Struggling with AS level French?

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Hey, I did AS AQA french last year and I will give you my best advice.

So at GCSE I came out with virtually full marks in french and spanish, attaining full marks in all coursework. I felt I had a very natural talent for languages and so opted for french A level, as my college didn't offer spanish or I'd have done both.

As the course started I found the content and the grammar easy, but the writing and speaking very difficult. I consistently got Ds and Cs in essays all throughout the year, getting my first B in march before exams.

Alongside french I took maths, further maths and physics - french was my completely different choice (and I really feel like that is why I struggled so much!)

My best advice for your speaking exam is to learn how and when to use the 'expressions clés' - I did loads of mindmaps of good sentences, key words/idioms and tenses to be able to get into whatever the topic is. Choose your least favourite topic for your nominated topic because then you can (to some extent) plan what you want to say and leave your confident topics to the conversation later on.
Essays are all about accuracy! The biggest jump from gcse to A level is that they expect you to be able to execute harder and more sophisticated grammar BUT get it all right as well.

I would recommend loads of reading (lemonde.fr is fantastic!) and listen to french radio.

So when it came to my exams I felt my speaking went brilliantly - flowed very well, filled up the time easily and even got imperfect subjunctive in there.
The big paper was hard. Reading section was fine, listening took a few gos, and my essay I feel must be what let me down. Be prepared to have to do an essay on one of your least favourite topics - sometimes the choices you get means you literally have to choose the lesser evil.

Turn up on results day and I've achieved A in maths, A in further maths, A in physics...... and a C in french.
Gutted doesn't cover it. Really wanted to do all 4 at A2 but clearly this wasn't an option.
Turns out I was 3 ums off a B , and my speaking was 3 ums off an A - it had been moderated down.

Where do I think I failed? I think it could be a lot of things: I got the highest mark in my class, we were the first AS French class to go through my college (very new sixth form) and there was four of us, on results day the grades were CCDU; doing an essay writing subject alongside essentially three maths was HARD, and I do believe if I had followed the 'arts' route and did English lit, french, philosophy and history I would have attained much higher grades on results day. Alas, I did not.

My best advice - immerse yourself in french, use the AQA website kerboodle, listen to radio read the news and most of all practice conversation with other students.

Hope this helps.

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Reply 21

username1214455

AS French is evil. It's like a vortex that sucks up all of your time and energy. I still have nightmares about it.

Reply 22

rachelc142

Original post by L'Evil Fish

Bonjour.

Tout le monde dit que tu devrais regarder les films... Mais je ne pense pas que ce soit utile.

Je pense que la plus meilleure manière de réussir en AS est d'apprendre la grammaire et de pratiquer avec quelqu'un.

Si tu sais ta grammaire, ça devient facile de construire tes propres phrases :smile:

Oui - je suis en accord - la grammaire est tellement important!
Aussi on doit essayer de practiquer ton "accent" (? Je ne sais pas le mot) tous les temps; je recommenderais avec un prof ou ami?

Le francais me manque. J'attends avec l'impatience pour le jour quand je peux visiter France. Je souhaite que je n'ai pas quitté le francais; quel dommage.

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Reply 23

L'Evil Fish

Original post by Obiejess

AS French is evil. It's like a vortex that sucks up all of your time and energy. I still have nightmares about it.

Lol, maybe you took it a bit too early. By far my easiest AS although I think as an a level itself, it's probably hardest

Original post by rachelc142

Et si l'on connaît sa grammaire, on peut construites n'importe qu'elles phrases !

C'est le même mot :smile:

'un accent' je dirais pas dire que c'est vraiment important parce que certains dans ma classe ont obtenu A sans bon accent mais oui, personnellement je pense qu'un bon accent est essentiel parce qu'on a un aire plus sûr

Mais on peut se parler :smile:

j'étudie plus le français en classe, mais je le parle un peu sur l'internet. La seule raison je vais passer les examens et parce que ça serait un A facile

Reply 24

username1214455

Original post by L'Evil Fish

Lol, maybe you took it a bit too early. By far my easiest AS although I think as an a level itself, it's probably hardest

Et si l'on connaît sa grammaire, on peut construites n'importe qu'elles phrases !

C'est le même mot :smile:

j'étudie plus le français en classe, mais je le parle un peu sur l'internet. La seule raison je vais passer les examens et parce que ça serait un A facile

Oh I know I took it too early but even aside from that the highest grade in my class was a C. I didn't even get the lowest and I was 15, the oldest was 18.

Yeah well everyone knows you're a special case anyway Fish.

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