Notes · PersianUK · A-Levels

The Iran-Iraq war, and how it is written about (موضوع چهارم: جنگ ایران و عراق)

This topic carries the first sub-theme of Edexcel's fourth theme, موضوع چهارم: تأثیرات سیاسی و هنری بر جامعه در گذشته و امروز, political and artistic influences on society past and present. The specification says Theme 4 covers political culture — meaning war and migration — together with artistic culture, meaning changing approaches to art; the first of those two halves is this topic and the second is the next one. The sub-theme is جنگ ایران و عراق, the Iran-Iraq war, which the specification's own heading dates from 1980 to 1988, and its three aspects are the war and its effect on society and on people, its effect on literature and film, and the effect of migration on society and the economy. Theme 4 is set in the context of Iran only. This is the most politically sensitive material in the qualification, and this topic is built around a single method: state dated facts flatly, attribute every interpretation to whoever makes it, name live debates as debates, teach the naming of the war as itself part of the content, invent no statistics and no testimony, and mark your own judgement as judgement. The aspect on literature and film is spec-required, is the richest, and is the safest way into the sub-theme, so it comes second rather than last.

5 sections~36 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Advanced 5

T·0555 / 12

Exam profile

AO1 · Understand and respond in writing to spoken Persian about history, memory and displacementAO2 · Understand and respond in writing to written Persian of historical, memoir and critical registerAO3 · Manipulate Persian accurately, using historical vocabulary and complex structuresAO4 · Show knowledge and understanding of, and respond critically to, the war and its place in Iranian culture

Operators:شرح دهیدتوضیح دهیدتحلیل کنیدمقایسه کنیدارزیابی کنیداستدلال کنیدنقد کنیدترجمه کنید

basic level

At first-year standard the expectation is an accurate outline and accurate vocabulary: when the war began and ended, the names it is given and by whom, the Persian words for war, ceasefire, displacement and reconstruction, and a personal response written in correct Persian without exaggeration.

higher level

The full A-Level expects the outline handled as argument. Which claims about the war are dated facts, which are interpretations, and whose? Why do figures for casualties and displacement differ so widely between sources, and what follows from that? How does a national literature about a war differ from a national history of it? Answers must attribute every evaluation, must resist any single narrative, must invent nothing, and must use the pluperfect, the passive and subordination deliberately.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

The Iran-Iraq war, and how it is written about (موضوع چهارم: جنگ ایران و عراق)

The war and what it is called (نام‌های این جنگ)#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9PN0 موضوع چهارم: تأثیرات سیاسی و هنری بر جامعه در گذشته و امروزPearson Edexcel 9PN0 Paper 1 Section A (translation into English)

The names of the war, and whose usage each is

Fig. 1A name for a war is a compressed argument about it, and Theme 4 is a theme about political culture, so the naming belongs in the answer rather than in a footnote. Use the first row in your own voice and introduce every other row as the usage of a particular community. The table is romanised and in English because the figure engine emits no direction attribute and has no bidi handling; the Persian spellings are in the prose above, and those are the forms you must be able to write.

Begin with what can be stated flatly, because a firm factual spine is what makes careful writing possible on a subject like this. The war between Iran and Iraq began in September 1980, when Iraqi forces crossed into Iran, and ended in August 1988 with a ceasefire after Iran accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 598. It lasted almost eight years. It was fought largely along the two countries' shared border and in the Gulf, and it involved very large military and civilian losses on both sides. The use of chemical weapons during the war is documented, including by United Nations investigations conducted at the time. Those sentences carry no interpretation and can be written without hedging. Everything after them needs care.

The names given to this war differ according to whose account you are reading, and in this qualification the naming is not background — it is content, because Theme 4 is about political culture and a name is a political act. جنگ ایران و عراق, the Iran-Iraq war, is the neutral descriptive term and is what the Edexcel specification itself uses; it is your safe default. جنگ تحمیلی, the imposed war, is standard Iranian usage and asserts that the war was imposed on Iran. دفاع مقدس, the sacred defence, is also standard Iranian usage and frames the war in moral and religious terms; it is the name attached to the literary and cinematic genres this sub-theme requires you to study. In the Iraqi state's wartime rhetoric the war was given a name invoking a seventh-century battle. In English-language writing it is usually the Iran-Iraq War, and sometimes the First Gulf War, a label that is ambiguous because others reserve Gulf War for the conflict of the early nineteen-nineties.

What you do with those names is straightforward and it is worth learning as a fixed technique. Use جنگ ایران و عراق when you are writing in your own voice. When you need one of the other names — and you will, because دفاع مقدس is the name of the genre — introduce it as the name that a particular community uses, in guillemets or with an attribution phrase: در ایران این جنگ را «جنگ تحمیلی» نیز می‌نامند, in Iran this war is also called the imposed war. That is not evasion. It is accuracy: a name that carries a claim should be reported as carrying it. A candidate who slides between the neutral term and a partisan one without marking the change has taken a position without arguing for it, and an examiner reading for critical analysis will see exactly that.

