Edit your draft in five passes, each with one job. Meaning comes first, because polished grammar cannot rescue a sentence that says the wrong thing.
This lesson is part of the SPM Arabic subject guide. It follows connecting paragraphs into one response.
What are the five passes?
| Pass | Question |
|---|---|
| 1. Meaning | Does each sentence say what I meant? |
| 2. Agreement | Do verb, doer, noun and adjective match in gender and number? |
| 3. Verbs | Is the person and time right and consistent? |
| 4. Connectors | Does each connector match its relationship? |
| 5. Spelling | Are the letters, hamza and endings correct? |
Read the whole draft once for each pass, and look for only one kind of mistake each time.
Worked example: a marked draft
Original draft: ذَهَبُوا الطلابُ إلى الشاطئِ أمسِ. أنا أَلْعَبُ مع أخي لأنّ نَسبَحُ في البحرِ.
Go through the passes.
- Meaning: “The students went to the beach yesterday. I played with my brother because swim in the sea.” The second sentence is unclear. The writer meant “and we swam”.
- Agreement: ذَهَبُوا الطلابُ has a plural verb before its doer. Correct to ذَهَبَ الطلابُ.
- Verbs: أَلْعَبُ is present, but the sentence is about yesterday. Change to لعبتُ, and نَسبَحُ to سبحنا.
- Connectors: لأنّ is wrong here, because the sentence adds an action rather than giving a reason. Use و.
- Spelling: check the ـتُ and ـنا endings and the hamza on أمسِ and أخي.
Final: ذَهَبَ الطلابُ إلى الشاطئِ أمسِ. لعبتُ مع أخي وسبحنا في البحرِ.
A common mistake: editing spelling first
Correcting a hamza on a sentence you later delete wastes time. The order matters because early passes can remove whole sentences.
Keep an edit log
Write the error you found in each pass in your mistake log. After a week, count which pass catches the most. That is where your drafting needs work.
Check yourself
Edit this draft using passes 2 and 3: تَكْتُبُ الطالبةُ الرسالةَ أمسِ، وقَرَأَ المعلّمةُ الرسالةَ.
Answer
Pass 3 (verbs): أمسِ shows past time, so تَكْتُبُ should be كَتَبَتْ.
Pass 2 (agreement): قَرَأَ must match the feminine doer المعلّمةُ, so it becomes قَرَأَتْ.
Corrected: كَتَبَتِ الطالبةُ الرسالةَ أمسِ، وقَرَأَتِ المعلّمةُ الرسالةَ. “The student wrote the letter yesterday, and the teacher read the letter.”
What to study next
Repair a repeated gender slip with fixing a recurring agreement error, then try the writing and organisation practice set.
If you want a teacher to edit your draft with you in layers, see online one-to-one Arabic tuition.