Student help

On the home page choose I want to learn Arabic, then enter your name, your email and a password. We send you a confirmation email — open it and click the link. That link is valid for 24 hours.

A student account is free, and we never ask for a card to use QalamChat.

There are two ways, and you can use both:

• Browse the directory. Open Find a teacher, read the profiles, and send a message to the one you like. Her reply arrives in Messages.
• Use an invite code. If a teacher already gave you an 8-character code, open More → My teachers, type the code and press Add.

You can study with more than one teacher at the same time — each one appears separately in Messages and in your schedule.

No. QalamChat runs in your browser — a recent Chrome, Safari or Edge on any phone, tablet or computer.

If you prefer an app icon, open QalamChat in your phone's browser and choose Add to Home Screen. It then opens full-screen like a normal app, but there is nothing to download from a store.

When your teacher has scheduled a lesson, it appears on your Home page and in My Schedule — press Join a few minutes before the start time.

If your teacher sent you a link or a 6-character room code instead, open the link, or enter the code on the join page. That code belongs to your teacher and never changes, so you can save it.

That is normal. Your teacher sees that you have arrived and lets you in when she is ready. Keep the page open — you will be moved into the classroom automatically, you do not need to refresh or knock again.

The first time you join, your browser asks for permission to use the camera and microphone. If you pressed Block by accident, click the padlock icon next to the address bar, allow camera and microphone, then reload the page.

• Close any other app that is using the camera (video calls, camera app).
• On iPhone, join from Safari — some other browsers on iOS cannot open the camera.
• If your connection is weak, turn your camera off and keep only audio. The lesson still works.

Reopen the lesson page. You go straight back into the classroom — your teacher does not have to admit you a second time, and the notebook and the shared page come back as they were.

What your teacher writes appears on your screen as she writes it. The notebook is hers to drive — you follow along, and afterwards she can save it so you keep a copy.

Your teacher decides which page everyone is looking at, so the class never gets lost. Her pen marks appear on your screen as she draws them.

Zoom is yours alone. Use the + and − buttons, pinch with two fingers, or hold Ctrl and scroll. Making the page bigger on your phone changes nothing for your teacher or your classmates — so zoom in as much as you need.

Your teacher switches this on when she wants it. Once she does, a Share photo button appears for you: take or choose a photo of your exercise and send it.

The photo opens on the shared screen for everyone in the lesson, and your teacher can write her corrections straight onto it. Send one clear, well-lit page at a time — a straight photo of the whole sheet reads much better than a close-up.

The chat box beside the video is for writing during the lesson — useful for a word you cannot pronounce yet, or when your microphone is not working.

New words you want to keep can be saved to My Words and practised later.

When your teacher saves a corrected page during the lesson, a copy is put in your own library: More → Lesson materials. It is the page exactly as she left it, corrections included.

This is free on every plan — your own work coming back to you is not a paid extra. You can delete any page from your library; deleting your copy does not delete your teacher's.

My Lessons shows, for each teacher, how many lessons you have paid for and how many you have used. One scheduled lesson you attended counts as one used lesson.

It is a shared record between you and your teacher, not money. If a number looks wrong, message her — she keeps the ledger.

Directly — exactly as you agreed with her. QalamChat never handles the money and takes no commission. Her payment details are shown next to her name in Messages and in your schedule.

After you have paid you can mark the lesson as paid so she sees it, and she confirms it on her side.

Practise between lessons: ask for a translation, check a sentence you wrote, or just have a conversation in Arabic. The free plan includes 20 messages a day.

Save any word you meet and revise it later. Each word moves through three stages — new, practising, learned — so you always know what still needs work. The free plan holds 50 words.

A Pro feature: upload your own Arabic PDFs, read them page by page, and tap any line for a translation — including scanned books, which are read with text recognition.

This is your private reader and has nothing to do with the PDFs your teacher shares in a lesson; those arrive in Lesson materials and are free.

Use the EN · ES · AR buttons at the top of any page. This changes the interface and the emails we send you. It does not change the language you are learning.

Every time on the site is shown in your own timezone, taken from your device. If it looks wrong, set it yourself in More → Account. Your teacher may well be in another country — she sees the same lesson at her own local time.

On the sign-in page choose Forgot password. We email you a link that is valid for one hour and can be used once. Open it and choose a new password.

Treat that link like the password itself — anyone who has it can set a new one. Never forward it or paste it anywhere.

Look in your spam folder first. If it is not there, sign in and use the Resend button on the banner at the top of the page. If the address itself was wrong, you can correct it in your account settings and we will send it again.

Write to us from the contact page and say what you were doing when it happened — that is usually enough for us to find it.