Year 8Autumn TermAges 12-13
Tips & Hints
Future Tense and Making Plans
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You don't need to be an Arabic expert to teach your child. Consistency, encouragement, and making it fun are far more important than perfection. These tips will help you feel confident and prepared.
🏫 For Teachers
- The future tense is the easiest tense to form in Arabic — just add one word! Use this to build confidence before tackling the three-tense system.
- The comparison of all three tenses is a key conceptual milestone. Use visual aids (timelines, colour-coding) to make it concrete.
- Intention phrases (أنوي أن, أريد أن) are grammatically more complex (they require the subjunctive). At this stage, teach them as set phrases.
- The "My Future" writing task is a perfect opportunity for cross-curricular links with PSHE/careers education.
🏠 For Parents
- Your child now has three tenses — past, present, and future. This is a huge achievement in any language.
- The future tense in Arabic is surprisingly simple. Ask your child to explain how it works — they will impress you!
- Talk about family plans in Arabic: "سنذهب إلى..." (We will go to...) — real conversation practice.
- Ask your child about their ambitions: "ماذا تريد أن تكون في المستقبل؟" (What do you want to be in the future?)
💡 Learning Hints & Memory Tricks
- ✦Arabic future tense is the easiest tense: just put سوف or سـ before the present tense verb. سوف أكتب = I will write.
- ✦سوف and سـ mean the same thing. سـ is just a shorter, more common version: سأذهب = سوف أذهب.
- ✦Think of the three tenses as a timeline: past (كتبَ - suffix), present (يكتب - prefix), future (سيكتب - سـ + prefix).