HSC Persian Continuers common mistakes
HSC Persian Continuers · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
While the recording plays, the candidate copies down whole sentences verbatim instead of noting key words, then runs out of time and misses the next item.
School habits of dictation and note-taking encourage transcription, and candidates fear that anything not written down is lost; they do not realise the marks come from answering the question, not from a transcript.
What to do instead
Practise note-taking with symbols and abbreviations (arrows, initials, numbers) and answer each question in the pause after the item; in practice, listen to a full passage once, then write answers from memory of the gist, and only check details on a second listen.
The candidate answers a listening question with a general impression ("she was happy") when the question asks for the specific reason or evidence given in the recording.
Candidates grasp the overall tone but do not decode the causal or contrastive connectors (چون، بنابراین، اما، با این حال) that carry the marked information, so they default to a feeling rather than a stated fact.
What to do instead
Build a checklist of signal words for reason, contrast, and sequence, and rehearse identifying the exact clause that follows them; when answering, quote or paraphrase the clause containing the connector rather than summarising mood.
The candidate writes a full English sentence or a mixed Persian-English answer when the question is in Persian and expects a Persian response.
Under time pressure the candidate reaches for the language of thought, and some candidates believe content matters more than language; they are unaware that response language can affect marks in a language examination.
What to do instead
In every practice task, answer in Persian even if imperfect, using short complete clauses; keep a personal list of question stems and the Persian formula for answering them (e.g. چون ... بنابراین ...) and drill answers aloud before writing.
The candidate reads the whole reading passage word by word before looking at the questions, then has too little time to answer the higher-mark items.
Candidates transfer slow intensive-reading habits from study contexts and treat every word as equally important; unfamiliar vocabulary then stalls them mid-passage.
What to do instead
Skim the questions first, then scan the passage for the relevant section, reading closely only around keywords; practise timed passages where unknown words are skipped and inferred from context, and allocate time explicitly to the final extended-response item.
The candidate lifts a long sentence from the text as the answer even though the question asks for the writer's attitude or an inference not stated directly.
Copying feels safe and demonstrates comprehension of vocabulary, but candidates do not distinguish literal retrieval questions from inference and evaluation questions, which require synthesis and their own wording.
What to do instead
Classify each question as retrieval, inference, or evaluation before answering, and for the latter two write a claim plus textual evidence in the candidate's own words; practise paraphrasing exercises where the source sentence may not be reused.
The candidate misses the function of formal versus informal register and misreads who is speaking to whom, or what relationship the text implies.
Textbook Persian often presents neutral register, so candidates do not notice the shift between میشما and تو, or between literary and colloquial forms, and therefore misjudge the social meaning of a text.
What to do instead
Study paired texts on the same topic in formal and colloquial register, listing pronoun, verb, and vocabulary differences; for each reading passage, explicitly identify the audience, relationship, and purpose before answering questions about tone.
The candidate writes a prepared memorised essay that only loosely fits the prompt, ignoring the specified audience, purpose, and format.
Candidates rehearse topics in advance and hope to recycle them, and they underestimate how much the task requirements (letter versus article, formal versus friendly) are rewarded.
What to do instead
Practise planning for two minutes against the prompt: underline the audience, purpose, and format, then choose only the memorised content that fits; write at least one response per week to varied prompts with a different format each time, and self-check the plan against the prompt before writing.
The candidate's writing is grammatically ambitious but inconsistent, with errors in verb endings, subject-verb agreement, and the ezafe construction that obscure meaning.
Candidates try to reproduce complex structures from model essays without controlling the underlying agreement and ezafe rules, and they do not proofread because they run out of time.
What to do instead
Keep a personal error log from marked work and drill the five most frequent patterns weekly; reserve the final five minutes for a proofreading pass checking verb endings, plural agreement, and ezafe links, reading the text aloud silently to catch omissions.
The candidate writes very short responses with simple sentences and little linking, falling below the expected length and range for the higher-mark writing task.
Fear of error leads candidates to avoid complex structures, and they do not plan enough content points before starting, so the response ends prematurely.
What to do instead
Before writing, list three to five content points and the connectors that will link them (علاوه بر این، از سوی دیگر، در نتیجه); practise expanding a simple sentence into a compound one, and build a bank of topic vocabulary to draw on.
The candidate transliterates Persian words into Latin script or writes in a mixture of scripts, and uses incorrect or absent Persian punctuation.
Candidates who are more comfortable typing in Latin script, or who rarely handwrite extended Persian, lose automaticity and fall back on transliteration; punctuation conventions in Persian are also under-taught.
What to do instead
Do all drafting by hand or in a Persian keyboard layout from the start, with a short daily handwriting or typing drill; learn the Persian comma, full stop, question mark, and quotation conventions and apply them in every practice response.