HSC Arabic Extension study guide

HSC Arabic Extension · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

Arabic Extension is a Higher School Certificate (HSC) course in New South Wales, Australia, taken alongside Arabic Continuers. It is designed for students who already handle Arabic with confidence and want to work with longer, more demanding texts and to write at length in both Arabic and English. The HSC Arabic Extension study guide has 4 sections and about 1,683 words.

Responding to and analysing Arabic texts

This domain tests whether you can read an Arabic text closely and then explain, in Arabic, what it is doing and how it does it. The examiner is looking for three linked skills: comprehension (what the text says), analysis of form and technique (how the text achieves its effect), and evaluation (how successfully it does so, and for whom).

434 words, about 2 min 02

Producing extended written text in Arabic

You must write a sustained Arabic text - an argumentative essay, a report, a formal letter, or a reflective piece - that is coherent, well organised, and written in appropriate register. Marks are awarded for task fulfilment, structure, range and accuracy of language, and control of register.

417 words, about 2 min 03

Producing extended written text in English about Arabic texts and issues

Here you write in English about Arabic material and about cultural or social issues it raises. The challenge is twofold: represent the Arabic text faithfully without distorting it, and write analytical English prose that meets the conventions of academic argument.

416 words, about 2 min 04

Knowledge of Arabic language and culture in context

This domain rewards breadth and precision: knowledge of how Arabic works as a language (its registers, its diglossic situation, its rhetorical traditions) and of the cultural contexts that shape texts. Questions may ask you to explain a linguistic feature, situate a text in a tradition, or discuss a cultural practice referred to in a passage.

416 words, about 2 min