5 Quick and effective way to improve your recitation fluency

In this article you’re about to learn the quickest, most effective ways to increase your fluency in reading the Quran in Arabic as suggested by Productive Muslim. By following these methods over time, you’d go from stuttering and stammering over simple words to reciting any page of the Quran as easily as you can recite Surah al-Fatiha.

1. Ancient Thai Saying

The ancient Thai people, now famous for their Muay Thai Kick Boxing style, had a saying. “If you want to be a good kicker… kick!” The same holds true of your goal of improving your Quran recitation. Follow the first advice given to the Prophet Muhammad “Recite!”. Recite as much as you can, as frequently as you can. Nothing can replace this discipline. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Before you know it, you’ll be reading an unfamiliar page in the same amount of time it used to take you to read a couple of lines.

2. Link New Habit With Old Habit

This is without doubt the single most effective way to build a new habit. You need to link the habit of reciting the Quran in Arabic with something you already do every single day without fail. Something like brushing your teeth, or putting your clothes on in the morning.

An excellent way to go about it is to link it with one (or more) of your 5 daily prayers. That way, you’re already in a state of wudhu, so one of the main psychological barriers is out of the way.

Now make the commitment to recite a small amount of Quran every single day for the next 30 days after the selected prayer.

3. Intelligent Repetition – The Mother Of All Skill

Here is a trick that will double or triple your effectiveness and speed at reading the Quran. Let’s say you’ve decided to recite 2 pages of the Quran after Isha every night and 2 pages before you leave for work in the morning.

Instead of reciting the first 2 pages on day one morning and the next 2 pages on day one night, try this out. On day one morning, recite page 1, then recite page one again. Then on day one evening, recite page 1 again, and again.

“But then I’ll only have done one page?!” I hear you exclaiming. That’s true, but you’ll have done that page four times, and what’s more important, is that by the 4th recitation, you will read it about 3 or 4 times quicker that on your first attempt. Aim for reading the page 5 times each day.

The next day, you can move on to page 2, and so on. At the end of the week, you might like to do one marathon session of going through all 7 pages you covered that week.

You may even want to do this with a Tajweed teacher, who’ll correct your recitation. You’ll notice that you can still recite page 1 about 2 or 3 times faster and more fluently than on your 1st attempt.

600 days later you will have completed the Quran 6 times. “Eat your heart out, Maulvi Saab!”

If you recite the page 5 times each day, and once at the end of the week, it’s the equivalent of completing the Quran once every 100 days – just over 3 months. That’s like reading the Quran 4 times a year – but who’s keeping count? ;)

4. Learn Some Vocabulary

The key to the whole process of understanding the Quran is to learn Quranic vocabulary lists. If you learn around 300 words, that accounts for about 70% of the entire Quran. But you need to learn the right words.

This links in with your recitation because when you know these commonly occurring words, you’ll spot them as you recite, and something magical will happen….

5. Get Your iPod Out..

If you are still struggling, the iPod technique will propel you forward. Get an online recitation from a famous reciter, whose voice you love. Listen to the recitation, one page at a time, as you read along the script with your finger.

Even if the reciter goes way too fast for you to start with, just finger along the page. Then, rewind back to where the page started, and do it again, and again.

So, here’s a quick review of the 5 ways to improve your recitation:

1. Practise Quran like a martial artist practices kicks.2. Read 1 page of the Quran immediately after a prayer.3. Repeat the same page several times before moving on.4. Learn 5 words of Quranvocabper day for 2 months.5. Get your iPod out and read along with a reciter.