The Pronoun and the Promise: Reading an Op-Ed Under Time Pressure
Lina has 18 minutes left in Paper I and five questions on a 210-word op-ed she has read twice. The passage argues that a regional dam will close for two weeks for maintenance without consulting farmers: «أعلنت الوزارة أن السدّ سيُغلق أسبوعين، لكن المزارعين قالوا إنهم لم يُستشاروا… ولمّا سُئل الناطق عن التعويضات، قال إن الوزارة وعدت بدراسة الطلبات، وهو وعدٌ سمعه المزارعون من قبل.» Question 4 asks what «هو» in «وهو وعدٌ» refers to; question 5 asks whether the author is neutral, sympathetic to the ministry, or critical. Lina’s glossary supplies «صيانة» but not «ناطق». She notices that the op-ed never uses first person and that the final clause «من قبل» is the only time marker with a loaded tone. She has been taught not to import outside knowledge about dams. She must decide how much weight to give irony versus explicit condemnation. Her answers will be marked for textual evidence, not for political opinion.
1. Identify the referent of «هو» in «وهو وعدٌ سمعه المزارعون من قبل» and justify your choice grammatically and textually. Name one alternative reading and say why it is weaker.
Read the worked answer
Decision: «هو» refers to the act of promising / the promise contained in «وعدت بدراسة الطلبات», not to «الناطق» and not to «الوزارة».
Grammatical reasoning: «هو» is a detached pronoun (ضمير منفصل) functioning as mubtadaʾ; «وعدٌ» is its khabar. A pronoun used this way normally points to a preceding nominalised idea when the predicate is an abstract noun. If «هو» referred to a person, «وعدٌ» would be an odd predicate (‘he is a promise’), whereas ‘it is a promise’ is natural.
Textual reasoning: The nearest semantically compatible antecedent is the verbal noun of «وعدت». The following relative clause «سمعه المزارعون» requires something audible or hearable: a promise can be heard; a spokesman can be heard but cannot be ‘a promise’.
Alternative: Taking «هو» as referring to «الناطق» fails on both predication and sense; taking it as «الوزارة» is possible only if one reads ‘the ministry is a promise’, which is metaphorical and unsupported by the surrounding factual report. The exam rewards the reading that keeps the sentence literal and cohesive.
2. Is the author neutral, sympathetic to the ministry, or critical? Support your answer with two pieces of textual evidence and explain how the absence of explicit condemnation affects your judgement.
Read the worked answer
Judgement: critical by implication, but measured.
Evidence 1: The farmers’ complaint «لم يُستشاروا» is reported without any ministry denial, explanation or counter-quote. In a news report, that omission is a selection choice: the reader is invited to see the farmers as wronged.
Evidence 2: «من قبل» (‘before’) is the only temporal phrase with a loaded tone. It implies that the promise to study the requests has been made before and may be a delaying tactic. The clause «وهو وعدٌ سمعه المزارعون من قبل» is thus ironic without using an explicit adjective such as «مماطلة».
Why not neutral or sympathetic: A neutral report would normally give the ministry’s justification for the timing or the compensation plan. A sympathetic report would foreground the ministry’s promise as good faith. Here the promise is placed after the complaint and framed by «من قبل».
Caveat: The author never says «أخطأت الوزارة», so the criticism is inferential. The safest formulation is ‘critical through selection and irony’, not ‘openly hostile’. This is exactly the distinction the mark scheme rewards.
3. The glossary lacks «ناطق». Reconstruct its meaning from root, pattern and syntax, and explain one error a candidate might make by guessing from English ‘speaker’.
Read the worked answer
Meaning: spokesman / spokesperson.
Root: ن-ط-ق carries the idea of speech or articulation. Pattern: فاعل is an active participle pattern, so ناطق is ‘one who speaks’. Syntax: «سُئل الناطق» is a passive verb requiring a human agent, and the following «قال» confirms that the referent is a person who speaks on behalf of the ministry.
Contextual check: In a news report about a ministry and compensation, the natural equivalent is «ناطق باسم الوزارة» or ‘spokesperson’, not a generic ‘speaker’.
Likely error: A candidate may translate ‘speaker’ literally and produce «المتحدث» or «السماعة» (a loudspeaker), or may leave ‘the speaker’ vague. ‘Speaker’ in English can mean a device or a presiding officer; the Arabic context rules both out. The exam tests whether the candidate uses morphology plus syntax, not whether they know a bilingual dictionary entry.