The method

How the course works

This is a reading course. It is designed with the assumption that you, the learner, is already familiar with most of the words you will encounter. It is not necessary to already speak the language, but it may not be the most efficient use of your time if you are aiming to communicate. If you are looking to learn Punjabi, this is an option, but it will not give you any help beyond reading the alphabet.

Gurmukhi is broken into 12 manageable chunks of 4-5 characters and matras (vowels that attach to the consonants). These are combined with a few different revision activities. The course runs on the following.

Firstly, each character is introduced and you are given an example of the sound in a common Punjabi word. We do include a word from English too, with either the same sound or how to modify a sound in English.

You will then be given examples of the characters in words and, if relevant, a description of how the sounds form together. This is important for the matras and how Punjabi uses inherent vowels with the consonants. You are then quizzed on the characters you have just learnt, and how they combine with the matra. After that, you will unlock a pack of vocabulary you will need to read with your new sounds and the previous characters you have already learnt. These words will likely already be familiar to you and help you match Gurmukhi to your vocabulary.

Each lesson ends with a quick test. It is mostly words you have seen before, with some new ones thrown in too. It will be mostly words from that lesson, but some from previous lessons thrown in too. You need 90% to unlock the next set of characters. If you get less than 90%, it is really recommended you wait a minimum of an hour before you reattempt the test. It would be best to give it a day, do some of the revision exercises, then reattempt. The difficulty of these lessons is fairly low, but the difficulty can become cumulative. Every set of characters we introduce assumes you can easily identify the previous characters. If you progress before you have a decent grasp of the previous characters, instead of only have maybe 4 new things to remember or use each lesson, you will have 5, then 8 then 10. Each set will take longer and longer to memorise. It is better to be able to recognise each character quickly before moving on.

There are a few ways to practise your reading.

The first is just a quick general practice. This grabs 25 vocabulary words at random from your completed lessons. It will take about 2 minutes so if you want to get another point of exposure to help cement the characters in your memory a bit faster, this is a great way to do that. This is unlikely to help you progress through the course faster, but will help your speed and fluency of reading in the medium term, it will also lock them in your memory for longer.

The second is a targeted set of revision. This is where you select some of the characters you are struggling to remember and it will give you a set of flashcards with just those ones. This will be particularly helpful for characters that start to look very similar to each other like p, kh, dh if you cannot seem to get them to stick. This could be anywhere from 2 minutes, to 10 minutes depending on how many characters you pick and if you are writing them down to help remember them.

The final one is a full targeted revision. This one is good if you have had a month or two away from the course and need to know what your points of revision need to be. It will test every character and matra then generate a flashcard set for those you get wrong. It will also save those flashcards so if you want to revise them again tomorrow, you do not have to redo that first revision set.

After you get to the unit’s test, you will have the option to add vocabulary words you might not know to a flashcard system to learn the meaning. This allows you to practice not just the sounds of the word, but learn what it translates to as well. This is a space repetition system, so will appear 12 hours, 24 hours, 3 days, 7 days, 2 weeks, a month, then 3 months each time you get it right. This system works best when you do it daily, it is recommended you try not to add more than 10 words at a time. This tends to start to get to the point where it starts to overwhelm your short term memory. Adding more than that once a week is fine, but if you are adding 15 a day for a week, you will find there will be an increasingly low accuracy rate for your cards.

It would be great to get feedback for this section! If you were wanting vocabulary packs to help expand your vocabulary, please contact us! It is something that is being considered.

It will not make you fluent. It will not teach you grammar. It will not teach you to hold a conversation. If you cannot already speak or understand a reasonable amount of Punjabi, you can still learn the letters here, but the word choice will not be beneficial for your progression in learning the language.

It is also enough to get you starting to write, but this is something you will need to find time to regularly practice on your own to reinforce and build that skill. If you complete the course, do nothing with your reading, after 12 months you will likely find you will make frequent errors, need a lot of processing time, and the difficulty will be too great to utilise consistently.