Summary of Arabic Continuers Syllabus Amendments

Outcomes

The outcomes relating to Objectives 2 and 3 have been revised to articulate more clearly the syllabus expectations. The revised outcomes still retain the essential character and intent of the syllabus. These minor amendments will not necessitate any revision of the Performance Bands.
Outcome 2.2 has been revised to provide consistency between the outcome and the examination specifications.
The revised outcomes relating to Objective 3 clarify syllabus and examination expectations, in particular those related to higher order skills.

In order to clarify the requirements of any task, the context, purpose and audience need to be stipulated. The inclusion of a definition of audience addresses an omission from the original syllabus.

Text types have been revised. Only those text types that students can be expected to produce in the written examination will be specified.
Text types for receptive use will not be specified and will be drawn from a wider range, which takes into account the impact of technology and the changing nature of texts.
Text types for productive use have been reviewed and amended for clarity and appropriateness.

Amendments to the word length requirements for the tasks in Section III: Writing in Arabic have been made to reflect the varying difficulties of the tasks, and to enable students to respond better to the types of questions asked in this section.
The weightings of the two tasks have been specified and are commensurate with the difficulty and word length requirements.