Secondary certificate year
Edunest pairs your twelfth-grader with an Arabic specialist fluent in the ministry's national curriculum: syntax and morphology, rhetoric, modern literary texts and extended writing. Your child meets the tutor live online, one to one. Each lesson starts from a real text, so grammar, imagery and writing are practised together, as the ministry's standards link them.
For students at government schools, and at private schools teaching the national curriculum, on the scientific, technology, or arts and humanities track.
What we cover
The ministry's Arabic standards (2018 edition) organise Grade 12 into four domains: word, sentence and discourse; reading; writing; and speaking and listening. Tutors plan from the modules below.
The standards suggest about 30% of Arabic teaching time each for reading and writing from Grade 7 to Grade 12. The tutor follows the school textbook's order of units.
Tools of emphasis, from inna to the oath and the emphatic nun; conditional sentences with jussive and non-jussive particles; kada and its sisters; original and extra prepositions. Marks slip when the rule is known and the parsing still goes wrong.
The arts and humanities standards go further: verbal nouns and participles that govern like verbs, fronting and omission in the nominal sentence, agreement of verb and agent, and the interpreted infinitive turned into an explicit one.
The nisba adjective and the changes it forces on a word, the abstract noun ending in -iyya, and the mimi verbal noun on the humanities track. Vocabulary work covers synonyms, opposites, words with several meanings and dictionary skills.
Simile in its single, extended and implicit forms; explicit and implied metaphor; kinaya, majaz mursal and symbol; then pun, rhymed prose, antithesis, contrast and double meaning. Learners are expected to name each figure and then explain its effect on meaning.
Grade 12 centres on the modern era: the literary renaissance, the revivalist, romantic and realist schools, classical and free verse, and the essay, autobiography, short story and play. Modern writing from Qatar and the Gulf has its own place.
Finding a writer's purpose and viewpoint, reading implicit meaning such as irony and exaggeration, separating fact from opinion and assumption, and tracing allusion and intertextuality. Scientific and media texts are read for how their language builds a case.
Every piece moves from plan to draft to revision. The standards ask for persuasive essays on debated questions, critical reviews of a book or literary text, a short research paper with footnotes and a reference list, and a short story.
Speaking clear Modern Standard Arabic on varied topics, taking part in group discussion, weighing a speaker's evidence, and reciting free-verse poems with fitting rhythm and gesture. Memorised lines of poetry serve as quotations in speech and writing.
How lessons run
Arabic is learnt through texts, so each lesson is built on a passage from school, an unseen text, or a piece of the student's own writing.
Step 1
Your child reads a short passage aloud, parses two or three of its sentences, names the imagery in a few lines of verse and writes one paragraph. The tutor sees whether marks go on rules, on analysis or on expression.
Step 2
The tutor lays the school's Arabic units against the December and June exam windows and plans backwards from each, keeping the grammar list for your child's track in view.
Step 3
Each rule is spotted in a real sentence, parsed aloud with a reason for every case ending, then used in sentences the student writes. A few parsing lines open the next lesson, so earlier rules stay fresh.
Step 4
Tutor and student annotate a poem or prose passage for idea, feeling, imagery and music, place it in its literary school, and turn the notes into a written analysis paragraph.
Step 5
Essays go through a draft and a revision, with comments on structure, evidence, connectors and hamza spelling. Parents get a brief written note on progress after lessons and are welcome to sit in.
Timings follow Qatar time (UTC+3) and a school week that runs Sunday to Thursday, with Friday or Saturday kept for longer revision, and Ramadan hours set by each year's official announcement.
The exam
Arabic is a General Secondary Certificate subject, taught on all three Grade 12 tracks. The ministry's Student Assessment Department prepares, supervises and marks the Arabic exams, and Grade 12 sits a final at the end of each semester.
Exam board
MOEHE Student Assessment Department
Its literary subjects section sets and marks the certificate Arabic exams for daytime, parallel and adult-education students.
Grade 12 sits it between 6 and 15 December 2026, before the mid-year break.
How a tutor helps
The tutor turns the first-semester units into a revision plan for the last month, with timed practice in parsing, text analysis and extended writing, and a check of every rhetoric term the units introduced.
Runs from 1 to 17 June 2027, and the ministry gives this semester's exams the higher weight.
How a tutor helps
Revision covers the whole year's grammar and texts. The tutor uses the rest day between exams for a short review of the next subject's weak points and keeps practice essays to the exam's working pace.
These dates come from the ministry's school calendar for the 2026-2027 academic year. Each school then publishes the day of the Arabic paper in its own timetable, so check the school's schedule too.
The certificate ends in a final Grade 12 percentage. Qatar University uses that percentage for admission and asks for at least 70%; other universities set their own entry requirements.
What we look for in a tutor
We match each tutor on these standards and on your child's track.
Reads, writes and speaks Modern Standard Arabic accurately, and can parse any sentence in a set text and give the reason for each case ending.
Knows the Grade 12 Arabic standards, including the humanities track's extra grammar, and teaches to the units your child's school is covering.
Places a modern text in its literary school and shows how a simile, metaphor or antithesis shapes what the text means.
Has prepared secondary students for end-of-semester Arabic exams, including extended writing completed within a set time.
Explains in plain Arabic, and bridges grammar terms in English for a student who studied in English at an earlier school.
Follows child-safeguarding practice in every lesson and keeps parents informed through short, regular notes on progress.
Common difficulties
Six difficulties that come up again and again in the certificate year.
Why it happens
Rules were memorised as lists, so in a long sentence the governing word is hard to find.
How a tutor helps
The student first marks the verb, the agent and any governing particle, then parses aloud and justifies each ending. Daily sentences taken from set texts turn the rule into a habit.
Why it happens
Jussive and non-jussive particles look alike, and the answers that must take fa' are easy to mix up.
How a tutor helps
The tutor sorts the particles into two families, teaches the answers that require fa' with a short memory line, and drills rewriting sentences until the choice becomes automatic.
Why it happens
Answers name the figure and stop, and an implicit simile is often taken for an extended one.
How a tutor helps
The tutor teaches a three-part answer: name the figure, point to its parts in the line, then say what it adds to meaning or feeling. Paired examples separate dimni from tamthili.
Why it happens
Beyond three-letter verbs the two share one form, and with three-letter verbs it can resemble a noun of place.
How a tutor helps
The tutor teaches a substitution test: when the explicit verbal noun fits the sentence, the word is a mimi verbal noun. Practice uses sentences from the student's own texts.
Why it happens
Writing starts without a plan, so paragraphs repeat and the conclusion restates the introduction.
How a tutor helps
The tutor models a plan with a clear position, developed paragraphs and a closing view, then marks each draft for structure, evidence, connectors and hamza spelling before the final copy.
Why it happens
The 2018 standards give the scientific and technology tracks three Arabic periods a week, against seven for humanities.
How a tutor helps
The tutor keeps a short, steady routine: one text, one grammar point and one written paragraph each week, so Arabic stays active beside physics and mathematics.
Questions learners and parents ask
Tell us your child's school, track and the Arabic units that feel hardest. Someone from our team reads every enquiry and writes back.