The rule about numbers governs everything in this sub-theme and is worth stating once, hard. Do not write a casualty figure, a veteran figure, a displacement figure or an economic figure from memory. Estimates for this war differ very widely between sources, they are themselves contested, and you have nothing with you in the examination against which to check one. There are two honest alternatives and both are stronger writing. Attribute: بر اساس برآوردهای گوناگون, according to various estimates. Or go comparative: تلفات این جنگ در تاریخ معاصر ایران بی‌سابقه بود — the losses of this war were without precedent in Iran's modern history — which is a defensible claim about scale that requires no number at all. And say why the sources differ, because that observation is itself an AO4 mark.

Worked example

Paper 1 Section A: a historical paragraph into English, keeping fact and framing apart

Translate into English and justify each choice. «جنگ در شهریور سال هزار و سیصد و پنجاه و نه آغاز شد و نزدیک به هشت سال به درازا کشید. در ایران این جنگ را «دفاع مقدس» نیز می‌نامند، و همین نام نشان می‌دهد که خاطره‌ی جنگ تنها یک خاطره‌ی نظامی نیست. برآوردها درباره‌ی شمار کشته‌شدگان با یکدیگر تفاوت بسیار دارند.»

Sentence one: a date in the solar calendar, and an idiom of duration
جنگ در شهریور سال هزار و سیصد و پنجاه و نه آغاز شد is The war began in the month of Shahrivar of the Iranian year 1359. Two decisions. First, the month name شهریور has no English equivalent and should be kept, with a gloss: Shahrivar, which falls in late summer. Second, the year is a solar Hijri year and translating it as a western year is a substantive change; the honest English is to give the Iranian year and, if you know it securely, the corresponding western date. به درازا کشیدن, to drag on or last, is a compound idiom; نزدیک به هشت سال is almost eight years and the hedge نزدیک به must survive.
Sentence two, first half: reported naming, and the guillemets do work
در ایران این جنگ را «دفاع مقدس» نیز می‌نامند is In Iran this war is also called the sacred defence. The verb is an impersonal third-person plural — they call it — which English renders naturally as a passive. را marks این جنگ as the object; نامیدن takes an object plus a predicate complement, here in guillemets. Keep the quotation marks in English or use italics, because the Persian is deliberately quoting a name rather than using it, and flattening that would misrepresent the sentence's whole point.
Sentence two, second half: a cleft, and a careful negative
و همین نام نشان می‌دهد که خاطره‌ی جنگ تنها یک خاطره‌ی نظامی نیست is and this very name shows that the memory of the war is not only a military memory. همین before a noun is this very and is emphatic. خاطره‌ی جنگ is an ezafe chain written ه‌ی after the final silent ه. The negative تنها ... نیست is not only, and it is not the same as is not — an English version reading the memory of the war is not a military memory would reverse the claim. This is the kind of small negation that a points-based scheme marks precisely.
Sentence three: the sentence you must not improve
برآوردها درباره‌ی شمار کشته‌شدگان با یکدیگر تفاوت بسیار دارند is Estimates of the number of those killed differ greatly from one another. برآورد is an estimate; کشته‌شدگان is those killed, a passive participle used as a plural noun, and it is deliberately more neutral than either قربانیان or شهدا, both of which carry framings. تفاوت داشتن با, to differ from, takes با. Above all, do not translate this sentence into a number. The Persian says the estimates differ; producing a figure in English would replace a careful statement with a fabricated one, which is exactly the failure this whole topic is built to prevent.

Result: The war began in the month of Shahrivar of the Iranian year 1359, which falls in late summer, and lasted almost eight years. In Iran this war is also called the sacred defence, and this very name shows that the memory of the war is not only a military memory. Estimates of the number of those killed differ greatly from one another.

Typical mistakes

Adopting دفاع مقدس as your own descriptive term without marking it. It is the name of a moral framing and of a genre, not a neutral label.
Writing a casualty number. The estimates differ enormously and you cannot check one in the exam room.
Calling it the First Gulf War without defining the term. The label is used in more than one way and will read as imprecise.
Treating the war as ancient history. It is within living memory for a very large number of people, and the register of your writing should reflect that.

