MATSEC AM Arabic cheat sheet

Question types fall into four groups: gist (الفكرة العامة), explicit detail (تفصيل), inference (استنتاج) and vocabulary in context. A detail answer must be traceable to one specific sentence, not to general knowledge.

Reversal markers - لكن، غير أنّ، بيد أنّ، على الرغم من أنّ، إلا أنّ - override whatever was asserted before them; when a question asks for the writer's final position, read the clause after the marker.

Discourse markers by function: addition (بالإضافة إلى ذلك، علاوة على ذلك، فضلًا عن)، result (لذلك، من ثمّ، بناءً عليه، وهكذا)، sequence (أولًا، ثانيًا، أخيرًا). Locating them maps the paragraph structure faster than reading every word.

Attribution decides the answer: يرى الكاتب أنّ / يعتقد / أشار إلى أنّ + clause marks a claim held by someone, whereas من المعروف أنّ or cited statistics present accepted fact. Match the question to the correct holder of the claim.

Pronoun chains resolve backwards to the nearest compatible noun: هو/هي، ذلك/تلك، هؤلاء، الذي/التي. A gender or number mismatch means the antecedent is earlier in the text, not the nearest noun.

Negation set: لم + jussive (past, 'did not'), لن (future, 'will never'), لا (present), ما/ليس (nominal sentences), غير/بغير (partial negation). Questions worded 'which statement is NOT supported' turn on precisely these particles.

Numerals appear in Arabic-Indic form (٣٤٥ = 345) and dates may be Hijri (هـ) or Gregorian (م); percentages take ٪. Read ١٤٤٥ هـ as a Hijri year, not a Gregorian one.

Unknown-word strategy: strip the definite article ال, the future سـ, and prefixes و/ب/ل/ك, then the suffixes ون/ات/ين/ها to expose three root consonants; match the resulting root to the word class the syntax requires.

Case endings: nominative ـُ for subject and nominal predicate, accusative ـَ for object, adverbs and the predicate of كان, genitive ـِ after prepositions and as the second term of idafa. Dual: ـَانِ nominative vs ـَيْنِ oblique.

Verb forms and core senses: I فَعَلَ basic; II فَعَّلَ causative/intensive; III فَاعَلَ mutual; IV أَفْعَلَ causative; V تَفَعَّلَ reflexive of II; VI تَفَاعَلَ mutual of III; VII اِنْفَعَلَ passive/intransitive; VIII اِفْتَعَلَ reflexive; IX اِفْعَلَّ colours and defects; X اِسْتَفْعَلَ seeking.

كان and its sisters (أصبح، أظلّ/ظلّ، بات، صار، ليس) keep the subject nominative and put the predicate in the accusative: كان الجوُّ باردًا.

إنّ and its sisters (أنّ، كأنّ، لكنّ، ليت، لعلّ) do the opposite: the following noun is accusative and the predicate nominative - إنّ الجوَّ باردٌ.

Idafa rule: the first term carries neither ال nor tanwin, the second stands in the genitive, and an adjective describing the first term follows the whole phrase and agrees with it: في المكتبةِ العامةِ الجديدةِ.

Broken plurals of non-humans take feminine singular agreement on verbs, pronouns and adjectives: وصلتِ الكتبُ الجديدةُ، هذه المجلاتُ مفيدةٌ. Human plurals agree normally.

Numerals 3–10 show polarity: the counted noun is plural genitive and takes the numeral's opposite gender - ثلاثةُ كتبٍ، خمسُ طالباتٍ. Numerals 11–99 take a singular accusative noun: أحدَ عشرَ كتابًا.

Diptotes (ممنوع من الصرف) take fatha instead of kasra in the genitive and never take tanwin: في مكةَ، بأكثرَ من. Triggers include the أَفْعَل pattern, فَعْلان, مَفَاعِل plurals and feminines ending in alif.

Jussive triggers: لم، لا الناهية، لام الأمر، and إن الشرطية governing two verbs. The jussive appears as sukūn or by dropping the final vowel or nūn: لم يكتبْ، لم يكتبوا، إن تدرسْ تنجحْ.

Word order differs by default: Arabic is VSO with optional topic fronting, English is SVO. Reorder before choosing vocabulary - وصلَ الوزيرُ متأخرًا → 'The minister arrived late.'

