Learning the Arabic Alphabet 1: Resources and Reference Material

My first goal in learning Arabic was to be able to read and say all the letters.  I began by searching google and YouTube for reference material, looking for a good chart of the alphabet, as well as an alphabet song or video on reciting the alphabet.  Then I would learn to say and write a few words, to help the alphabet sink in and start to build a vocabulary.

What stuck with me is printout of the following chart:

This chart only shows the Isolated form of each letter, comparable to the "capital" form of each letter in English.  I quickly learned that it would be useful to have on hand a chart showing the Initial, Medial, and Final forms of letters as well.  I printed the following chart out on the back of the one above, which allowed me to recognise and read each letter of each Arabic word I ran across, even if I still couldn't understand them!:

These are the two reference papers that have stuck with me.  Several videos and self-tailored exercises also helped me to quickly memorize and be able to clearly hear, recognise and pronounce these letters.  I will look at the best of these videos in my next post:  Learning the Arabic Alphabet 2: Reference Videos