Has anyone done the Persian GCSE?

lol im half iranian and i know a boy who took it and got an easy A*. he was an iranian native and only came to the country three years before he took his gcses.

so unless you are near fluent i wouldnt bother and would concentrate on your other subjects.

despite being iranian, i wont bother learning it as i would never really visit the country due to the government. obviously we all have ourpersonal interests at heart and i only think you should bother learning for the gcse if you will actually use the language otherwise a european language like german, spanish is more usefull.

speak normally.

Thanks Well, I know some conversational farsi, I can talk about the weather and stuff but I couldn't talk about, say, politics or religion or describe something scientific.. And I can read a litttle bit... I mean, it's probably enough to study for a week or two and get a good grade with. I just wanted to know if you can talk normal farsi or if you have to speak how people read?

xxx

I haven't done the GCSE, however, do you think that if you really only know how to say "hi how are you?" and talk about the weather, that you know enough?

I've just looked through the sample papers here...the Reading and Listening exams look easy enough, though I think Writing might prove tricky for someone who's speaking isn't that great. I'm not trying to knock you here, I'm just going by what you've said

I'm sure if you practice enough however you'll do well, and it's really great that your taking an interest in the language

Also: I doubt they expect you to speak like Sadeq Saba

Well, I've done GCSE French so I know sort'a what they expect you to know... I think speaking-wise I know just about enough really; I can understand it quite well [unless you're going to start talking compex persian] and I can give some okay-ish responses. I'm pretty much sorted with reading, listening and speaking [probably] but like you said, the writing could be... problematic. In school they do french writing as coursework, do they not do the persian writing as coursework?

Thanks for your help, and the encouragement Just wanted to say, I love what you've put in your signature and I couldn't agree more

P.S. who's Sadeq Saba? :O

I'm not sure, that may depend on the exam board.

If you don't mind saying, whereabouts do you live? I can recommend some good Iranian shops in London which sell Farsi textbooks (the ones primary school kids in Iran use). You might feel daft using a little kid's book, but they will help you learn reading and writing very well. Alternatively you could sign up to a Farsi school which would prepare you for GCSEs and teach you on the weekends.

I'm not sure, that may depend on the exam board.

If you don't mind saying, whereabouts do you live? I can recommend some good Iranian shops in London which sell Farsi textbooks (the ones primary school kids in Iran use). You might feel daft using a little kid's book, but they will help you learn reading and writing very well. Alternatively you could sign up to a Farsi school which would prepare you for GCSEs and teach you on the weekends.

Listening is easy, however some of the answers you tick may be in Farsi, so again, you do need to have the necessary reading skills to know what you're ticking

Feel free to PM me if you don't want to reveal your location here.

YAAAAY. Well done you!

Lol, he's an Iranian journalist...he's on BBC Persian

i took Persian GCSE when i was 10 years old, and i got an A*. it's relatively easy considering my Persian is worse than my mums English. i think if you're from iran or your parents are from iran, then you have an advantage because your parents are more likely to speak iranian than english or whatever. listen in on their conversations to learn new words and try to speak in persian to them as much as you can and try out new words in conversation. also, if you have persian sattelite it helps if you watch childrens programmes because they speak slower, and then move onto persian soaps shown on tv and then watch some of the news. i reccomend BBC Persian they really helped me when i took A level.
i'd say that the hardest part of the whole exam was the writing so i'd say concentrate a bit more on practising you writing. and remember that if you take persian GCSE then it would be written for an english person like french and spanish etc. so it'll be much easier than forexample if you lived in iran.
good luck

Woahhh, well done, I'm 16 and i would be lucky enough to get a C, i don't know but i have a feeling that i did terribly bad in this exam

Don't stress - mark schemes always lenient!

GUYS i am in the same situation ! , that exam was hard . I have been learning to read recently , I think i got all the easy questions right , but woahhhh , the last two questions about the basketball player and the iranian girl were difficult and the worst , I answered the last question in english ! , please help cure my worries by posting a reply.