“Ultimately, they would like to work out how to teach Arabic reading better to children, including helping them to tell letters apart and how to remember which sound goes with which letter.”
Why? Immersion in arabic shuts down the right hemisphere and renders it unusable after a time. It causes permanent brain damage.
Just look at obama. That is why clerics must learn the koran in the original arabic and they are incapable of logic or abstract thinking and have no sense of chronology.
The Koran is one of the few documents that is written with full vowel marks throughout. The makes it a good text for a beginner to read. Too bad it is loaded with vile content.
I have a 1588 translation of the bible in Welsh. It was the source document that the Welsh used to preserve their language as the English sought to suppress it. They were forced to work 6 days a week, leaving only Sunday for worship and preserving their language. That was the origin of "Sunday School" in the Christian churches. I find it instructive an interesting to compare a King James translation side by side with the 1588 Welsh version that predates it. My next best "side by side" is a Harry Potter book. Even with my feeble command of Welsh I can see differences in wording in the Welsh Harry Potter book.