I'm in year 11 as well but am working at an A* on reading and listening
I'm on edexcel but have learned a lot of the vocab (you by no means need to learn all of it). Make sure you know your synonyms as although I haven't seen an aqa paper, on edexcel the last question is all in French. This means one way of saying something will be in the passage, and the question (also in French ) will have another way of saying that phrase/ word. For example, it could have a question on a teenagers life and say something like:
'Mes amis détestent les courses, mais moi, j'adore faire du shopping!'
And then the question could say something like (tick the right answer):
1)Il/ Elle n'ai jamais aimé faire les magasins quand elle était petite.
2)Il/ Elle aime les courses, cependant, ses amis détestent ça.
Basically, this sort of question shows why its crucial to know your negatives, as well as synonyms. The question translates to ' my friends hate shopping, but it love to go shopping'. Right there we can see two different ways of saying 'shopping'. Furthermore, answer number one translates to 'she never liked shopping when she was young' and this is just like the question they could try and trick you on. A lower grade student would see the ne jamais (negative) and assume that this answer may be correct because they didn't know les amis means friends, perhaps they only know the French word 'copain' for friend? The exam could try to trick you like this, so make sure you learn more than one way of saying various words and learn all your negatives! Also, make sure you pay attention to who is the speaker of the text. For example, if it says something like 'quand j'étais petit(e), je croyais qu'il était gentil, mais il m'enerve!' Make sure you understand here that the speaker believed that 'he' was kind when they were young, but now they get on the speakers nerve. Pay careful attention to who is speaking and who the negative is used for. Apart from negatives and synonyms, theres little else you will ever be tricked on (apart from false cognates- words that look like the English but don't mean the same- but that would be too harsh for a GCSE exam in my opinion). Negatives come very fast on the listening so listen out! I hope this helped and good luck! If yours assessments are A* ypou should do great!