Reading: Paper 1 Section B and the texts you will meet (القراءة)

Arabic relative clauses behave in a way that gives a reader free information, and English speakers systematically miss it. Work out the rule and then use it to parse three sentences at speed.

1. 01The rule, and why it is a gift to a reader

   A relative clause after a DEFINITE antecedent must be introduced by a relative pronoun agreeing with it: الذي, التي, الذين, اللواتي. A relative clause after an INDEFINITE antecedent has no pronoun at all. So the presence or absence of الذي tells you whether the noun before it was definite — before you have looked at the noun. In a long sentence where the antecedent is several words back, that is genuinely useful information, and it is free.

2. 02Parse a definite one

   المشروع الذي أعلنته الوزارة العام الماضي لم يبدأ بعد. الذي is masculine singular, so its antecedent is masculine singular and definite: المشروع. Inside the clause, أعلنته carries a resumptive ه referring back to المشروع, which Arabic requires and English does not have. الوزارة is the subject of أعلنته. So: the project which the ministry announced last year has not yet begun. The resumptive pronoun is the second gift: it tells you the antecedent's role inside the clause.

3. 03Parse an indefinite one

   أعلنت الوزارة مشروعا يبدأ العام المقبل. There is no relative pronoun, so مشروعا must be indefinite — and it is, with its accusative alif visible. يبدأ العام المقبل is a relative clause with no marker: a project which begins next year. An English speaker reading quickly can take يبدأ as a second main verb and produce nonsense; the rule prevents that, because an indefinite noun followed directly by a verb is almost always a relative clause.

4. 04Parse one where the antecedent is a non-human plural

   الإجراءات التي اتخذتها البلدية لم تحقق أثرا واضحا. التي, feminine singular, is correct for the non-human plural الإجراءات — the same agreement rule that governs verbs and adjectives governs relative pronouns. اتخذتها carries the resumptive ها. لم تحقق is feminine singular for the same reason. Three separate consequences of one rule inside seven words, and a reader who knows the rule reads it as a single unit.

5. 05Use the rule in reverse when you write

   The same rule is a production trap. Writing نص يشرح الموقف, a text which explains the position, is correct with no pronoun; writing النص الذي يشرح الموقف is correct with one; writing نص الذي يشرح is wrong, and it is one of the commonest errors in candidates' Arabic because English uses which in both cases. Check every relative clause you write against the definiteness of its antecedent, and remember to attach the resumptive pronoun when the antecedent is the object of the clause.

6. 06Turn it into a reading reflex

   When you meet الذي or التي, do two things immediately: look left for the nearest definite noun that agrees, and look inside the clause for the resumptive pronoun that tells you its role. When you meet an indefinite noun followed by a verb, assume a relative clause until proved otherwise. Those two reflexes together will resolve most of the long sentences in a Section B text, and they cost no vocabulary at all.

Result: A definite antecedent takes الذي, التي or their plurals, agreeing fully, and the clause carries a resumptive pronoun where the antecedent is its object; an indefinite antecedent takes no relative pronoun at all. Reading the presence or absence of the pronoun tells you the antecedent's definiteness before you have found it, and writing it wrongly is one of the commonest errors an English speaker makes in Arabic.

Two constructed passages on the same subject, the family house. Both are written for this exercise rather than taken from any source. Read each for what its type rewards. Literary: كان البيت في آخر الزقاق، وكانت نافذته الوحيدة تطل على جدار. لم يكن أحد يزوره إلا في الأعياد، وحين يزورونه كانوا يجلسون في الغرفة نفسها التي جلس فيها آباؤهم، ويتحدثون عن الأشياء نفسها. ومع ذلك لم يشك أحد منهم يوما في أنه بيت العائلة. Journalistic: يتناول تقرير بلدي ظاهرة إغلاق بيوت العائلة في المدن الكبرى، ويعزو معدوه ذلك إلى ارتفاع أسعار العقارات وإلى انتقال الأبناء إلى مدن أخرى بحثا عن العمل. غير أن التقرير يلاحظ أن كثيرا من هذه الأسر تواصل الاجتماع في المناسبات، ولو في مكان آخر

1. 01Read the literary tense pattern first

   كان البيت, كانت نافذته, لم يكن أحد يزوره, كانوا يجلسون — every verb in the first two sentences is كان or كان plus an imperfect, which is the Arabic of habitual background. Then ومع ذلك لم يشك أحد منهم يوما, a perfect under a negative, which breaks the pattern. That break is the point of the passage: everything before it is habit and the last sentence is a claim about how the habit was regarded. A reader who registers the tense pattern has found the passage's argument without reading for content.

