the muḍāf (genitive) state: ـي (my) / ـكَ (your m) / ـكِ (your f) / ـهُ (his) / ـها (her). ▶ §41–§71
Style note: don't double the pronoun — hādhā ibnī, huwa ṭālib (not wa-huwa). ▶ §36
A Seerah-flavoured drill item — man wālidu Rasūlillāh ﷺ? → ʿAbdullāh (مَن for a person) — and the unit closes with a 40-mark self-test on Units 1–2. ▶ §27–§40, §100

V13 Unit 4 (Daily Life) — the morning-routine dialogue

The first daily-life dialogue worked through in full — wake / pray Fajr / recite Qurʾān / go to school by bus — then read line-by-line with a picture vocab list. ▶ §13–§23
"Yourself" questions: many sample answers about one's own day (riyāḍah sport, ʿamal work, ḥadīqah garden, ṭabkh cooking, jarīdah newspaper). ▶ §35–§47

V15 Unit 4 (Daily Life) — the second dialogue & the future

كم (kam) = "how many" asks for a count, answered with a number — kam afrād al-usrah? → thamāniyah — and the answer is a nominal sentence (jumlah ismiyyah). ▶ §95–§102
The household-chores dialogue, the future سَـ / سوف, and the jumlah ismiyyah vs fiʿliyyah / fāʿil vs mafʿūl contrast are taught content. Mostly drills otherwise. ▶ §1

V16 Unit 4 (Daily Life) — the third dialogue

Vocab pair: مُبَكِّر (mubakkir, early) vs مُتَأخِّر (mutaʾakhkhir, late), from the roots bakkara / taʾakhkhara. ▶ §10, §18–§23
The rest is grammar: ism nakirah vs maʿrifah, the sun letters, the three case-endings, and the dual verb yuṣalliyāni. Mostly drills; little outside the syllabus. ▶ §1

V19 Unit 4→ — telling time & full conjugation

Telling the time (feminine ordinals) and the full conjugation of a sound verb across all 14 persons — past then mapped to present, with weak verbs set aside. A drill-heavy session with WhatsApp practice; little background material. ▶ §1

V20 Unit 4 (+ prayer patterns) — Ṣarf revision

Tense sense: a habitual action is stated with the simple present — "I go to work at 8 in the morning." ▶ §46
Otherwise a continuation of V19's conjugation drill (mādhā tafʿalu / tafʿalīna, the future sa-, matā + time, ayna tuṣallī + place over the five prayers). Mostly revision drills. ▶ §1

V28 Unit 6 (Prayer) — the first dialogue & deriving the imperative

Course-meta: Unit 5 (food/drink) is finished; Unit 6 is الصَّلاة — prayer as ʿibādah — and is taught by reading its dialogues first. ▶ §2–§3
Real-life framing: the dialogue is offered as a true-to-life model (oversleeping → give a reason → put the alarm by your side). ▶ §33
The grammar workshop on deriving the imperative across 3/4/5/6-letter verbs notes several exceptional / deferred cases in passing — weak-letter-ending verbs (the weak letter drops), the doubled verb istatabba → yastatibbu, and the same drop-rule across the 5- and 6-letter patterns. ▶ §49, §64–§66

V29 Unit 6 (Prayer) — dialogues 2 & 3

Comprehension method: a question may be answered with a direct answer or a full sentence — and the word order can vary (ʿIṣāmٌ yusāfiru… or yusāfiru ʿIṣāmٌ…). ▶ §23–§24
Place note: the Masjid al-Ḥarām has the Kaʿbah; ayna l-masjid al-ḥarām? → fī Makkah. ▶ §21
Exercises preserved as background: ordering the five prayers, an odd-one-out set (ʿāfin vs verbs; Makkah vs countries; ṣalāh vs foods), picture-matching the adjectives marīḍ / qarīb / baʿīd / kaslān, and an ordinals / family-ordering drill. ▶ §46–§55
Course-meta: a 20-mark mid-semester mock is announced. ▶ §57