Active revision

چهار نام این جنگ را بنویسید و برای هر کدام مشخص کنید که چه کسانی آن را به کار می‌برند و چه ادعایی در آن نهفته است؛ سپس یک جمله بنویسید که در آن نام غیرخنثی را به گوینده‌اش نسبت دهید

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Persian (9PN0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

The war in literature and film (تأثیر آن بر ادبیات و فیلم)#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9PN0 موضوع چهارم — جنگ ایران و عراق: تأثیر آن بر ادبیات و فیلمPearson Edexcel 9PN0 Paper 2 Section B (written response to works — method)

The war years, and where the dates stop

Fig. 2Four securely dated landmarks and the span they enclose. The emphasised event is the ceasefire, because it is the point after which the war's presence in Iranian culture stops being reportage and becomes memory. Notice what this figure deliberately does not do: it puts no date on the literary or cinematic response, because that response has no single dated landmark and inventing one to balance the diagram would be a fabrication. The absence is the honest answer, and it is worth a sentence in your own writing.

This aspect is required by the specification, it is the richest in the sub-theme, and it is the safest, so take it early rather than leaving it as a coda. The war produced a very large body of Iranian writing and film-making, enough that it is spoken of as a field with its own name. ادبیات دفاع مقدس, sacred-defence literature, and ادبیات پایداری, literature of resistance, are the two labels most used; سینمای دفاع مقدس is the corresponding label in cinema. Naming the field with its own Persian label, and noting that the label itself carries a framing, is a strong opening move — it shows you know that a genre name is not a neutral description of the works inside it.

The forms are worth distinguishing because they do different work. خاطره, memoir, is the largest form by volume, and much of it takes the shape of an oral account recorded and edited by a writer, a practice that raises real questions about voice and authorship that are discussed openly in Iran. رمان, the novel, gives distance and invention. شعر, poetry, gave the war its most quoted lines and its elegies. مستند, documentary, and فیلم داستانی, feature film, split the cinema. And there is a substantial body of writing about the aftermath — about جانبازان, disabled veterans, including those affected by chemical weapons, and about آزادگان, returned prisoners of war — which is often more searching than the writing produced during the fighting.

Two works can be named safely as widely discussed examples: the novel «زمین سوخته» by احمد محمود, and the recorded memoir «دا», one of the best-selling Iranian books about the war. In cinema, ابراهیم حاتمی‌کیا is the director most closely associated with the war and its aftermath, and بهرام بیضایی's «باشو، غریبه‌ی کوچک» is among the most discussed Iranian films connected to wartime displacement. Name works accurately and stop there. Do not summarise a plot you have not read or a scene you have not watched, and never invent a quotation from any of them. If you intend to use a work as evidence, read or watch it; if you have not, write about the field rather than about the work.

The analytical question that lifts this aspect above description is what a national literature about a war can do that a national history cannot. Several answers are defensible and each can be argued: literature can hold contradictory experiences together without resolving them; it can record the domestic and civilian war that military history omits; it can carry grief in a form that a chronology cannot; and it can, equally, become official and consoling in ways that close questions rather than open them. That last possibility is discussed by Iranian critics themselves, and reporting the critical debate rather than choosing a side is exactly what the AO4 grid means by responding critically and analytically.

Worked example

Paper 2 Section B method: how to build an evidenced paragraph about a work, applied here to war writing

Paper 2 asks for a critical and analytical response to a prescribed work, justified with evidence from the work itself. Practise the method on a work of war writing you have actually read, then transfer it to your prescribed text. Build one paragraph in Persian and account for every move.

Step one: state the claim before you reach for the evidence
A paragraph that begins with an episode and works towards a point reads as retelling. A paragraph that begins with a claim and then locates the episode that supports it reads as analysis, and the AO4 grid for Paper 2 is explicit that it rewards selecting relevant material, presenting and justifying points of view and drawing conclusions. So the first sentence is the claim: در این اثر، جنگ بیشتر از راه زندگی روزمره دیده می‌شود تا از راه میدان نبرد — in this work the war is seen more through everyday life than through the battlefield.
Step two: locate the evidence rather than summarising it
Evidence in a literature essay is a located episode: you name where in the work something happens and what is done there, in one or two sentences, and you do not retell the story around it. نویسنده در بخشی از کتاب که به روزهای پس از بازگشت می‌پردازد، به جای توصیف نبرد، سکوت خانه را وصف می‌کند. The author, in a part of the book that deals with the days after the return, describes the silence of the house instead of describing combat. Note پرداختن به, to deal with or treat, which takes به and is the standard critical verb for what a text is about.
Step three: say what the evidence shows, which is the step candidates skip
همین انتخاب نشان می‌دهد که پرسش اصلی اثر، بازگشت است نه جنگ. This very choice shows that the work's central question is return, not war. The word انتخاب, choice, is doing the analytical work: it treats the author as having decided something, which converts a description of the text into a claim about the text. That is the move that separates a Level 4 paragraph from a Level 2 one, and it costs one sentence.
Step four: acknowledge the counter-reading, then close
می‌توان گفت که این خواندن، بخش‌های نبرد را کم‌اهمیت می‌شمارد؛ اما حتی آن بخش‌ها نیز بیشتر از دید کسانی روایت می‌شوند که منتظرند تا از دید کسانی که می‌جنگند. One could say that this reading undervalues the combat sections; but even those sections are narrated more from the point of view of those who wait than of those who fight. می‌توان گفت که is the impersonal one could say and is the polite way to raise an objection to yourself. کم‌اهمیت شمردن, to count as unimportant, is a compound verb. And the sentence answers the objection with more evidence rather than by asserting harder, which is what the top band asks for.

