Issues in Today's World
What you must understand
Expect contemporary topics: education and employment, youth unemployment, technology and social media, environmental problems, migration and refugees, health, and the balance between tradition and change. You must be able to state a problem, explain causes, describe effects, propose solutions and give a personal position. The vocabulary of argument is essential: الأسباب، النتائج، الحلول، من ناحية أخرى، في رأيي، لا شكّ أنّ، يجب أن.
Traps in questions
- One-sided answers. A question asking you to discuss needs at least two perspectives and a conclusion.
- Listing problems without solutions. Marks are typically allocated to solutions and evaluation.
- Overgeneralising. Use من المؤكد أنّ، قد، في بعض الحالات rather than absolute claims.
- Ignoring the Arabic context. Examples grounded in Arabic-speaking societies strengthen relevance.
- Mixing registers. Formal discussion needs MSA, not dialect.
Rule of thumb
Use the PECS frame: Problem (المشكلة), Examples/causes (الأسباب), Consequences (النتائج), Solutions plus opinion (الحلول ورأيي). One sentence per element gives a complete paragraph.
Worked example
Prompt: Discuss the effect of social media on young people. Model: لا شكّ أنّ وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي تؤثر في الشباب تأثيرًا كبيرًا. فمن ناحية، تتيح لهم فرص التعلم والتواصل، ومن ناحية أخرى، قد تؤدي إلى إدمان الشاشات وضعف العلاقات الواقعية. لذلك يجب على الأسرة والمدرسة توعية الشباب بضرورة الاستخدام المتوازن، وفي رأيي أنّ الوعي هو الحلّ الأساسي.
Arabic Language Skills and Text Types
What you must understand
This domain underpins all others: grammar accuracy, range of vocabulary, and control of text types. Core grammar includes verb patterns and tenses, agreement, the dual, broken plurals, case endings in formal writing, pronouns, negation, comparatives, and connectors. Text types you must recognise and produce include formal and informal letters, emails, articles, reports, diary entries, speeches, notices, conversations and advertisements. Each has conventions: a formal letter opens with تحية طيبة وبعد and closes with وتفضلوا بقبول فائق الاحترام; a diary is personal and reflective; an article needs a headline and paragraphs.
Traps in questions
- Answering in the wrong text type. A report without headings or a letter without a greeting loses structure marks.
- Agreement errors. Adjectives must agree in gender, number and definiteness; non-human plurals take feminine singular agreement.
- Negation confusion. Use لم + jussive for past, لا + present for habitual, لن + subjunctive for future, ما + past for completed negation.
- Ignoring the audience. Formal vs informal pronoun and vocabulary choices are marked.
- No connectors. Writing without ثم، لكن، لأنّ، بالإضافة إلى reads as a list.
Rule of thumb
Before writing, spend one minute on a TAP plan: Text type and its conventions, Audience and register, Purpose and required content points. Then check agreement and negation in the final two minutes.
Worked example
Prompt: Write an email to a teacher requesting information about a course. Model: الأستاذ الفاضل، تحية طيبة وبعد، أكتب إليك لأستفسر عن دورة اللغة العربية التي تنظمها المدرسة. أرجو أن تزوّدني بموعد التسجيل والمتطلبات. شاكرًا لك حسن تعاونك، وتفضل بقبول فائق الاحترام. Note the formal opening, the purpose statement, the polite request and the formal closing.