המשפחה והעולם הדיגיטלי: theme 3.1.1, past and current trends

You have written the sentence המשפחה הישראלית השתנתה מאוד בעשורים האחרונים. Improve it until it earns marks.

1. 01Diagnose what is wrong with it

   The sentence is true, vague and unmarkable. It names no community, no measure, no source and no direction of change. An AO4 grid asks for knowledge and understanding that supports an argument with appropriate evidence; this sentence has neither knowledge nor evidence, only an assertion. It is also the sentence almost every candidate writes, which means it distinguishes nobody.

2. 02Add the community

   בקרב משפחות חילוניות בערים הגדולות, among secular families in the large cities. Now the claim is about a specific population and can be right or wrong, which is the first condition of being worth marks. Note the construct-free phrasing with בקרב, among, which is a useful and safe preposition for exactly this move.

3. 03Add the measure and the direction

   גיל הנישואין עלה, the age of marriage has risen, and מספר משקי הבית שבהם חיה אישה לבדה גדל, the number of households in which a woman lives alone has grown. Both are directional claims that a source could confirm or refute. Note גיל הנישואין is a construct chain and מספר משקי הבית is a three-term chain, both with the article on the final noun.

4. 04Add the source, without inventing a number

   לפי נתוני הלשכה המרכזית לסטטיסטיקה, according to the figures of the Central Bureau of Statistics. You have not claimed a figure, so you cannot have got one wrong, and you have shown the examiner that you know where the evidence lives. This is the single most valuable habit in the whole AO4 half of this qualification.

5. 05Add what the claim does not show

   אך אין בכך כדי ללמד על משפחות חרדיות או ערביות, but this does not tell us anything about Haredi or Arab families. A sentence that marks the limit of its own evidence is doing exactly what the top AO4 band describes as evaluation, and it costs eleven words.

Result: בקרב משפחות חילוניות בערים הגדולות עלה גיל הנישואין וגדל מספר משקי הבית שבהם חיה אישה לבדה, לפי נתוני הלשכה המרכזית לסטטיסטיקה, אך אין בכך כדי ללמד על משפחות חרדיות או ערביות - a sentence that names a population, a direction, a source and a limit, in place of one that named nothing.

Write a short Hebrew paragraph on the absence of civil marriage in Israel that a supporter and an opponent of the arrangement would both accept as accurate.

1. 01Separate the fact from the evaluation before writing

   The facts: there is no civil marriage; the 1953 law gives the rabbinical courts exclusive jurisdiction for Jewish citizens; other recognised communities have their own courts; marriages contracted abroad are registered. The evaluations: whether this is right. Everything in the first list can be stated flatly; nothing in the second can be stated at all without an attribution.

2. 02Open with the fact, in the passive or the impersonal

   בישראל אין נישואין אזרחיים, ועניינים של מעמד אישי נתונים לסמכותם של בתי הדין הדתיים של העדות המוכרות. Note נתונים, given over, a passive participle, and לסמכותם, to their jurisdiction, a noun with a possessive suffix - both raise the register to match the subject and both are AO3 evidence.

3. 03Attribute the first position, at its strongest

   התומכים בהסדר טוענים כי מסגרת אחת שומרת על בסיס משותף לענייני מעמד אישי בציבור שהגיע ממדינות רבות. Note טוענים כי, argue that - the attribution verb is doing the work, and כי is the formal complementiser that suits the register.

4. 04Attribute the second position, equally strongly

   המתנגדים טוענים כי היעדר אפשרות אזרחית פוגע בחופש המצפון וכי הוא מקשה במיוחד על מי שהמערכת הדתית אינה מכירה במעמדו. Equal length, equal force. If one position is given three clauses and the other one, the paragraph has taken a side without saying so, and an examiner will see it.

5. 05Close without adjudicating

   הצעות לשינוי החוק הוגשו פעמים רבות ולא התקבלו, והשאלה נותרה פתוחה. That is a factual sentence about the state of the argument, not a verdict on it. It is also, in an AO4 grid, exactly what evaluation of a contested issue looks like: knowing that it is contested and being able to say why.

Result: A five-sentence Hebrew paragraph in which every fact is dated or institutional, every characterisation is attributed with a verb of claiming, the two positions are given equal weight and length, and the closing sentence reports the state of the argument rather than settling it.

You want to say that single-parent households have become more common. You have no figure and no dictionary. Write it three ways and choose.

1. 01The version that invents a number

   עשרים אחוז מן המשפחות בישראל הן חד הוריות. Do not write this. You cannot source it in the exam room, a marker may know it is wrong, and even if it happened to be right it is unattributed. An invented figure is the single most damaging thing a candidate can put on this paper, because it converts a knowledge answer into a false one.

2. 02The version that is merely vague

   יש הרבה משפחות חד הוריות בישראל. This is safe and worthless: הרבה, a lot, is not a claim. It uses no comparative structure, so it earns nothing on AO3 either. Vagueness is the wrong solution to the problem of not knowing a number.