Result: در این اثر، جنگ بیشتر از راه زندگی روزمره دیده می‌شود تا از راه میدان نبرد. نویسنده در بخشی از کتاب که به روزهای پس از بازگشت می‌پردازد، به جای توصیف نبرد، سکوت خانه را وصف می‌کند؛ همین انتخاب نشان می‌دهد که پرسش اصلی اثر، بازگشت است نه جنگ. می‌توان گفت که این خواندن، بخش‌های نبرد را کم‌اهمیت می‌شمارد؛ اما حتی آن بخش‌ها نیز بیشتر از دید کسانی روایت می‌شوند که منتظرند تا از دید کسانی که می‌جنگند.

Typical mistakes

Treating the whole field as uniform. Iranian critics disagree about it, and reporting that disagreement is the higher-scoring answer.
Inventing a plot detail to make a point vivid. It is a fabrication and it is unnecessary.
Ignoring the aftermath writing about veterans and returned prisoners. It is often the most interesting part of the field.
Assuming that a recorded memoir has a single author. The oral-account-plus-editor form is normal here and is itself discussed.

Active revision

پنج شکل ادبی و سینمایی این حوزه را نام ببرید و برای هر کدام در یک جمله بنویسید که چه چیزی را بهتر از دیگری می‌تواند نشان دهد؛ سپس یک پرسش انتقادی درباره‌ی خودِ نام این حوزه بنویسید

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Persian (9PN0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

The war and its effect on society and people (جنگ و تأثیر آن بر جامعه و مردم)#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9PN0 موضوع چهارم — جنگ ایران و عراق: جنگ و تأثیر آن بر جامعه و مردمPearson Edexcel 9PN0 Paper 2 Section A (translation into Persian)

The effects of a long war on a society can be organised into categories that are describable without numbers, and organising them is what an examiner is looking for. Demographic: a generation of young men whose lives were shaped by military service, and families altered by loss. Territorial: cities and towns along the border — خرمشهر and آبادان are the two most often named — damaged, evacuated and later rebuilt. Economic: oil facilities and infrastructure damaged, spending redirected, rationing introduced, and a long reconstruction, بازسازی, afterwards. Institutional: new organisations created during and after the war to care for veterans and the bereaved. Medical: long-term illness among those exposed to chemical weapons, which remains a documented and continuing consequence.

Two Persian words in this field carry framings and must be handled deliberately. شهید, martyr, is the standard Iranian term for those who died and is embedded in institutions, street names and public commemoration; کشته‌شده, the one killed, is the neutral descriptive term. Both are in ordinary use, they are not interchangeable, and the choice signals something. Similarly جانباز, literally one who has given of themselves, is the standard term for a disabled veteran and carries an honorific; مجروح جنگی, war-wounded, is the neutral description. Use the neutral term in your own analytical voice and report the honorific term as the term used in Iran, with a phrase such as در ایران به آنان «جانباز» گفته می‌شود.

Memory is itself an effect and is one of the most examinable aspects of this sub-theme. Public commemoration in Iran is extensive: هفته‌ی دفاع مقدس, the annual commemorative week; museums; monuments; the naming of streets and institutions; and organised visits to the former battle areas known as راهیان نور. Those are describable institutional facts. What is argued about, in Iran, in Persian, is what public memory does — whether it consoles, whether it instructs, whether it can crowd out other accounts of the same events. Reporting that argument and naming the positions in it is precisely what the AO4 grid means by critically analysing, and it is far stronger than a paragraph asserting one position.

One more discipline specific to this aspect: do not use fabricated testimony. It is tempting, when writing about a war, to construct a sentence beginning یکی از سربازان می‌گفت, one of the soldiers used to say, and to invent what follows. Do not. An invented voice is a fabrication whatever its intention, and it is also a weaker piece of writing than an accurate report of a documented account. If you have read a memoir, say what it does without quoting from memory; if you have not, describe the form rather than inventing an instance of it. The examination has no place where an invented quotation earns a mark, and several where it will cost you.

