Sentence Construction, Error Correction, and Applied Grammar
Two sentence patterns
Arabic builds either a nominal sentence (جملة اسمية: مبتدأ + خبر) or a verbal sentence (جملة فعلية: فعل + فاعل + مفعول به). Correction questions test whether these parts agree in gender, number, definiteness, and case. Read the sentence aloud, locate the subject and predicate, then check the ending of each.
Correction checklist
- Does the خبر match the مبتدأ in gender and number? «الطلابُ مجتهدون» not «مجتهد».
- Is the فاعل raised and the مفعول به set in نصب?
- In إضافة, the first noun loses تنوين and takes the case required by its job; the second is مجرور.
- Adjectives follow the noun in definiteness and case.
- Word order: the verb normally precedes the فاعل; do not force English order.
Worked example
Incorrect: «جاءَ الطالباتُ إلى المدرسةِ.» Reasoning: الطالبات is a non-human plural, so the verb takes feminine singular: «جاءتِ الطالباتُ». The فاعل remains مرفوع. If the sentence were «جاءت الطالباتُ المجتهداتُ», the adjective also agrees in feminine plural because the group is human. This distinction is the most common correction trap.
Traps
Correcting only the ending and leaving agreement wrong; adding ال to the مضاف; making the خبر accusative after كان; confusing كان and إنّ; rewriting the whole sentence when one word is wrong. Write the corrected word only, then recopy the sentence once to check that nothing else broke.