3. 03The version that compares over time

   מספר המשפחות החד הוריות בישראל גדול היום מכפי שהיה לפני שלושים שנה. Now there is a real directional claim, built on a comparative - גדול ... מכפי ש, larger than it was - which is a structure from 3.3.5 and is exactly the manipulation the AO3 grid describes. And it is true without any number attached.

4. 04Add the source, and you have the AO4 mark too

   לפי נתוני הלשכה המרכזית לסטטיסטיקה, מספר המשפחות החד הוריות בישראל גדול היום מכפי שהיה לפני שלושים שנה. The attribution costs six words and converts an assertion into evidence. Note the construct chain נתוני הלשכה with its article on the second element.

5. 05Add the limit, and you have the evaluation mark

   אך העלייה אינה אחידה בכל הקהילות. But the rise is not uniform across all communities. Five words, and the sentence now shows that you know the aggregate hides variation - which is what the top AO4 band means by evaluating rather than reporting.

Result: לפי נתוני הלשכה המרכזית לסטטיסטיקה, מספר המשפחות החד הוריות בישראל גדול היום מכפי שהיה לפני שלושים שנה, אך העלייה אינה אחידה בכל הקהילות - a directional, sourced, qualified claim with no number in it at all.

A Paper 1 stimulus text on digital government contains: מאז שהושק הפורטל הממשלתי החדש ניתן להגיש בקשות רבות באופן מקוון, אך ארגוני זכויות טוענים שהמעבר פוגע דווקא במי שאין לו גישה למחשב. The question, with no AO3 marks attached, is: מה טוענים ארגוני הזכויות.

1. 01Identify exactly what is asked

   The question asks what the rights organisations claim, and nothing else. It does not ask what the portal does, when it was launched, or what the writer thinks. The answer is therefore the content of the שטוענים clause and only that.

2. 02Find the smallest span

   שהמעבר פוגע דווקא במי שאין לו גישה למחשב - that the transition harms precisely those who have no access to a computer. That span begins where the claim begins and ends where the sentence ends. Nothing before it belongs in the answer.

3. 03Adjust only what grammar forces

   The span begins with the complementiser ש, which was attached to טוענים in the original. Dropping it gives המעבר פוגע דווקא במי שאין לו גישה למחשב, which is a free-standing clause. That is the whole adjustment: one letter. This is permitted lifting, because the comprehension question carries no AO3 marks and the span matches the phrasing of the question.

4. 04See the answer that would lose the mark

   Copying from מאז onwards includes the launch of the portal and what can now be done online - material the question did not ask for. The specification says the content mark is withheld where a response includes irrelevant material, so this longer answer, which contains the right information, can score zero. The instinct to give more is the enemy here.

5. 05Note where the rule reverses

   If the same content had to appear in the summary question, none of this lifted language would earn an AO3 mark. There you would write: ארגוני זכויות מזהירים כי המערכת החדשה מקשה על מי שאינו מחובר, using different words and a different verb. One text, two modes.

Result: המעבר פוגע דווקא במי שאין לו גישה למחשב - a nine-word permitted lift adjusted by one letter, with the longer and more generous answer identified as the one that loses the mark.

A stimulus text describes the movement of Israeli public services online and ends with a qualification about who is left behind. Build the summary.

1. 01Extract and count content points before touching Hebrew

   Five: (1) many state services moved to a single online portal; (2) applications that once required attendance can be made from home; (3) processing times fell; (4) organisations report that older applicants and applicants outside the centre struggle; (5) the ministry says telephone and counter services continue. Five points, five sentences, about nineteen words each. That arithmetic is the whole plan.

2. 02Choose the order and the connectives now

   Points 1 to 3 are the development, 4 is the qualification, 5 is the response. So: development, development, development, מנגד or אולם for the turn, and ובתגובה for the response. Three connectives chosen in ten seconds, and now no sentence will stall while you hunt for a linking word.

3. 03Rebuild the vocabulary so nothing is lifted

   If the text says הושק, write החל לפעול. If it says זמן טיפול, write משך הטיפול. If it says מתקשים, write נתקלים בקושי. No three consecutive words should survive from the source. Where you can, change the structure rather than the word: turn a noun phrase into a clause, or an active into a passive.

4. 04Write, checking accuracy continuously

   Agreement on every noun phrase; the article on the second noun of every construct chain - שירותי המדינה, אתר הממשלה; et before every definite direct object; participles for the general present and past forms for the completed developments. One deliberate complex structure per two sentences: a relative clause with ש, or an infinitive after ניתן ל, which is the impersonal it is possible to.

5. 05Stop cleanly

   Count in blocks of about twenty. After the fifth point you should be near 95. If you are at 91 and the sentence is finished, stop. Do not add a concluding sentence: a summary does not need one, and a sixth sentence pushes the fifth content point past the cut-off in a long answer.

Result: A five-sentence summary of about 95 words in which the content plan and the connectives were fixed before any Hebrew was written, no three-word span survives from the source, and the qualification - the content point an examiner most wants to see - sits in sentence four rather than after the cut-off.