Idafa chains reverse in English. Translate from the last noun backwards: كتابُ تاريخِ الفنِّ = 'the art history book' / 'the book of art history'.

A definite singular with generic force becomes an English bare plural or generic article: القهوةُ مشروبٌ شعبيٌّ = 'Coffee is a popular drink', not 'The coffee is a popular drink.'

Aspect, not tense, drives the verb: perfective → simple past; imperfective → present, habitual or progressive; كان + imperfective → past continuous or 'used to'; سوف/سـ → will; قد + perfective → has/had or may have.

Do not render every و as 'and'. Arabic strings clauses with و where English prefers a full stop, a semicolon or asyndeton; keeping all of them produces run-on English.

Emphatic particles إنّ، لقد، قد are usually dropped in English unless the emphasis is contrastive; translating them mechanically as 'indeed' distorts the register.

Fixed verb-noun collocations must be found, not invented: اتخذ قرارًا = decide; أجرى مقابلة = conduct an interview; ألقى خطابًا = give a speech; قدّم اقتراحًا = propose.

Names: use established English exonyms where they exist (القاهرة → Cairo, مالطا → Malta, محمد → Muhammad) and transliterate consistently rather than phonetically ad hoc.

Three-part architecture: مقدمة (topic plus narrowed thesis in 2–3 sentences), عرض (one paragraph per argument, topic sentence first), خاتمة (thesis restated, main evidence summed, recommendation or prediction).

Each body paragraph carries one controlling idea, supported by مثال (example), إحصاء (statistic) or سبب/نتيجة (cause–effect). A paragraph listing unrelated claims loses the cohesion marks.

Connectors by function: addition فضلًا عن ذلك / بالإضافة إلى؛ contrast في المقابل / على العكس / إلا أنّ؛ cause بسبب / نتيجةً لـ؛ conclusion خلاصة القول / من ثمّ. Reusing one connector throughout reads as a limited range.

Register control: MSA only. Replace colloquial forms (مش، عشان، كثير حلو) with (ليس، من أجل، جميل جدًا) and avoid code-switching into English or French.

Sentence variety: alternate verbal sentences (بدأت الحكومةُ...) with nominal ones (الحكومةُ التي بدأت...); front a prepositional phrase only for emphasis, not as decoration.

Arabic punctuation: ، for the comma, ؛ for the semicolon, ؟ for the question mark, and no capital letters to mark sentence starts. Direct quotation uses «...» or "...".

The highest-scoring argument pattern is claim → evidence → counter-argument (قد يعترض البعض بأنّ...) → refutation. A wholly one-sided essay reads as incomplete reasoning.

Classical qasida structure: nasib (nostalgic opening at the abandoned camp) → rahil (desert journey) → madih, fakhr or hija. Metre is quantitative (بحر) and the poem is monorhymed (قافية).

المعلقات: the seven (or ten) canonical pre-Islamic odes of Jahili poetry; the most quoted opening is Imruʾ al-Qays's قفا نبكِ من ذكرى حبيبٍ ومنزل.

Abbasid high points: Abu Nuwas (خمريات), al-Mutanabbi (panegyric and wisdom verse), al-Jahiz (prose: البخلاء، الحيوان), al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri (مقامات).

Maqama is a short trickster narrative in rhymed prose (سجع), introduced by Badiʿ al-Zaman al-Hamadhani in the tenth century and perfected by al-Hariri in the eleventh.

النهضة: the nineteenth-century revival centred on Egypt and Lebanon, driven by translation, the press and reformers such as Rifa'a al-Tahtawi.

Modern movements: مدرسة الديوان (al-Aqqad, al-Mazini, Shukri) against neo-classicism; the Apollo group; الشعر الحر with Nazik al-Mala'ika and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab.

Mahjar (émigré) writing from the Americas: Gibran Khalil Gibran (النبي) and Mikhail Naimy (كتاب مرداد).

Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, the only Arab laureate to date; the Cairo Trilogy (بين القصرين، قصر الشوق، السكرية) is his central work.

Script and culture basics: Arabic runs right-to-left with 28 letters; calligraphic styles include نسخ، ثلث، كوفي، ديواني، رقعة; the Arab League has 22 members and Arabic is official in roughly 25 states.