WJEC French FN4 - 14th June 2016

I'm doing Au Revoir Les Enfants for the film! c: What about you? The past paper questions are quite hard, to be honest. I think it does depend on how much vocab you know too, because the environment ones are quite easy and I'm happy with the environment as a topic.

That's the first I've heard of that! It's unfair for examiners to do that, but I can see why your teacher might say that because there isn't really that much space for you to write an answer, and then cross it out and write another answer. I remember hearing from my teachers that you wouldn't get the mark if your answer exceeded the amount of line(s) given, although that was from last year, and it was implied about the listening paper, if I recall correctly!

I have no revision tips, aha, sorry! I just do and re-do and re-do the past paper questions. There's a resource that my school have called ZigZag though, which have similar questions. I didn't think that you needed quotes though for the essay.

Nice, what's it like as a film? I'm doing Les Choristes as my film and Le Blé en Herbe as my book - my school does two so we have more choice in the exam, which is probably going to be useful on the day but feels like a lot right now -_- I completely agree about the vocab thing - for the questions in English one of the papers needed to translate a word that even our teacher didn't know, which felt so unfair!

Yeah, I think it wasn't necessarily to stop us from crossing stuff out and rewriting another answer but to stop us writing too much and effectively making the examiner find the answer in what we'd written - though I had no idea about writing too much for the listening being bad too, thanks!

I found some Cambridge Pre-U question papers which are reasonably similar to the WJEC ones, so I've just been doing those to revise - and learning vocab of course! Re-doing questions sounds good though - I suppose your answers get more clear and focused each time. Have you not used quotes in your essays then? Mine aren't super long, but we've been told they're useful for the whole PEE structure in essays as evidence? Though you do have to memorise them, which usually means your choice is kind of limited!

What would you say you find hardest about the exam? For me it's probably the reading comprehension questions in French just because of their obscurity

ARLE is alright - it's not as interesting as Les Choristes for sure. The fact that it was made in the 80s just makes it harder to write about because of context. We've only done one film because our teacher said it was too much for to do two things so for our year, she decided to do just the one film.

Yeah, that's true! I'm always told that you don't need to write full sentences either but I can never get the verb changes right without writing out in full.

Ah! That sounds good - I'll try them in the half-term. I sometimes use quotes but because it's the film, I don't remember the direct French (and more of the English subtitles) and it seems weird to misquote the film too. If it was a book, I'm sure I'd try to remember quotes. I don't feel like the quotes add anything to my essay either; just sometimes as an example, really.

Definitely the reading comprehension questions!! It's so hard to get exactly what the mark scheme wants. I'm kind of disappointed that the listening questions are only worth 6 marks too.

i suppose that'll mean you know the film really well though! I have exactly the same problem with not writing full sentences - I'm always afraid I'm not actually answering the question whenever I do! And getting what it says on the mark scheme just never works out for me

Yeah, I don't quote much Les Choristes stuff - I suppose because with a film you talk about cinematography and colour and other effects, but with a book it's just the words!

The listening questions are normally the least ambiguous, so I suppose it would be nice to have some more as well - but there we go! Do you listen to or read the news in French? I feel like I should way more than I actually do...l

Hi! I'm doing La Haine for the essay, I'm basically having to teach myself a lot of stuff cause we've had reduced time this year due to funding issues in college
Can't really say I'm super confident about it but I've been doing essays etc to try and get used to it and stuff

Also, I was just looking at a past paper and for the essay how do you indicate the question you're doing? Do you just write 4(a) and then start answering or do you write 4(a) *question here* and then start answering?

Hiya! In our class we studied both Au Revoir Les Enfants and Les Choristes but I'm just focusing on Au Revoir Les Enfants as I feel there's more to talk about :/ I find this exam a hard to revise for like they could ask anything for the essays whats everyone else doing for it?

I'm just using the tonnes of PDF's that are on the internet they're really useful! I find there's a lot to talk about so it might be worth watching, there's a lot more specific vocabulary worth looking up however.
And yeah that's basically the revision I'm doing! I have all of my A2 exams in the space of a week though next week so don't know how much I'll be able to do😂
Ooh I did La Haine for my speaking exam!

@rileystringer1 Sorry, I've only just seen this! Are you trying to learn quotes for Les Choristes? If you are I have a few on Quizlet - I can send you a link?

@zplin I think just writing the question number and part is fine, though I find it helpful to write out the whole question because I'm so bad at focusing on the essay title...

@loinducoeur Haha it makes me feel better to know I'm not the onky one who hates reading the news in French!

Good luck to everyone for next week!

Guys! Was the FN2 translation : je n'y arriverai pas OR je n'y arriverai jamais?