AQA GCSE Urdu Past Papers & Mark Schemes

AQA GCSE Urdu (specification code 8648) is one of AQA's most widely taken heritage language GCSEs, primarily sat by students from British Pakistani and British Kashmiri families who use Urdu at home or at community school. The qualification assesses four skills — Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing — each worth 25% of the final grade. Both Foundation and Higher tiers are available for all four assessed components. Urdu is written in the Nastaliq style of the Perso-Arabic script, written right-to-left. Students must be able to read and write in Nastaliq script for the Reading and Writing papers. The script's cursive, calligraphic nature means letter forms change substantially depending on position in a word (initial, medial, final, isolated), and mastery of script is directly rewarded in both papers. Paper 1 (Listening) tests comprehension of spoken Urdu covering the AQA themes: identity and culture, local and national areas, and education and employment. Transcripts are in spoken Standard Urdu (rather than regional variants such as Punjabi-inflected Urdu), and students answer questions in English. The listening paper is available at Foundation and Higher tiers with different audio tracks. Paper 2 (Speaking) is teacher-assessed using the standard AQA format: role play, photo card, and general conversation. Urdu verb morphology changes based on the gender of both the subject and object in many tenses — this gender agreement system, as well as the use of postpositions (rather than prepositions), is assessed throughout and distinguishes higher performance bands. Paper 3 (Reading) requires reading in Nastaliq script and includes comprehension questions and a translation from Urdu into English. Paper 4 (Writing) requires extended writing in Nastaliq script and includes a translation from English into Urdu. The verb system — including tenses, aspect (perfect, continuous, habitual), and gender agreement — is directly assessed in the writing tasks.