How to get the grade you want in GCSE French
I decided to make this post because a lot of people struggled with languages in my year - they were getting 7/8/9s across all their subjects, and 4s in their chosen language (not bad for this point in the year but it’s a stark contrast to grades in all the other subjects, and there’s ALWAYS room for improvement). Now languages don’t come naturally to many people, but hard work can get you very far. SO here are just some tips that might help you since mocks are coming up as well - if you need any more info/help pop me an ask/message and I’d be happy to help.
Might be common sense, but people around you may place emphasis on Maths and Science, and you may shrug it off and say it’s just French; it’s not that important; you’ll learn all the vocab last minute, - but that won’t work, unless you’ve got a REALLY good memory but even then, the test won’t ask you what “chaleureux” or “pampelmousse” mean, it’ll ask you why Anais likes the town of Nice so much or where Claude, who lives in Paris, goes to buy grapefruit, and how he gets there.
Also, LANGUAGES ARE IMPRESSIVE AND WILL HELP YOU THROUGHOUT LIFE! Start to pay attention in class now, ask questions for things you don’t get, attend help sessions if you need them, write down new words, print off the spec or have it at your disposal - you don’t have to come home and bang out notes for hours, and repeat French words to yourself over and over again to get it in your head (hell, don’t do that for anything, please!). Just don’t brush it off as irrelevant, or not try because even a little bit of work can get you SO far. I have a friend who got a 2 in their Year 10 EoY and then a 5 in their mocks, and ended up with an 8 in their final exam. It’s all possible!
2) KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO BE TESTED ON
Know the types of questions that will come up, and what you’ll have to do for them.
SPEAKING: You got to choose a topic (at least for AQA, tell me if this isn’t the case for the other exam boards?), so PREPARE THE HECK OUT OF THAT TOPIC! If you guys want the sheet I made to try and predict what questions I’d get asked, message me, and I’ll post it online - it saved my life! Have a few questions planned out that you can just spout the answers off by heart while you think of ways to extend. I can still remember the sentences I replied with. ALSO! Prepare for the question you’ll have to ask your teacher during the general conversation beforehand - you have to do it, and it can be as simple as you want it to. Try and ask this question before prompted, that way the conversation seems more natural, and you can just focus on getting out a good answer without that hanging around the back of your mind.
What I did, that surprisingly helped me, was nearer to the speaking exam, I just replied to everything my family said in French, and tried to work on it from there. Spontaneity is needed, because you can’t always predict the questions that will come up. Ask friends to test you, record yourself and listen to it on the train/bus/car/walk to school. ALSO, if you get people to ask you predicted questions, you’ll know how you’ll automatically want to react in English - rather than learning something unnatural that you won’t remember, just translate what you’d say in English to French - more likely to remember it that way.
Some questions in the writing exam only require you to write 90 words, while others want 150, and then there’s always those positive/negative/not mentioned in the reading one - careful with those - always read the question carefully.
3) THE SPEC IS YOUR NEW HOLY BOOK
This is the case for most subjects! The exam board won’t give you any words that aren’t on the specification - it’s a pre-made cheat sheet! This will help especially for your reading and listening exams (and the other two as well). I don’t know about the other boards, but AQA especially has a good spec, with all the vocab organised by topic. If you know these words, you’ll be set.
This helps particularly with Step 2. Also for translation, it is literally just matching the vocab from the spec to English, so knowing the words helps considerably.
4) WATCH FRENCH FILMS/YOUTUBERS/TV SHOWS
If you can’t go to France, bring France to you! Immerse yourself in the fillers they use (the bah, in the place of um) and the intonation of their sentences. I don’t know how to describe this, but I always see French as very up-down like this dash: ⁓. You know the whole thing about French being a cursive language? Integrate some of these expressions into your speaking, when the teacher asks you spontaneously during your speaking exam: Tu t’endends bien avec ta famille? Say: BIEN SUR.... (and the rest of your sentence) - SAY IT WITH THE PASSION OF A FRENCH PERSON WHO LOVES THEIR FAMILY!!!
Knowing how French people speak will help you greatly for listening and writing, and you’ll reach a point where it becomes kinda natural to understand what they’re saying? ALSO, for the Listening exam (for AQA at least), the people on the recording speak a lot slower than the youtubers and actors in the videos you watch - so if you do this early on - you’re set!
Some youtubers I’d reccommend: Norman fait des videos, Cyprien, Dirty Biology
TV SHOWS: I watched the Santa Clarita diet dubbed in French (because I’m a lazy lass who couldn’t resist the pull of Netflix, but used it for GOOD!), Versailles, The Returned, and HERE is a great post about how to sound more French by @frenchaise (this isn’t a must, but it helps with fluency points).
5) LEARN A FEW COMPLEX PHRASES
SO many people in my class tried to memorise the entire paragraphs they’d write in their writing exam - this doesn’t work!! Considering the number of topics and combinations of questions that could come up, that’s more than 20 paragraphs you’d have to memorise on top of the 10+ other subjects you’d have to revise for - don’t do that. Just have a select few phrases that are considered to be “complex” or A* and personalise them for your topic. They could be something as simple as: Dans le salon, il y a toujours des gens en train de regarder la tele. Bitesize has loads of these phrases, as well as the Zut website.
Using a variety of tenses gets you very far. Present, Near Future, Future, Imperfect, Conditional etc. You have to know the 5 basic ones for present, past and future, as well as conditional, it helps if you have a few phrases in the subjunctive tense. Even one line can make the difference between the 8 and the 9 - for writing especially a range of tenses is very important - use them ALL, somehow - be creative - this only gets you more marks from an examiner sick of reading about how Mark played football in the park.
The one phrase I used for subjunctive when asked about my town was: Bien que ma ville soit jolie... - very easy to do - slip it in to your speaking as well.
7) EXTEND, EXTEND, EXTEND!
My teacher had this 10 finger rule for ways to extend. So you did something - that’s the ‘what’ done. Now for the: who did you do it with? Where did you do it? Why did you do it? When did you do it? Have you done it in the past/will you do it again in the future? Did you enjoy it? Did the person you were with enjoy it? How would you improve it? What was the weather like?
Only thing is, make sure you stay relevant with the extensions you use. Don’t go off on a tangent about your family, when the question asked was about your town.
ALSO - answer all the bullet points in the writing that you get given, if you skip one, even if your answer is on par with the works of Proust, you could go down a whole grade.
8) ACCURACY IS A BIG DEAL
Check over your spellings, your grammar and all those sneaky little phrases you may have forgotten to conjugate - a few mistakes won’t do too much harm, but too many and you could drop a whole grade. If you can’t remember how to spell it, try to substitute another synonym in for it.
9) STAY CALM - YOU CAN DO IT
Don’t panic. Remember what you’ve revised. All the work you’ve put in. Take a deep breath, sit down, clear your mind, and just do the exam - because in the end, that’s all it is. An exam. And if you think you didn’t do well, it isn’t the end of the world - you’re more than that. But also, you probably did fine, we just all have a tendency to think we’re worse than we actually are. Grades aren’t the be all and end all, and sometimes, they aren’t even a good measure of the work you put in. But if you put the work in, then be proud, because this is about getting the grade that YOU want! Je suis fier de toi!
In the end, just enjoy the subject - it might be the last time you get to learn a language formally for free! Hehe. Bon courage mes amis!
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