Pearson Edexcel A-Level Urdu Past Papers & Mark Schemes

Pearson Edexcel A-Level Urdu (specification 9UR0) examines the national language of Pakistan and a language of significant cultural importance across South Asia. Urdu presents a unique linguistic situation — it shares its core grammar and most everyday vocabulary with Hindi (the two are mutually intelligible in spoken form), but uses the Perso-Arabic Nastaliq script, draws its formal and literary vocabulary primarily from Persian and Arabic, and has a distinct literary and cultural tradition rooted in Mughal heritage. Paper 1 (Listening, Reading and Translation — 2 hours, 80 marks, 40%) tests comprehension of standard Urdu at native speed. The Nastaliq script reads right-to-left and, like Arabic and Persian, generally omits short vowels — making reading comprehension dependent on vocabulary knowledge. Listening passages reflect the range of Urdu spoken in Pakistan and the UK diaspora. Translation sections test the postposition system (Urdu uses postpositions rather than prepositions — 'ghar mein' = in the house, literally 'house in'), the ergative construction in the perfective (where the subject takes 'ne' and the verb agrees with the object), and the distinction between formal literary Urdu and everyday conversational register. Paper 2 (Written Response to Works and Translation — 2 hours 40 minutes, 120 marks, 30%) engages with Urdu literature — including ghazal poetry, short stories (afsane) by masters like Manto, Ismat Chughtai, or Premchand, and South Asian cinema. The literary tradition of Urdu is extraordinarily rich, particularly in poetry, and students must write critical analysis in formal written Urdu using the Persianised academic register. Paper 3 (Speaking — approximately 30 minutes, 72 marks, 30%) covers themes including Pakistani society and politics, the Urdu-speaking diaspora in Britain, cultural identity across national boundaries, and the relationship between tradition and modernity in South Asian communities. This archive of 42 resources provides practice across both current and legacy specification papers.