Worked example

Paper 2 Section A: an English paragraph about a war's aftermath into Persian

Translate into Persian and justify each decision. 'The fighting stopped in 1988, but for the border towns it did not end there. Houses had to be rebuilt, fields had to be cleared, and a generation had to decide whether to return. Historians point out that reconstruction is always slower than the announcements about it.'

Sentence one: two clauses, two tenses, and a careful placement of the negative
جنگ در سال هزار و سیصد و شصت و هفت پایان یافت، اما برای شهرهای مرزی در همان‌جا تمام نشد. Two things. First, the year: Persian writing about this subject normally uses the solar Hijri year, and giving the Iranian year rather than the western one is the more idiomatic choice — the western year belongs in the English. Second, the pair پایان یافت and تمام نشد deliberately uses two different verbs for stopped and end, which is what the English does; using the same verb twice would flatten the sentence's point.
Sentence two: three obligations, and the impersonal construction that carries them
خانه‌ها را باید از نو می‌ساختند، کشتزارها را باید پاک می‌کردند، و نسلی باید تصمیم می‌گرفت که بازگردد یا نه. Persian expresses past obligation with باید plus a past continuous, which is a construction worth drilling because English learners reach instead for a modal that does not exist. Note را on خانه‌ها and کشتزارها: both are specific objects. از نو ساختن is to rebuild. And the embedded question که بازگردد یا نه, whether to return or not, takes the subjunctive بازگردد — a decision that has not been made cannot be in the indicative.
Sentence three: attribution, and a comparative with a relative clause
مورخان یادآور می‌شوند که بازسازی همیشه کندتر از اعلام‌هایی است که درباره‌ی آن می‌شود. یادآور شدن, to point out or remind, is a good register lift over گفتن. کندتر از is the comparative slower than. The compared phrase اعلام‌هایی که درباره‌ی آن می‌شود is the announcements that are made about it, an indefinite plural head with a restrictive relative clause and an impersonal passive inside it. That is a genuinely complex structure, correctly built, and the range strand of the AO3 grid at Paper 2 exists to reward exactly this.
Check the register before you move on
Read the finished Persian back and ask whether any word has drifted into the honorific register. This paragraph is analytical and uses جنگ, شهرهای مرزی, بازسازی and مورخان — all neutral. Had it used دفاع مقدس or شهدا it would have changed voice mid-answer without saying so. Register discipline in this sub-theme is not squeamishness; it is the practical form of the rule that your own judgement must be visible as your own, and that other people's framings must be visible as theirs.

Result: جنگ در سال هزار و سیصد و شصت و هفت پایان یافت، اما برای شهرهای مرزی در همان‌جا تمام نشد. خانه‌ها را باید از نو می‌ساختند، کشتزارها را باید پاک می‌کردند، و نسلی باید تصمیم می‌گرفت که بازگردد یا نه. مورخان یادآور می‌شوند که بازسازی همیشه کندتر از اعلام‌هایی است که درباره‌ی آن می‌شود.

Typical mistakes

Using شهید as though it were a neutral synonym for a war death. It is not, and the choice is visible.
Inventing testimony. There is never a mark for it and it is a fabrication.
Describing the war's economic effect with an invented figure. Say what happened, in categories, and attribute any magnitude.
Writing خرمشهر with a space. It is one place name, one word.

Active revision

پنج دسته از پیامدهای جنگ را به فارسی نام ببرید و برای هر دسته یک جمله بنویسید که هیچ عددی در آن نباشد؛ سپس در یک جمله توضیح دهید که چرا واژه‌ی «شهید» را در نوشته‌ی تحلیلی خود به گوینده نسبت می‌دهید

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages (Department for Education)

Migration, society and the economy (تأثیر مهاجرت بر جامعه و اقتصاد)#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9PN0 موضوع چهارم — جنگ ایران و عراق: تأثیر مهاجرت بر جامعه و اقتصادPearson Edexcel 9PN0 Paper 3 Section B (listening, reading and writing)

The specification places migration inside the war sub-theme, and the placing is a hint about how to read the aspect: several distinct movements of people belong here and merging them produces a muddle. Internal displacement: people moving from the border provinces to other parts of Iran during the fighting, and the question of who returned afterwards. Emigration: Iranians who left the country during the nineteen-eighties, forming substantial communities abroad. Inward movement: Iran received very large numbers of Afghan refugees from the late nineteen-seventies onward, a movement that has continued in waves ever since and is one of the largest and longest-running refugee situations anywhere. Each has its own causes, its own timescale and its own economic consequences.

