Producing Texts: Genre, Cohesion and Audience
What this domain demands
You produce written Arabic for a stated purpose and audience: an email, a blog post, an article, a short story, a review, a letter of complaint. Assessment weighs task fulfilment, text structure, range and accuracy of language, and cultural appropriateness. A grammatically tidy text that ignores the brief still scores poorly.
Concepts to master
- Genre conventions: an email opens and closes with formulae (تحية طيبة وبعد، وتفضلوا بقبول فائق الاحترام); a blog post may be personal and direct; an article needs a headline and a thesis. Match the opening and closing to the genre.
- Paragraphing and cohesion: Arabic favours explicit connectors - ومن ناحية أخرى، بالإضافة إلى ذلك، لذلك، في حين أن، وعلى الرغم من. Do not string clauses together with و alone.
- Formality markers: MSA throughout for formal writing; avoid dialect spellings and English loanwords where an Arabic equivalent exists.
- Verb economy: aspect choice (perfect/imperfect), and the role of قد, كان + imperfect, and إنّ/لعلّ/لقد for emphasis.
- Audience calibration: what the reader already knows, what needs explaining, what tone is expected.
- Reviewing: leave time to check agreement, case endings you are confident about, and spelling of hamza forms.
Traps
- Off-brief content: writing a beautiful essay when the task asked for a letter to a specific person.
- Missing the required elements: prompts often list three things to include; a text covering two is capped.
- Register leakage: dialect words or English syntax calqued into Arabic (e.g. word-for-word 'make a decision' constructions that do not fit).
- Wrong addressee agreement: mixing أنت/أنتم and masculine/feminine forms mid-text.
- Neglecting the close: formal texts need a closing formula, not an abrupt stop.
Rule of thumb
Spend two minutes unpacking the prompt into a checklist before writing: genre, audience, purpose, and each required content point. Then build one paragraph per content point with an explicit connector at the start. Finish with a closing that matches the genre.
Worked example
Brief: write an email to a school principal proposing a cultural exchange evening, including a date, two activities, and a request for permission. Checklist: email formulae (opening + close), date, two activities, permission request. Paragraph 1 states purpose; paragraph 2 gives date and activities; paragraph 3 makes the request politely with هل من الممكن أن…; close with وتفضلوا بقبول فائق الاحترام. Every requirement is visibly ticked.