2. 02Notice what the literary passage never says

   It never says the house was neglected, or that the family was declining, or that anyone felt anything. It says the only window faced a wall, that nobody visited except at festivals, that visitors sat in the same room their fathers had sat in and talked about the same things. Those are observations, and the reader assembles the situation from them. A question here would ask ماذا يفهم القارئ عن مكانة البيت لدى الأسرة, and the answer must be an inference with the observations as evidence.

3. 03Read the journalistic frame

   يتناول تقرير بلدي … ويعزو معدوه ذلك إلى … The claim is attributed from the first clause: this is what a report says, not what the writer asserts. عزا … إلى is to attribute something to a cause, and معدوه, its compilers, is a sound masculine plural in a construct with a possessive suffix — so the two causes named are the report's causes. A question asking من يرى أن ارتفاع الأسعار سبب رئيسي؟ has one correct answer, and it is not the writer.

4. 04Find the journalistic concession

   غير أن التقرير يلاحظ أن كثيرا من هذه الأسر تواصل الاجتماع في المناسبات، ولو في مكان آخر. غير أن marks the reservation and ولو, even if, marks its limit. This is the sentence a question will target, because it complicates the report's own headline finding: the houses are closing, and the gatherings continue elsewhere. Notice كثيرا من, a great many, and preserve it — an answer that says the families all continue to gather has misreported the source.

5. 05See what each passage can and cannot be asked

   The literary passage cannot be asked لماذا أغلقت بيوت العائلة, because it gives no causes; it can be asked what the reader understands about the house's standing. The journalistic passage cannot be asked كيف شعر أفراد الأسرة, because it reports no feelings; it can be asked what causes the report gives and what it qualifies. Matching your reading to what the text can support is what stops you inventing an answer that is not there.

6. 06Answer one question from each, in your own Arabic

   From the literary passage, on the house's standing: يفهم القارئ أن البيت لم يعد مستعملا في الحياة اليومية، ولكنه ظل رمزا للأسرة، بدليل أن الزيارات اقتصرت على الأعياد وأن أحدا لم يشكك في أنه بيت العائلة. بدليل أن, on the evidence that, is the frame that turns an inference into an argued answer. From the journalistic passage, on the qualification: يلاحظ التقرير أن كثيرا من الأسر ما زالت تجتمع في المناسبات وإن كان ذلك في مكان آخر، وهو ما يحد من دلالة إغلاق البيوت

Result: From the literary passage: يفهم القارئ أن البيت لم يعد مستعملا في الحياة اليومية، ولكنه ظل رمزا للأسرة، بدليل أن الزيارات اقتصرت على الأعياد وأن أحدا لم يشكك في أنه بيت العائلة. From the journalistic passage: يلاحظ التقرير أن كثيرا من الأسر ما زالت تجتمع في المناسبات وإن كان ذلك في مكان آخر، وهو ما يحد من دلالة إغلاق البيوت

Read this constructed passage and answer: ماذا يفهم القارئ من كلام سكان الحي، ولماذا؟ لم يعلن المهرجان هذا العام عن أي عرض في المسرح القديم، واكتفى ببرنامج في الصالة الجديدة على أطراف المدينة. وقال المنظمون إن القرار يتعلق بالسلامة فقط. غير أن سكان الحي لاحظوا أن أسعار التذاكر ارتفعت في الوقت نفسه، وأن الحافلات لا تصل إلى الصالة بعد منتصف الليل

1. 01Separate what is stated from what is reported

   Three kinds of statement sit in four sentences. The programme change is stated as fact. القرار يتعلق بالسلامة فقط is reported — قال المنظمون إن — and so is a claim by an interested party, not the writer's assertion. And the residents' two observations are also reported. Nothing in the passage asserts a motive. So the answer cannot be that the festival moved for commercial reasons; that would be importing a claim the text does not make.

2. 02Find the juxtaposition, because it is doing the work

   The residents place two facts beside each other — ticket prices rose at the same time, and buses do not reach the venue after midnight — and beside a third that the organisers supplied, that the decision was about safety only. Neither observation contradicts the safety claim. What the juxtaposition implies is that the residents doubt فقط, only: they are pointing at effects the safety explanation does not cover. The implication is about the completeness of the explanation, not about its truth.