The Persian vocabulary here is precise and using it precisely is a mark of real command. مهاجرت is migration in general; مهاجر is a migrant. آواره means displaced, someone without a home, and آوارگی is that condition. پناهنده is a refugee in the legal sense, and پناهندگی is asylum. جابه‌جایی is displacement or relocation in a more neutral, administrative sense. تبعید is exile. These are not stylistic variants: a legal refugee and an internally displaced person are in different situations with different rights, and an answer that uses the words interchangeably has shown it does not know that. The distinction between آواره and پناهنده in particular is worth being able to explain in one sentence.

Economic effects run in several directions at once, and the honest paragraph says so. Departure removes workers and skills from a region and, over time, may send money back to it. Arrival adds labour, often in construction, agriculture and services, and adds demand for housing, schooling and health care. Return, after a war, requires investment before it produces anything. Any of those can be described mechanically without a statistic, and any claim about magnitude — how much, how many, what share — must be attributed. بر اساس گزارش‌های سازمان‌های بین‌المللی, according to the reports of international organisations, is a defensible formula; a remembered percentage is not.

This aspect is one where a candidate can very easily slip from description into a judgement about policy, and the discipline is the same as everywhere else in Theme 4. Write what is documented, attribute assessments, and mark your own view. Note also that the Afghan presence in Iran is a subject on which Iranians and Afghans hold a wide range of views and about which there is a substantial Persian-language literature on both sides; representing that range is better analysis than adopting any one position. And keep the theme's scope in mind: Theme 4 is set in Iran, so the movement is examined for its effect on Iranian society and economy, not as a survey of Afghanistan.

Worked example

Paper 3 Section B: two sources on displacement, summarised then evaluated

The recording carries a local official from a border province who says that most families who left during the war eventually came back. The written source carries a researcher who says that the ones who returned were not the same people who left, because the young mostly stayed away. Write 5(a), 5(b) and 5(c) in Persian.

5(a): summarise, and notice the quantifier
در فایل شنیداری، مسئولی محلی می‌گوید که بیشتر خانواده‌هایی که در سال‌های جنگ آنجا را ترک کرده بودند، سرانجام بازگشتند. Two details. بیشتر, most, is a quantifier and reproducing it exactly is what a summary is for; replacing it with همه would misreport the source. And ترک کرده بودند is a past perfect inside a relative clause — those who had left — which correctly places the leaving before the returning. Tense sequencing inside relative clauses is one of the things the AO3 accuracy strand notices.
5(b): summarise the second source, and keep its because
در متن نوشتاری، پژوهشگری می‌نویسد که بازگشتگان همان کسانی نبودند که رفته بودند، زیرا بیشتر جوانان در جای تازه ماندند. بازگشتگان, the returnees, is a past participle used as a plural noun and is a compact way to name a group. همان کسانی ... که is the same people who. Keeping the زیرا clause is essential: the researcher's claim is not that fewer returned but that a different population returned, and the reason is the whole substance.
5(c): find the disagreement, which is about what is being counted
دو منبع بر سر شمار بازگشتگان اختلافی ندارند؛ اختلاف بر سر آن است که چه چیزی شمرده می‌شود، خانواده یا فرد. The two sources do not disagree about the number of returnees; the disagreement is about what is being counted, families or individuals. This is a genuinely sharp observation and it comes straight from the wording: the official counted خانواده‌ها, the researcher counted جوانان. Noticing the unit of measurement is one of the most reliably rewarded evaluative moves available in this question.
5(c) continued: judge, and give a test
به نظر من سخن پژوهشگر برای فهم آینده‌ی این شهرها مهم‌تر است، زیرا ترکیب سنی جمعیت آینده را تعیین می‌کند؛ اما سخن مسئول محلی نیز درست است و نشان می‌دهد که خانه‌ها خالی نمانده‌اند. اگر آمار سنی این شهرها در دسترس باشد، می‌توان هر دو ادعا را هم‌زمان سنجید. In my view the researcher's statement matters more for understanding these towns' future, because the age composition determines the future population; but the official's statement is also true and shows that the houses have not stayed empty. If age data for these towns is available, both claims can be tested at once. Note the conditional with the subjunctive باشد, and the impersonal می‌توان with the past stem سنجید.

Result: 5(a) در فایل شنیداری، مسئولی محلی می‌گوید که بیشتر خانواده‌هایی که در سال‌های جنگ آنجا را ترک کرده بودند، سرانجام بازگشتند. 5(b) در متن نوشتاری، پژوهشگری می‌نویسد که بازگشتگان همان کسانی نبودند که رفته بودند، زیرا بیشتر جوانان در جای تازه ماندند. 5(c) دو منبع بر سر شمار بازگشتگان اختلافی ندارند؛ اختلاف بر سر آن است که چه چیزی شمرده می‌شود، خانواده یا فرد. به نظر من سخن پژوهشگر برای فهم آینده‌ی این شهرها مهم‌تر است، زیرا ترکیب سنی، جمعیت آینده را تعیین می‌کند؛ اما سخن مسئول محلی نیز درست است و نشان می‌دهد که خانه‌ها خالی نمانده‌اند. اگر آمار سنی این شهرها در دسترس باشد، می‌توان هر دو ادعا را هم‌زمان سنجید.

