GCSE EdExcel Arabic Help

EdExcel GCSE Syllabus is not the ideal course when you want your children to be able to understand, at least, the basic, simple Ayahs of the Qur'an. However, muslim institutions across the world have not provided any similar, but more suitable alternative for the children being brought up in the UK/Europe etc, or at least I'm not aware of it.  The GCSE course helps the parents to maintain a momentum, which lasts 2-3 years, until the final examination stage is reached. This was not possible with the local Madrassah which my daughters had been attending since it was just a case of:  "in through one ear and out the other", yet the Madrassah had been reporting "A" and "B" grades for my daughters at the end of each month or term.

Anyhow, I decided to upload some of the files which I had prepared for my daughters' preparation for the GCSE Arabic.  I did an extensive search on the internet for helpful free downloads for GCSE Arabic preparation but could not find anything so I hope these files will come quite handy for many of the parents.  I'm afraid any mistakes in the original EdExcel Vocabulary lists (and I did notice a few of them) have found their way through into these files.  If you do notice any errors, please let me know so that I can make corrections. JazaakumAllahu-Khairan.

In my opinion, for the non-Arab children being brought up in UK/Europe etc, Vocabulary is the major hurdle when preparing for GCSE EdExcel Arabic. There is such a big variety of it. The demand on the Grammar front is relatively less. I would say, only 10% or so of the total preparation time can cover the essential Grammar needed to pass the exam with a decent grade, even A or A*.  In order to tackle this vocabulary challenge, I came up with "one word a day" idea.  I have a White-board in front of the dining table and I ask my daughters to read the word-of-the-day (and its meaning) every time they pass by.  MashaAllah, Ta'ala, I have been doing that for the last 10 months.  That means around 300 of uncommon words (so far).  Common words, such as Ana, Anta,... Ab, Akh,..kitab, kursi...etc are not included in the White-board list since these get revised anyway when they read the Arabic textbook (I use "Qisas Qaseerah" by Ghassan Mahir and Marium Mahir, and found it quite good but it does require a teacher with Arabic knowledge to supervise its reading and understanding).

I hope to upload my one-word-a-day Vocabulary list for each month to this website. To distinguish them from other Vocabulary files, those one-word-a-day files will have names such as "2014-01_Vocab", "2014-02_Vocab" etc. The MS-Word files shown below do not necessarily cover 100% of the EdExcel syllabus but many of the core words should be covered within these files.

Finally, just to share some happiness, I was so happy this morning when my daughter translated "Wa Ilahukum Ilahun Wahidun" from the Qur'an.  It's Ayahs like these which I see as Muhkamaat.  May Allah, Subhanah, wa Ta'ala, make me successful in my objective, and accept it for the reward in this Dunya and Akhira and also fulfil your pure wishes for your children. Ameen. When you download the resources shown below, please join me in offering a short Du'a for my mother who passed away in April 2013 and my father who passed away when I was just 9 months old: "May Allah, Subhanah, grant blessings and comfort to Naseer Ahmed's parents in their After-Life (Akhira) - and to all of us in this Life (Dunya) too" Ameen.

Update 14th Oct. 2015: My elder daughter has managed to achieve an A grade in her GCSE-Arabic so I hope the above-stated strategy for the EdExcel GCSE-Arabic exam preparation is justified.