Composition: Grading a Flawed Invitation Letter
Twenty-six students write a 90-word informal Arabic letter inviting a friend to the school annual day. The brief requires three details: the date (Thursday, 14 August), the venue (school auditorium), and the chief guest (a local doctor). A sample draft is projected: «إلى صديقي أحمد، أنا سعيد لأنك سوف تأتي إلى حفلتنا. المدرسة سوف تنظم حفلة في يوم الخميس. الحفلة سيكون في الساعة العاشرة. نحن ندعوك. السلام.» The teacher spots three problems: a missing letter opening/closing convention, a gender-agreement error in «الحفلة سيكون», and an omitted chief guest. Several students argue that the draft is understandable, so it should not lose marks. The teacher must decide how to grade meaning versus accuracy, and must model a revision that keeps the draft’s simple register while meeting the brief. The class has 25 minutes; each student must annotate the draft, then write a corrected version of no more than 100 words.
1. Identify the three problems and rank them by severity for this composition task.
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Problem 1 is grammatical: «الحفلة سيكون» has a feminine subject with a masculine verb; it should be «ستكون» or «سوف تكون». Problem 2 is content: the chief guest is required by the brief but absent. Problem 3 is register/convention: the draft lacks an opening such as «تحية طيبة وبعد» and a closing such as «مع تحياتي». Rank the chief guest omission first because it is a task-achievement failure: the reader cannot act on the invitation fully. Rank the gender error second because it is a visible accuracy error that an examiner will mark even though meaning survives. Rank the missing conventions third, though in an informal letter they still matter. A clean but incomplete letter can score lower than a slightly flawed letter that fulfils all three required details.
2. Write a corrected version of no more than 100 words that keeps the simple register and meets the brief.
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Model: «إلى صديقي أحمد، تحية طيبة وبعد، أنا سعيد لأنك ستأتي إلى حفلتنا. ستنظم المدرسة حفل اليوم السنوي يوم الخميس الموافق 14 أغسطس في قاعة المدرسة في الساعة العاشرة. سيحضر الحفل ضيف رئيسي هو طبيب محلي. نحن ندعوك بصدق. مع تحياتي، صديقك.» Changes and reasons: added «تحية طيبة وبعد» and «مع تحياتي» to satisfy letter conventions; replaced «سوف تنظم» with «ستنظم» for a concise future; corrected the agreement by making the verb feminine; inserted the date, venue, and chief guest; kept vocabulary simple and repeated «ندعوك» to preserve the draft’s direct tone.
3. A student argues that ‘understandable’ should be enough to pass. How should the teacher respond?
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Respond that ‘understandable’ is the floor, not the criterion. The task is communicative: the reader must learn the date, venue, and chief guest, and must recognise the text as a letter. A draft that omits the chief guest is understandable but incomplete. Exam rubrics separate content, grammar, and register; a gender error such as «الحفلة سيكون» is understandable yet still marked because it is a controlled accuracy point. The teacher can model the difference by asking what the reader can and cannot do: the reader can attend on Thursday, but cannot know who the chief guest is. That shows why content omission outranks a small stylistic preference.