Keeping the Citation in the Passage
The panel is choosing the reading passage for the second trial. Text A is a 250-word article on «آداب استقبال الضيف في الثقافة الإسلامية». It argues that hospitality in the Gulf is not merely custom but a religious obligation, and supports the claim with Q 4:86, «وَإِذَا حُيِّيتُم بِتَحِيَّةٍ فَحَيُّوا بِأَحْسَنَ مِنْهَا أَوْ رُدُّوهَا», and with a well-known hadith linking gratitude to people with gratitude to God. One teacher wants both citations removed: the paper, she argues, tests Arabic, not religion, and candidates of other faiths sit it. Another teacher says that removing them leaves the paragraph's closing sentence, «وهذا ما يجعلها واجبًا لا مجاملةً», with nothing to rest on. Meanwhile the item writer has drafted item 6: «بِمَ وصَفَ الكاتبُ الضيافةَ في الجملة الثانية؟»
1. Resolve the dispute - keep, cut, or adapt the citations - and state a criterion the panel can apply to future passages.
Read the worked answer
Adapt: keep both citations, but control what the items ask about them.
The fairness objection is real but misdirected. The problem would be an item whose key requires knowledge held outside the passage - naming the sūrah, identifying the narrator of the hadith, or judging a doctrinal claim. That is a recall item, and it is unfair on any candidate who has not memorised the material, regardless of faith. It is not a problem that the passage contains a quotation, provided the quotation is printed and its vocabulary is accessible.
Removing the citations creates a different and worse fault. The article's argument has the form: practice → authoritative support → therefore obligation. Cut the support and the conclusion «واجبًا لا مجاملةً» becomes an assertion the passage never earns; candidates would then be asked comprehension questions about a paragraph with a broken inferential chain. Cohesion is a reading construct, and الاستشهاد is one of the rhetorical moves the syllabus expects candidates to recognise - in literary, journalistic, and religious texts alike.
Criterion for the panel: remove the element and test the paragraph. If the argument still stands, the element is decoration and may be cut. If the argument collapses, the element is load-bearing and stays - but then the items must test its function, never its source, and the passage must gloss unfamiliar lexis such as حُيِّيتُم and رُدُّوهَا in a footnote. Apply that test to the hadith as well: here it carries the second half of the argument, so it stays on the same terms.
2. What is wrong with the drafted item 6, and how would you rewrite it so that the citation is tested as reading rather than as recall?
Read the worked answer
The fault is in the verb, not the topic. «بِمَ وصَفَ» asks candidates to retrieve a word from a named sentence. The answer is a label lifted from the text; the item tests matching under a locator, which a candidate can do without understanding the paragraph or the quotation. It also leaves the citation, the most argumentatively loaded element in the passage, completely untested.
Rewrite it as a function item. For example: «ما وظيفة الآية في الفقرة؟» - keyed to the fact that the writer uses it as evidence that the practice is an obligation rather than a social custom. Or: «لمَ ذكر الكاتبُ الآيةَ بعد وصف العادة؟» The second version is better because «بعد» forces candidates to see the ordering: practice first, authority second, conclusion third.
Add a reference item on the same passage, since it is answerable from the text alone and needs no outside knowledge: «إلى ماذا يعود الضمير في «منها»؟» - keyed to التحية. This tests cohesion, it is fair to every candidate, and it makes the quotation do the work of a reading text rather than a scripture test.
Two guards for the item writer. First, no item may ask candidates to agree with or evaluate the religious claim; the moment it does, the paper is testing belief, not Arabic. Second, keep the paraphrased answer available in the passage's own vocabulary, so that a candidate who understands the argument but lacks the metalanguage can still answer. Check both guards before the paper goes to moderation.