V30 Unit 6 (Prayer) — the six sentence patterns

This session summarises the Prayer unit's sentence patterns — the question pattern, the answer pattern, and the rest, taught so you can tell a question from its answer. ▶ §17, §27
Creative drills preserved as background: build a dialogue from two picture-cards (e.g. al-ʿaṣr + al-bayt); "shall we both go to the mosque?"; and expanding two sentences into a whole paragraph from a single picture (at-tahajjud fī l-ḥammām … uṣallī al-Fajr fī l-masjid). ▶ §49, §52, §58–§59, §65–§66

V31 Units 5–6(–7) revision — the exam-drill session

Answer-style coaching: a naʿam / lā answer is best given with a reason (sabab), but the reason is optional; answer in your own words. ▶ §9–§10
Reading models — the Salmān paragraph: from Turkey, travelling to Makkah, prays the five prayers in al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, and Jumuʿah in al-Masjid an-Nabawī — followed by comprehension Q&A (min ayyi balad / ayna yusāfiru / limādhā / matā → yawma-l-khamīs). ▶ §24–§37
The Ṭāriq paragraph (Ẓuhr/ʿAṣr in Masjid ʿUthmān, Fajr in Masjid Bilāl, alarm beside him) + six true/false items on it. ▶ §39–§48
Exam-format meta: Section 1 = al-mufradāt — ṣil bayna-l-kalimāt (match the columns); the matched/opposite pairs ṭaʿām↔sharāb, naḥīf↔samīn, shāy↔qahwah, laḥm↔dajāj, qalīl↔kathīr, qarīb↔baʿīd; and odd-one-out items (adhān among prayer-times; māʾidah, a noun, among the adjectives jawʿān/kaslān/marīḍ; munabbih among place-names). ▶ §51–§64
The Muḥammad-from-Egypt paragraph + true/false (he travels to Makkah & Madīnah, alone — bi-mufradihi); and the announcement of a Units-5–6(–7) Google-form mini-test. ▶ §50, §81–§87

V32 Practice-paper logistics (almost entirely admin)

Paper logistics: "do the paper and send it to me; I'll correct it and send it back; we'll review the answers next class." This session is almost entirely administrative — it walks through the five practice-exam question types (verb-fill, odd-one-out, question-word, error-correct, add-words) and little else. ▶ §22

V37 Unit 8 (Work) — the first dialogue

Setting: item 1 is a ḥiwār between ʿUthmān & ʿAlī; the second dialogue is set in a classroom among students (aṭ-ṭālib al-awwal…). ▶ §2, §77
Background vocab/grammar from the work dialogue (workplace + hours, aʿmalu ṭabīban "I work as a doctor," the dual humā, the sa-aʿmalu future + professions) is preserved here; the exam-relevant كم and question-word rules live in the Lesson 1 Lecture tab. ▶ §4–§7, §72–§91

V38 Unit 8 (Work) — professions by root & school stages

Professions built from their roots (preserved as background): صَيدَلة pharmacy → ṣaydaliyy pharmacist; the م-ر-ض nursing cluster (tamrīḍ / mumarriḍ / maraḍ / marīḍ / saqam); هندسة → muhandis; the ط-ي-ر aviation cluster (ṭāra / ṭayarān / ṭayyār / ṭāʾirah); the agent-noun al-murabbī educator; and مِهنة = profession, with synonyms ḥirfah and waẓīfah. ▶ §4–§7, §10, §13
The feminine "do you have children / do you love your work?" dialogue (hal laki aṭfāl? / hal tuḥibbīna ʿamalaki?, with ayḍan "also"), the faculty list, and the note that the clock is deferred to a later session. ▶ §15, §20–§23, §28, §30

V39 Unit 8 (Work) — telling the time & fronted possession

Telling the time, kam sāʿatan taʿmal, fronted laka / lī possession (kam ṭiflan laka, laysa lī), and reordering jumbled sentences. A drill-heavy work session; little outside the syllabus. ▶ §1

V40 Unit 8 (Work) — building a paragraph from pictures

Method note: don't fuss over the ḥarakāt yet — get the words right first. ▶ §13
The drill is building a paragraph from picture word-groups (doctor / engineer / pharmacist / teacher) and a 13-question Q&A, including a male vs female version (Fāṭimah's day) — "state your role first." Mostly drills. ▶ §26, §34