Typical mistakes

Using پناهنده for anyone who has moved. It has a legal meaning and misusing it is a substantive error.
Treating Iranian emigration in the nineteen-eighties as caused by the war alone. Several factors are discussed and attributing one cause is a claim.
Turning the Afghan refugee aspect into a survey of Afghanistan. Theme 4 is scoped to Iran and its society.
Quoting a refugee figure from memory. The numbers are large, are estimates, and differ between sources.

Active revision

چهار واژه‌ی مهاجر، آواره، پناهنده و تبعیدی را تعریف کنید و برای هر کدام یک نمونه‌ی مربوط به این زیرموضوع بیاورید؛ سپس یک ادعای اقتصادی بنویسید که هیچ عددی نداشته باشد اما سازوکار روشنی داشته باشد

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Persian (9PN0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

Writing about the war without inventing anything (روش نوشتن درباره‌ی جنگ)#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9PN0 موضوع چهارم — جنگ ایران و عراق (all three aspects)Pearson Edexcel 9PN0 Paper 1 Section C (writing — research question)

This section collects the method the whole sub-theme runs on, because a method is what lets you write confidently about difficult material. Six rules. State dated institutional facts flatly. Attribute every interpretation to whoever makes it. Name live debates as debates rather than settling them. Teach the naming of the war as itself part of the content. Invent no statistics and no testimony. Mark your own judgement as judgement. Every one of those maps onto something the AO4 grid at Section C actually rewards: knowledge and understanding demonstrated through research, a sustained line of argument, and conclusions drawn on aspects of culture and society.

The reason estimates differ so widely for this war is itself examinable and is worth a sentence in any answer that gets near a number. Different sources count different things — military deaths only, or civilian deaths too, or deaths from later illness; they cover different periods; they come from parties with an interest in the figure being higher or lower; and record-keeping in a long war along a contested border is imperfect. Saying that in one clause — برآوردها از آن رو گوناگون‌اند که منابع چیزهای متفاوتی را می‌شمارند — is an intellectual move that shows you understand what a statistic is, and it protects you from ever needing one.

For your own judgement, use a fixed structure so that it is unmistakable. Mark it: به نظر من or از دید من. Give a reason: زیرا. And, in the strongest answers, name what would change your mind: اگر ... آن‌گاه دیدگاه دیگری درست‌تر خواهد بود. That third element is rare among candidates and is very visible to an examiner, because it demonstrates that you are holding a position rather than merely expressing a preference. It is also the single most transferable habit in this entire qualification, and it works identically in Section C, in a Paper 2 essay and at question 5(c) of Paper 3.

Finally, keep the analytical weight on language and culture rather than on current affairs. This sub-theme is history and its cultural afterlife, and the specification's aspects are about society, about literature and film, and about migration. An answer that turns into a commentary on present-day politics has left the aspects, will be marked as off-question, and will do so while handling material that the specification's own guidance flags for cultural sensitivity. The disciplined answer is also the higher-scoring one, which is a convenient thing to be able to say about a rule of tact.

Worked example

Paper 1 Section C: a research answer on the war's cultural afterlife, built to the six rules

Your research subject is from Theme 4 and you are writing about Iran. The statement is «جنگ هنوز در فرهنگ ایران حضور دارد.» The unseen text argues that the presence is now mostly institutional rather than personal. Write the opening two paragraphs in Persian and account for every move.

