QCAA Arabic (SEE) cheat sheet

The SEE Arabic external assessment tests receptive skills (listening and reading) and productive skills (writing and speaking) in Modern Standard Arabic, with the target language used throughout the stimulus material.

Text types named in the syllabus include personal and formal letters, emails, diary entries, blog posts, news reports, interviews, conversations, announcements, notices, advertisements, instructions, narratives and short persuasive texts.

Register is a decision rule: informal register uses colloquial-friendly vocabulary and short sentences for friends and family; formal register uses MSA, complex connectors and passive constructions for official or academic audiences.

Purpose is signalled by verb mood and text structure: imperative-heavy texts instruct, interrogative openings interview, evaluative adjectives plus recommendation verbs persuade, and past-tense sequencing narrates.

Audience determines address forms: singular informal أنت/أنتِ in personal texts, plural polite أنتم or honorific titles like حضرة السيد in formal correspondence.

Each productive response must satisfy the stated purpose, audience and text type, because task fulfilment is judged against those three elements rather than against length alone.

Cohesion in Arabic is achieved through connectors such as لذلك، بالإضافة إلى ذلك، من ناحية أخرى، في حين أن، ونتيجةً لذلك; examiners reward varied and accurate use.

Cultural content (festivals, family roles, education, environment, technology in the Arab world) supplies common stimulus contexts, so vocabulary fields should be learned thematically.

Arabic is written right to left; the definite article ال assimilates to sun letters (ال + شمس = الشمس) and is pronounced clearly before moon letters (ال + قمر = القمر).

The nominal sentence (جملة اسمية) begins with a noun or pronoun and needs no copula in the present: الطالبُ مجتهدٌ = 'The student is diligent'.

The verbal sentence (جملة فعلية) begins with a verb; the verb agrees in gender with the subject but stays singular when the subject follows the verb: كتبَ الطلابُ الدرسَ.

Case endings are governed by function: nominative ـُ for subject, accusative ـَ for direct object, genitive ـِ after prepositions and as the second term of إضافة.

The إضافة construction expresses possession without a separate word for 'of': كتابُ الطالبِ = 'the student's book'; the first noun takes no ال and no nunation.

Verb patterns: the past tense is inflected by suffix (كتبَ، كتبَتْ، كتبوا), the present by prefix and suffix (يكتبُ، تكتبُ، يكتبونَ), and the imperative is derived from the present stem.

Broken plurals (جمع التكسير) change the internal vowel pattern (كتاب/كتب، طالب/طلاب، مدرسة/مدارس) and must be learned as lexical items; sound plurals add ون/ين or ات.

Common exam pitfalls: confusing همزة الوصل with همزة القطع, miswriting ة versus ه, and omitting the negative particles لا، لم، لن which each require a specific verb form (لم + jussive, لن + subjunctive).