V41 Units 6–8 — workbook / exam review

Exam-format meta, preserved as background: column-matching (iḍāfah-pairing, e.g. shahru Ramaḍān, al-yawmu d-dirāsī); a "vocabulary-power" drill — write each word with no spelling mistake; reassembling a word from broken letters (aṭwāl, tadrīb, tarbiyah, ṣaydaliyyah, ibtidāʾiyyah); and an add-two-words-to-a-group task (to mihnah → professions; to kulliyyah → faculties). ▶ §3–§4, §7–§8, §17, §23–§27, §30–§35
Reading-comprehension passages: Ḥassān & Aḥmad's housing (man yaskunu fī ḥayyi l-jāmiʿah?) and ʿUthmān's four daily meals (breakfast 6 am, lunch 1 pm, dinner 7 pm, plus a snack after breakfast and before lunch — fish/meat, sweets, tea then coffee), with a "which-sentence-matches-the-paragraph" task. ▶ §52–§74
Plan: a model exam combining Units 7–8, then a whole Units-1-to-8 model paper, then 2–3 mock papers to self-correct. ▶ §75–§76

V42 Reading — "fī l-Madīnah" & the three senses of رأى

The three meanings of رأى (raʾā), taught from the reading passage: (1) to see with the eyes; (2) to see in a dream; (3) to hold an opinion. ▶ §13–§14
Dream sense, with two Qurʾānic illustrations: Yūsuf ﷺ — إِنِّي رَأَيْتُ أَحَدَ عَشَرَ كَوْكَبًا ("I saw [in a dream] eleven stars … prostrating to me"); and Ibrāhīm ﷺ — إِنِّي أَرَى فِي الْمَنَامِ أَنِّي أَذْبَحُكَ ("I have seen in a dream that I am sacrificing you"). ▶ §15–§17
Opinion sense: mā raʾyuka fīhimā? = "what is your opinion of the two?"; from it comes رَأي (raʾy) = opinion — the same word used in fiqh (considered opinion). ▶ §18–§22
Qurʾānic aside on "buy / sell": لِيَشْتَرُوا بِهِ ثَمَنًا قَلِيلًا (Sūrat al-Baqarah) — فَوَيْلٌ لَهُمْ "woe to them" who wrote falsehood, claimed it was from Allah, and sold His words for a paltry price; the verb sharā can mean both buy and sell. ▶ §36–§41
The second dialogue (the doorbell, "is your father in?", mashghūl "busy," the kitchen, the juice from the fridge) is a vocabulary reading. ▶ §57–§75

V44 Revision (all 8 units) — reading + sentence grammar

Two reading passages: ʿAbdullāh's Friday (his Jumuʿah morning and the rest of the day), and Bashīr, who wants to be a doctor — he studies Arabic so he can study at the Arabic university, and his friend writes from Kuwait wishing he could come and study there. ▶ §4–§21
Grammar revision before the physical class: fiʿl / fāʿil / mafʿūl bihi (object takes fatḥah, subject takes ḍammah), and jumla fiʿliyya vs jumla ismiyya (mubtadaʾ – khabar), with care over word order and case-endings. ▶ §22–§40
The semester's closing aim, stated by the Sheikh: to be able to read the Qurʾān with understanding — that is the point of the case-endings and the sentence grammar. ▶ §41–§42

Sheikh Akram a one-off Ṣarf (morphology) revision session

V21 Ṣarf revision — conjugating the verb across the pronouns

A stand-alone morphology (Ṣarf) revision: forming the present from the past, and conjugating kataba ("he wrote"), dhahaba ("he went") and the Qurʾānic naṣara ("he helped") across all the pronouns. ▶ §3, §28, §39, §42
Method notes: the middle-letter vowel (fatḥah / kasrah / ḍammah) of the present must simply be memorised — it cannot be predicted; the last letter takes ḍammah, so the middle vowel is the only variable. ▶ §6–§7, §10
Study aid: a colour key — red = masculine, black = feminine — runs through the pronoun table, with "fill in the table yourself" and "practise these verbs at home" as the homework. Mostly drills; little outside the syllabus. ▶ §19, §21, §58

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