3. 03Notice the word the whole inference turns on

   فقط. Without it, the organisers' statement would be uncontroversial and the residents' observations would be unrelated details. With it, the sentence claims that safety is the entire reason, and the residents' two facts are precisely the kind of thing an entire reason would have to account for. This is why reading a short function word carefully is worth more in an inference question than knowing a long noun.

4. 04Check for the conspicuous absence too

   The passage never says who benefits from the move, never gives the price change as a figure, and never says whether an alternative venue was considered. The absences are consistent with a report that is deliberately not making an accusation, which is itself worth noticing: the writer is presenting a disagreement rather than joining it. That observation would strengthen an answer, and it is evidenced by the reporting frames.

5. 05Write the inference with the evidence attached

   يفهم القارئ أن سكان الحي لا يقتنعون بأن السلامة هي السبب الوحيد، بدليل أنهم يذكرون إلى جانبها أمرين لا يفسرهما هذا السبب: ارتفاع الأسعار في الوقت نفسه، وصعوبة الوصول إلى الصالة ليلا. بدليل أن … is the evidence frame. لا يفسرهما هذا السبب, which this reason does not explain, states exactly what the juxtaposition implies. Note that the answer says they are unconvinced, not that the organisers are lying — the smaller claim is the one the text supports.

6. 06Check that you did not import anything

   Run through the answer word by word and ask of each claim: where is it in the text? Unconvinced — from the fact that they raise counter-observations against فقط. Prices rose at the same time — stated. Buses do not reach the venue after midnight — stated. Nothing about profit, nothing about the old theatre's condition, nothing about the organisers' motives. The answer is entirely inside the passage, which is what makes it an inference rather than a guess.

Result: يفهم القارئ أن سكان الحي لا يقتنعون بأن السلامة هي السبب الوحيد، بدليل أنهم يذكرون إلى جانبها أمرين لا يفسرهما هذا السبب: ارتفاع الأسعار في الوقت نفسه، وصعوبة الوصول إلى الصالة ليلا

The recording was an interview in which a resident of an old quarter argued that restoration has priced local families out of their own neighbourhood. The written text is a municipal statement, constructed for this exercise: تؤكد البلدية أن برنامج الترميم أنقذ عشرات المباني التاريخية من الانهيار، وأنه وفر فرص عمل في قطاع البناء التقليدي. وتضيف أن ارتفاع الإيجارات ظاهرة عامة في المدينة كلها ولا يمكن نسبتها إلى البرنامج وحده. غير أن البيان يقر بأن عددا من الأسر انتقل إلى أحياء أخرى خلال السنوات الأخيرة. Write 5(b).

1. 01Identify the position, not the topic

   The statement's position is not that restoration is good; it is that the programme's benefits are attributable to it while the rent rise is not. That is a claim about attribution, and it is the answer to the question. Opening with it — يدافع البيان عن البرنامج بالتمييز بين ما يمكن نسبته إليه وما لا يمكن — gets the analysis into the first clause rather than after a paragraph of description.

2. 02Give the two positive claims compactly

   فينسب إليه إنقاذ عشرات المباني التاريخية من الانهيار وتوفير فرص عمل في البناء التقليدي. نسب إلى is to attribute to, and using it here mirrors the statement's own logic. إنقاذ and توفير are two verbal nouns as objects, which is how Arabic compresses two clauses into one. عشرات is a plural of عشرة and is a usefully vague quantity word — preserve it rather than converting it into a number.

3. 03Give the denial exactly, because its scope is the argument

   وينفي أن يكون ارتفاع الإيجارات نتيجة للبرنامج وحده، معتبرا إياه ظاهرة عامة في المدينة كلها. نفى أن يكون takes a subjunctive. وحده, alone, is the load-bearing word and must survive into your summary: the statement does not deny that rents rose, and it does not deny that the programme contributed. It denies that the programme is the sole cause. A summary that reports a flat denial has misreported the source.

4. 04Record the concession, and mark it as one

   غير أنه يقر بأن عددا من الأسر انتقل إلى أحياء أخرى في السنوات الأخيرة. أقر بأن, concedes that, marks the status. عددا من الأسر is a number of families — again vague, again to be preserved. This sentence matters disproportionately, because it is the point at which the written source and the recording actually touch: the resident's central claim is exactly this movement, and the statement grants the fact while disputing the cause.

5. 05Stop, and check the quantifiers

   Three sentences: position, claims, concession. The scheme is points-based and further sentences add nothing. Then check the three quantifiers — عشرات, وحده, عددا من — because all three are places where a summary can silently change the claim. Upgrading عددا من to كثيرا, or dropping وحده, would each turn an accurate summary into an inaccurate one.

