AQA A2 French Unit 3 June 19th 2014

I got an A* when I did it 2 years back!

I got an A* when I did it 2 years back!

Hey guys, for me I generally find the listening and reading as my weakest points. The writing on the other hand is my strength. Does anyone have any tips on how they tackle the listening and reading questions successfully ? Thanks in advance


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Haha wow! Okay we are very opposites then but I guess that means we can help each other! Reading is my strongest because its right there infront of me and I sort of digest the text, first time I read it through, i annotate sentences where ive had to decipher the meaning and underline words i dont understand and predict their meaning, also the best thing is to put it into context, for example if the text is about say the president talking about immigrations and the question says 'the president feels that too many immigrants are coming in' then you can often make an educated guess cause its very unlikely that anyone would say that due to political correctness so the answer to the statement is likely to be faux, thats a pretty basic example but context and educated guesses will get you those last few marks

For the listenings my best advice would be to download french radio on to your phone and wake up to it in the mornings, even if its just 5 or 10 minutes, really good ones with a2 difficulty are tv 5 monde and france info (their website has lots of good articles where you can read and just try to see how much you understand amd look up unfamiliar words , or just open channels like france 24 on tv, its good to have some video action too hahaha, i also sometimes translate the reading texts they give and i gain alot of vocab, also it really is unbelievable how much you can tune your ear to french, we still have a month so I would really reccomend the radio, try to listen out for specific words and see if you can write them out and look them up

When youre actuallly doing the listenings and tgere is something ypu dont understand, try to write it out phonetically and see if you can piece it together, studying french in classrooms, we're really accustomed to identifying words on paper, also use the context thing

I really hope I helped and would love for any help with the writings, whats the best way to prepare for the essays and do ypu know where I could find some good structures? I always make mistakes in tiny things like accents and genders and prepositions which is really annoying



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Hi thanks for your tips, will definitely try them.

In regards to writing, I would say the main thing that will help in achieving the top marks is: having a good, organised structure that reads well, a range of language structures; simple, compound and complex(mainly complex though) and you should also try to include subjunctive and si clauses in your writing. You can start by doing at least 1 hour of grammar revision a day( that's what I did and it really did help). Try to write one essay a week and then check where you went wrong making sure you don't make the same mistake the next time and always ask your teacher how to improve your writing to the next level.

I hope this helps!


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Ahh right I see, yewh I guess structure is super is super important, how are ypu revising grammar btw? And yeah its just all thoe pesky little mistakes like wrong accents or putting 'de' after verb that is supposed to be 'a' :/ I think youre right about having a list of complex structures to scatter qround is really important do you have any good examples?

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I revise grammar by doing daily grammar exercises from a very helpful grammar book. You could and should try to add in as much subjunctive and si clauses in your writing as you can.

Some complex phrases you could use:

Il va de soi que [subj.] - it goes without saying that
Quoi qu'il en soit - whatever the case
Qu'on ne s'y trompe pas en pensant que/comme - Let's not trick ourselves in thinking that/like...
Il faut bien reconnaitre que - You/we should remember that

Good luck with revision !

Who's doing L'etranger and La haine?

I'm doing La Haine aswell it's such a good film! I've heard l'etranger is also good- going to try to read it soon!

Which one are you planning to write about and which one do you prefer?