Read Sesame
This is an interactive multimedia teaching software that helps the user to learn how to read Arabic, available on a CD ROM	Horizons Innovations

Introduction

Approach

Teaching Tools

The Interface

Fun Elements

Five Steps To Learn Arabic

Introduction

Read SESAME exploits the fact that Arabic words can be easily divided into doubtless phonetic sections. Take this example from English, the letters "ough" that you can find in the following words: Though, Cough, Thorough, Thought, Rough and Through. Notice that the "ough" sound, which is spelled the same in each of these words, is pronounced differently in every one of them. That is never the case in Arabic.

Arabic alphabet is composed of 28 letters; any letter in a word is attached with a diacritic or connected with a vowel letter. Read SESAME introduces the three basic diacritics: Fat'ha, Damma and Kasra, and the three vowels: Alif, Waow, and Ya. Every letter is pronounced slightly different depending on the diacritic attached to it or the vowel connected with it. Thus, six different sounds are associated with every letter, three short (corresponding to the diacritics) and three long (corresponding to the vowels).

Approach

Read SESAME will teach you all Arabic letters and the six sounds associated with every one of them; it will teach you the different shapes of every letter; then it will help you to divide any word into segments corresponding to phonetic sounds that you already know, and thus you will be able to read most Arabic words.

To achieve its objective Read SESAME implements the Trial and Error techniques. Is your answer correct? "Good going", and the clowns' parade will start running, otherwise "oh'uh" and the spot corresponding to the correct answer will blink.
Anyone can use Read SESAME to learn reading Arabic, yet it is specially designed for young users. The music, the colors, the scenes, the pictures, and the indicative voice expressions, all, make using Read SESAME an enjoyable experience.

Read SESAME is designed in a course fashion. Its material is usually given to native Arab students from K - 2.

Teaching Tools

• Trial and Error techniques.
• Prints four types of take home booklets.
• Customizable exercises.
• Customizable program response to user answers.
• Customizable quizzes and automatic generation of reports.

Interface

• Colorful scenes from the famous 1001 Arabian nights.
• Extremely easy to use. Keyboard can be detached.
• Voice instructions.
• Bilingual interface: American and Arabic.
• Interactive.

Fun Elements

• Many melodies and 52 musical instruments.
• Clowns' Parade: select from 5 different animated parades.
• Sound effects.

Five Steps To Learn Arabic

Read SESAME teaches you how to read Arabic in five levels:

1. Meet Genie, who will get you acquainted with Arabic through his magic talking book.
2. Learn the basic shape of each letter and how it sounds with the three basic diacritics.
3. Learn how each letter sounds with the three vowel letters. By the end of this level you will know six sounds for all Arabic letters.
4. Learn the different shapes of every letter and how to trace their basic shapes.
5. Learn how to read words by segmenting them to basic phonetic sections.