6. 06See what 5(c) can now do with it

   The summary has isolated the real disagreement, which is about causation rather than about facts: both sources agree that families moved and that rents rose, and they disagree about attribution. That is the sentence 5(c) should open with — الخلاف بين المصدرين ليس على الوقائع بل على نسبتها — and it is available only because 5(b) reported the scope of the denial rather than the denial itself.

Result: يدافع البيان عن البرنامج بالتمييز بين ما يمكن نسبته إليه وما لا يمكن. فينسب إليه إنقاذ عشرات المباني التاريخية من الانهيار وتوفير فرص عمل في البناء التقليدي، وينفي أن يكون ارتفاع الإيجارات نتيجة للبرنامج وحده، معتبرا إياه ظاهرة عامة في المدينة كلها. غير أنه يقر بأن عددا من الأسر انتقل إلى أحياء أخرى في السنوات الأخيرة

A Section B text reports that a city has opened a public library in a converted market building, that visitor numbers have been highest among students, that the municipality says the aim was to reuse a building rather than to build a new one, and that some booksellers in the surrounding street have said their trade has changed. Work the four question types.

1. 01Multiple choice: eliminate on evidence, not on plausibility

   ما الهدف الذي تذكره البلدية من المشروع؟ with options including زيادة عدد القراء and إعادة استعمال مبنى قائم. Both are plausible and only the second is what the municipality is reported as saying; the first is true of the outcome and answers a different question. The discipline is to underline the exact words in the text that decide it — تقول البلدية إن الهدف كان … — and to reject any option you cannot point at. Thirty seconds, one mark banked.

2. 02Retrieval: answer short, and recast

   من أكثر الفئات ارتيادا للمكتبة؟ The answer is students, and the recast version is الطلاب هم أكثر الفئات ارتيادا, using the text's information without its sentence. أكثر … ارتيادا is a superlative with a tamyiz. Do not add why they come, do not add how many: the question asked one thing and the extra earns nothing while costing time you will want later.

3. 03Two reasons: number them, and stop at two

   اذكر سببين يجعلان تحويل المبنى خيارا معقولا. Two, numbered: أولا، أن المبنى كان قائما بالفعل فلم تكن هناك حاجة إلى بناء جديد؛ وثانيا، أن موقعه في وسط السوق يجعله قريبا من الناس. أولا … وثانيا … makes the two visible to the examiner and stops you from writing a third. Both reasons are drawn from the text and neither reproduces its wording.

4. 04Inference: claim plus evidence, and keep the claim small

   ماذا يفهم القارئ من كلام الباعة عن أثر المكتبة على الشارع؟ يفهم أن أثر المكتبة على الشارع لم يكن أثرا واحدا، بدليل أن الباعة تحدثوا عن تغير في تجارتهم لا عن ازدهار ولا عن كساد. The claim is that the effect was mixed rather than good or bad, and the evidence is the text's own word تغير, change, which is neither. Note how much work one carefully-read noun does, and how much smaller and safer this claim is than saying the library harmed the booksellers.

5. 05Spend the last five minutes on the Arabic

   Check four things. Agreement: الطلاب is a human plural taking a plural verb, but any non-human plural in your answers takes feminine singular. The idafa: أكثر الفئات has no article on أكثر. Verb endings: يجعلان is a dual indicative and keeps its ن; if it had followed أن it would lose it. And the accusative alif on any indefinite object — أثرا واحدا has it. Four checks, and none of them requires the text.

6. 06Audit where the time went

   Five minutes on the questions, fifteen mapping the text, fifteen writing, five checking, five spare. If in practice you find the fifteen minutes of mapping becoming twenty-five, the cause is almost always reading for vocabulary rather than for structure — and the fix is the connective drill from the first section of this topic, not more vocabulary.

Result: Multiple choice: eliminate on the text's exact words, not on plausibility. Retrieval: الطلاب هم أكثر الفئات ارتيادا. Two reasons: أولا، أن المبنى كان قائما بالفعل فلم تكن هناك حاجة إلى بناء جديد؛ وثانيا، أن موقعه في وسط السوق يجعله قريبا من الناس. Inference: يفهم أن أثر المكتبة على الشارع لم يكن أثرا واحدا، بدليل أن الباعة تحدثوا عن تغير في تجارتهم لا عن ازدهار ولا عن كساد