Read as far as you can, then stop.

Where you start

Lesson one, the letters.

You start exactly where the class opens — twenty-eight letters, what each one sounds like, and where in the mouth it is made. This is the most common answer we get and it is nothing to be uncomfortable about. Most adults in this position have prayed for years, correctly, from sound and memory. That is not a failure to fix; it is a stage nobody ever moved you past.

Roughly where this lands you: stage 01 of the path, from the first session.

Where you start

Lesson one briefly, then joining.

You know the letters standing alone, which is further than you think. What is missing is the thing that turns letters into reading: a letter changes shape depending on where it sits in a word, and until that clicks, a familiar letter in an unfamiliar position looks like a stranger.

Roughly where this lands you: the back half of stage 01 and into stage 02.

Where you start

Finishing the qāʿidah, then reading.

You can decode words, and a full line is still too much at once. That usually means one of the marks is not automatic yet — sukūn, shaddah, tanwīn or the long vowels — so every few words you have to stop and work it out. The fix is not more effort, it is the last third of the qāʿidah, and then reading out loud with someone correcting you.

Roughly where this lands you: the end of stage 02, moving into stage 03.

Where you start

Reading fluency.

You read what you know and slow down on what you do not, which means the decoding works and the fluency has not been built yet. That is a practice problem, not a knowledge problem, and it is the fastest stage to move through — it needs unfamiliar text, out loud, every week, with someone stopping you at the right moments.

Roughly where this lands you: stage 03, and stage 04 sooner than most.

Where you start

Juz ʿAmma, with tajwīd.

You can read. What you have not been taught is what the marks oblige you to do — and that last step is the one most adults never get, because it is the point at which most classes assume you learned it as a child.

For the record, the answer to step five is that the nūn is pronounced clearly, because the letter after it is made in the throat. That is one of four things that can happen to that nūn, and knowing which is which is most of what stage 04 is.

Roughly where this lands you: stage 04 — the thirtieth juz, read properly.

Where you start

Past the reading. Which is where the other half begins.

You read fluently and you know what the marks oblige you to do. That means the reading track has nothing left to teach you — and it also means you are exactly who the rest of this program is for.

Reading Juz ʿAmma well and carrying it in your chest are two different things. So is knowing a rule and applying it without thinking at speed. Both of those are their own work, and neither of them is what the qāʿidah was ever for.

• Tajwīd properly, as its own study — the rules learned and drilled rather than recited about, with someone listening to whether you actually apply them
• Memorising Juz ʿAmma — the thirtieth juz committed properly, with the tajwīd holding while you recite from memory, which is where most people's falls apart

Both are being formed now alongside the reading cohorts. Say on the form that you read already and you will be placed against those rather than against the letters — and if after a call the honest answer is that you need a ḥifẓ circle for the whole muṣḥaf or a teacher working toward an ijāzah, you will be told that and pointed there instead.