Sample Concepts That Can Be Taught Through Copywork

When Letters are being copied

·         Uppercase vs. lowercase

·         Vowels vs. consonants

·         Locate the letters being copied in words

·         Dictation of the letters

·         Sounds of the letters

 

When words are being copied

·         Uppercase vs. lowercase

·         Number of letters in the words

·         How many vowels/consonants are in the words/identify them

·         Dictation of the words

·         Spelling

·         Meaning/Words that are alike in meaning (synonyms)

·         Capitalization of proper nouns

·         Part of speech (for older students)

·         Pronunciation (make sure student can correctly pronounce the words)

 

When sentences are being copied

·         Capitalization of beginning of sentence and proper nouns

·         Spacing between words

·         Punctuation

·         Alphabetizing

·         Number of words in the sentence

·         Changing statements to questions and questions to statements. (not for Quraan)

·         Parts of speech; identify the parts of speech of each word in the sentence (older students) or simply work on one particular part of speech.

·         Dictation of a sentence

·         Meaning (choose a word from passage, have student define or pick out definition (as used in context) from a group of words.

·         Word choice: Words that are alike in meaning (synonyms); antonyms; lively verbs

·         Titles

·         Abbreviations

·         Plurals

·         Verb tense

·         Transitive/Intransitive verbs

·         Passive sentences vs. Active sentences

·         Pronunciation (make sure student can correctly pronounce the words)

·         Repeated reading to increase reading fluency.

 

 

 

When passages are being copied

 

·         All of the above concepts under sentences

·         Paragraphs (indenting, sentences are not written on separate lines, main idea).

·         Comprehension questions (multiple choice, true false, explain)

·         Cloze exercises. The copywork sample has words missing, fill them in.

·         Point of view

·         Chain of narrations

·         Discussion

·         Sequencing of events

·         Affixes

·         Practice finding ayaat in the mushaf or the hadith in the book used

·         Hifz (memorization)

·         Repeated reading to increase reading fluency.

·         Setting (some hadith might be descriptive in where events took place for example)

·         Composition. Write an essay on the topic of the copywork.

·         Translating between Arabic and English text

 

 

 

If you would like to incorporate dictation into your copywork exercises, I highly recommend this site for tips on using dictation: http://draft.eca.state.gov/education/engteaching/dictatn.htm