Arabic A-level?

hey,
i did my arabic as in last year, in year 10, and it was kinda hard and tiring but that's probably since i didn't take it seriously.

are you planning on doing the exam or being taught a level arabic?

if youre planning on doing the a level, go through exam papers to look at the structure and stuff cus when i opened the exam, i was expecting it to be like the gcse exam but the gcse exam was so easy in comparison.

amani

I did GCSE arabic but there's no way in hell I would brave A level arabic. Two of my friends were doing some practise papers this year though and they both seemed to find it pretty easy. That may be because they're both very good at it though and get A*'s at gcse with next to no work. As for enjoyable, I guess only you would know the answer to that. Did you enjoy gcse arabic?

Did you not enjoy GCSE Arabic?

I mean I didn't mind it. But looking at the past papers now. I don't think I could get a decent grade. I'm not a native speaker which makes it twice as hard as well

I got an A at GCSE with literally no prep whatsoever. But I looked at the a level papers and they're all about translating from arabic to english and vice versa

What did you end up getting as a result?

Which board are you going to do it on? I did it on Edexcel and it was made up of five sections: 1) answering questions from an extract (everything is in arabic) 2) answering more questions from a different, more complex extract (everything in arabic) 3) putting the 7arakat on another extract- (the grammar section) 4) a translation from arabic into english and it requires you to be able to understand fos7a properly 5) the writing section- you write an essay on a controversal subject that they set and you have to ensure you put in the 7arakat

THAT WAS AS ONLY BTW ^^

I got a B and I did it in year 10. i might retake it and do it alongside A2 this time and do it next year (in year12)

Hey i know this forum is quite old butis anyone doing the exam next thursday 31rst may?

Hey, I am.
I'm doing Arabic as my 3rd A2, but am self teaching myself so it's tough lol.
I managed to get B/76 at AS though with just rushing through the past papers in the last minute though. I think I dropped marks on the 7arakat tashkeel part. I also know my essay writing uses a lot of vocal arabic lol, but what can you do hehe.
I'd like an A so I was going to resit the AS module, but my college wanted FOURTY QUID for it? So I just paid fourty for the A2 module...
I've been doing past papers and it seems like a harder exam than the AS exam. The comprehension just seems harder to answer and much more aggravating. The translation is alright, as long as I don't get a mind blank and completely forget the translation of a specific word. The essay writing is alright too since I don't mind writing, but what I hate is the fact that they give us the questions that are unbelievably vague and ask us to write a 250-350 word essay about it... I mean honestly, what do they expect us to write?
I also think they should leave a more "general" essay question such as "write a story which contains a dog and cat". The exam should test our ability to write Arabic, not how much we know about past civil wars in the middle east and silly things like that...
I'd be happy with another B in A2 at this point to be fully honest. Fortunately the grade boundaries are around 9 marks lower than AS so that will hopefully help us out...

I hated the 7arakat thing! It was so random coz like you're not used to speaking with them, yeah A2 is definetly harder than AS! Yeah i get what you mean about the translation like i sometimes go blank and can only think of it in Syrian arabic not fus7a :s
Have you read any of the books? Because the questions about the books are so much easier than the ones on the arab history and stuff.
Do you know how much you have to get to get an A* overall? I hope if i get a B i can at least scrape an A overall


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Yeah I agree, the 7arakat thing was useless. Let's be honest... nobody even uses them when arabic is written... if anything it confuses me more when reading arabic lol.
When I do the translation my mind sometimes goes blank too, the only difference is that words pop up in Lebanese arabic for me as opposed to fus7a haha, but I guess Lebanese arabic & Syrian arabic is more or less the same thing anyway.
Out of interest, do you actually learn arabic at college or anything? I don't so I haven't read the books unfortunately. I wish I had actually checked this exam before 3 days ago, otherwise I might have actually bought the book lol. I'm limited to the first 4 questions only now. They're such stupid questions though, whoever writes the papers deserves to die, seriously. 250-350 words for such vague questions, and they even have the cheek to mark us on content lol.
In the examiner report a lot of people tried the "7arb ahliya" question in the 2011 paper and got minimal marks because they didn't actually speak about a civil war. Apparently people spoke about the Iraq war and things like that. Fortunately when I did it I spoke about the Lebanese civil war.
I think to get an A* in any subject you must have an A at AS level and 90%+ at A2 level. How did you do last year in the AS paper? I got 76 UMS and a B. I would've liked an A, but I didn't mind the B. To be honest I don't think 76/B was too bad considering it was just doing a few past papers before the exam. But I'm almost certain I lost most marks where you needed to put 7arakat.
I've read the examiner reports and apparently in the translation part where it said the title as "al hatef al naqal" many people didn't realise it was the same as "al hatef al mota7arek" and thus lost a lot of marks. God knows what they may have translated it to lol
I'd take a B at A2 level to be honest, so hopefully I can get a high C or a B even. For a C in the A2 arabic paper, all you need is 40/80 apparently, and I'm pretty sure I can accumilate that. So far I got 64/80 on the June 2011 paper and 57/80 on the June 2010 paper. But then again my Mum is marking both my Section C's. She's giving me around 18-23 on them, some end up better than others.
She keeps telling me that my writing isn't that bad considering I'm just writing off the top of my head. The main problem is that I'm not great at spelling and sometimes I use Lebanese words lol. In the Examiner report for the 2011 paper they put a perfect example that got 28/28. I read it and it was like reading a book, it was like proper fus7a...
But simultaneously my Mum told me not to be too demoralised and to keep in mind its an Arabic as a SECOND LANGUAGE exam and that the person who got 28/28 was blatantly somebody who's Arabic was his/her first language... which doesn't apply for me.
But yeah :P How did you do at AS? It's so good to actually find somebody else doing this bloody exam... last year I couldn't find anyone on TSR doing the AS exam... plus the fact that I was sat by myself in the exam made me wonder whether anybody actually does A level Arabic lol

Haha shubak xD!!
To be honest, it's difficult not to keep elaborating on and on about the same point when you need to write 250-350 words on something that isn't worth more than 50...
The question about names along with the grandfather and grandmother thing could've also referred to how Prophet names are most popular (Mohammed, Ahmad etc) and Prophet wife names for women. However I still fail to acknowledge HOW THE FLUFF we are meant to write 250-350 words about it... Problem is nobody monitors the edexcel Arabic exams... The questions asked are so dumb and random. I hated that question in a section A comprehension where the question was - what do we learn from the passage about he Islamic world? And I think it was worth 2 marks and I was going mad because it says Aktob 7assab ma ja2 fi al less and it didn't say anything about it in the comprehension... We had to make our own conclusion basically which is a ridiculous exam mistake as it can be very confusing. The final answer was "la2an hiya kabeera" and I was so mad because that was what I wanted to put but didn't because it wasn't said in the comprehension text...


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To be fair, whoever the sad low life behind writing the Arabic exams is they need to get their act together :/
I totally agree about the history exam, like you said a non Arabic person wouldn't know anything about the names tradition and so forth. I have a funny feeling this Arabic paper will be ridiculously terrible and I will end up getting a C and being declined by both my firm and re was still lik lol[/QUOTE

Hahah, just realised the exam is in four days im actually so worried that im going to look at the paper and get a mind blank, what are you doing to revise for it?
They give us way too much time for the paper, ive decided im not gonna rush because last year i finished and there was still an hour and a half let and they wouldnt let us leave, it was the most boring hour and a half of my life


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