Paragraph one: agree with a bounded part, and put the fact first
این سخن درست است، اما باید روشن کرد که «حضور» به چه معناست. جنگ در سال هزار و سیصد و شصت و هفت پایان یافت، و با این حال هنوز در نام خیابان‌ها، در موزه‌ها، در هفته‌ی یادبود سالانه و در شمار زیادی از کتاب‌ها و فیلم‌ها دیده می‌شود. The statement is true, but one must clarify what presence means. Note the impersonal باید روشن کرد, one must clarify; note that the dated fact comes before any interpretation; and note that the list of four places where the war remains visible is entirely institutional and entirely checkable — no statistic, no testimony, nothing invented.
Paragraph one continued: introduce the framings without adopting one
در ایران این جنگ را «جنگ تحمیلی» و «دفاع مقدس» نیز می‌نامند، و همین نام‌ها بخشی از همان حضورند. In Iran this war is also called the imposed war and the sacred defence, and those very names are part of that same presence. This sentence does three things at once: it reports the Iranian terms accurately, it marks them as reported by putting them in guillemets, and it turns the naming into evidence for the statement under discussion. That is the naming-as-content move, and it is worth practising until it is automatic.
Paragraph two: give the unseen text its job and then complicate it
متن ناخوانده استدلال می‌کند که این حضور امروز بیشتر نهادی است تا شخصی. پژوهش من نشان داد که این تمایز به نسل بستگی دارد: برای کسانی که آن سال‌ها را به یاد دارند، خاطره شخصی است؛ برای نسل‌های بعد، بیشتر از راه نهاد و رسانه می‌رسد. The unseen text argues that the presence is now more institutional than personal; my research showed that this distinction depends on generation. بستگی داشتن به, to depend on, takes به. The generational distinction is the paragraph's own contribution, and it is a claim about mechanism rather than magnitude — which is why it needs no number.
Close the paragraph with a marked judgement and a defeater
به نظر من هر دو شکل حضور واقعی‌اند، اما شکل نهادی پایدارتر است، زیرا به حافظه‌ی افراد وابسته نیست؛ اگر پژوهشی نشان دهد که نسل تازه این نهادها را نادیده می‌گیرد، آن‌گاه باید این داوری را بازنگری کرد. In my view both forms of presence are real, but the institutional form is more durable because it does not depend on individual memory; if research showed that the new generation ignores these institutions, this judgement would have to be revised. Mark, justify, defeater — the three-part structure, in one sentence, in correct Persian, and with nothing in it that could not be defended.

Result: این سخن درست است، اما باید روشن کرد که «حضور» به چه معناست. جنگ در سال هزار و سیصد و شصت و هفت پایان یافت، و با این حال هنوز در نام خیابان‌ها، در موزه‌ها، در هفته‌ی یادبود سالانه و در شمار زیادی از کتاب‌ها و فیلم‌ها دیده می‌شود؛ در ایران این جنگ را «جنگ تحمیلی» و «دفاع مقدس» نیز می‌نامند، و همین نام‌ها بخشی از همان حضورند. متن ناخوانده استدلال می‌کند که این حضور امروز بیشتر نهادی است تا شخصی. پژوهش من نشان داد که این تمایز به نسل بستگی دارد: برای کسانی که آن سال‌ها را به یاد دارند، خاطره شخصی است؛ برای نسل‌های بعد، بیشتر از راه نهاد و رسانه می‌رسد. به نظر من هر دو شکل حضور واقعی‌اند، اما شکل نهادی پایدارتر است، زیرا به حافظه‌ی افراد وابسته نیست؛ اگر پژوهشی نشان دهد که نسل تازه این نهادها را نادیده می‌گیرد، آن‌گاه باید این داوری را بازنگری کرد.

Typical mistakes

Producing a number under time pressure because the paragraph felt thin. It will be a fabrication and the paragraph will be worse.
Letting the answer drift into present-day politics. The aspects are historical and cultural.
Expressing a preference and calling it a judgement. A judgement has a reason and, ideally, a stated defeater.
Writing in the honorific register in your own voice. Report those terms; do not adopt them.

Active revision

یک بند صد و پنجاه کلمه‌ای درباره‌ی این جنگ بنویسید که در آن دقیقاً یک واقعیت تاریخ‌دار، یک تفسیر منسوب، یک مقایسه بدون عدد و یک داوری شخصی همراه با شرط ابطال آن آمده باشد

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Persian (9PN0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

References & sources

Sources

Pearson Edexcel

Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Persian (9PN0) specification

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

The Iran-Iraq war, and how it is written about (موضوع چهارم: جنگ ایران و عراق)

5 sections~36 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Advanced 5

The Iran-Iraq war, and how it is written about (موضوع چهارم: جنگ ایران و عراق)

Key points

Paper 1 Section A: a historical paragraph into English, keeping fact and framing apart

Key points

Paper 2 Section B method: how to build an evidenced paragraph about a work, applied here to war writing

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: an English paragraph about a war's aftermath into Persian

Key points

Paper 3 Section B: two sources on displacement, summarised then evaluated

Key points

Paper 1 Section C: a research answer on the war's cultural afterlife, built to the six rules

Sources

The Iran-Iraq war, and how it is written about (موضوع چهارم: جنگ ایران و عراق)

Key points

Paper 1 Section A: a historical paragraph into English, keeping fact and framing apart

Key points

Paper 2 Section B method: how to build an evidenced paragraph about a work, applied here to war writing

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: an English paragraph about a war's aftermath into Persian

Key points

Paper 3 Section B: two sources on displacement, summarised then evaluated

Key points

Paper 1 Section C: a research answer on the war's cultural afterlife, built to the six rules

Sources