AS french oral

my school's received the date for the French oral exam (wjec) its pretty soon -21st march. the big problem is that we had a few issues with the teachers and so far we havnt even covered 1 of the topics. the questions on the oral can be from any topic and a teacher is gonna give us a vocab list for all the topic to learn in a month- something that's gonna be intense and stressful.
Im not the most confident with speaking and my French isn't great- but I really want to pass this exam.
im DESPERATE everyone is freaking out.
pls give me some revision tips, what I need to work on, how to deal stress advice, and just any general tips. im really worried pls help.
thanks in advance

Reply 1

Anna Schoon

13

Original post by Exotic-L

my school's received the date for the French oral exam (wjec) its pretty soon -21st march. the big problem is that we had a few issues with the teachers and so far we havnt even covered 1 of the topics. the questions on the oral can be from any topic and a teacher is gonna give us a vocab list for all the topic to learn in a month- something that's gonna be intense and stressful.
Im not the most confident with speaking and my French isn't great- but I really want to pass this exam.
im DESPERATE everyone is freaking out.
pls give me some revision tips, what I need to work on, how to deal stress advice, and just any general tips. im really worried pls help.
thanks in advance

Let's look at these topic areas, taken from the WJEC specification:

(a) Leisure and Lifestyles, including travel and tourism, sport, hobbies,entertainment, customs, traditions, healthy living – health and nutrition, dietand exercise; unhealthy living - drugs, aids, smoking, alcohol, etc

(b) The Individual and Society, including relationships and responsibilities,gender issues, youth culture (values, peer groups, fashions and trends etc.),education, vocational training and future careers.

Take it step by step:

The main thing is to actually have factual knowledge about all of these and you don't even have to that in French. Most of this is general knowledge: you already know what smoking does to you and why sport is good for you, for example. Have a look at past papers (available online here: http://www.wjec.co.uk/qualifications/qualification-resources.html?pastpaper=true&subject=French&level=gceasa) and see what comes up and what sort of actual knowledge you need to answer the questions.

Then, go to the internet - Quizlet and memrise are both good because they have vocab listed according to topic areas. A lot of the vocab will span across several topics anyway - eg. there's a lot of common vocab for sport/exercise/diet/health. You'll find that as you learn the vocab and the topics, things will get easier and easier. Don't forget that the stimulus cards themselves contain a lot of the vocab you need, so that will help!

As you're panicking over the oral exam in March, concentrate on that. As I said, get hold of some of the stimulus cards and familiarise yourself with the format. The mark schemes (available on the same page as above) will tell you that "Communication" is what gets you the main marks, for which you need the ideas ("information content") and that you will be credited for taking the initiative. You could then make up some of your own and work on those.

As your whole class is affected and everyone is desperate, get together with your classmates and share your knowledge. Together, you could work on one topic group a week - eg sport and hobbies go well together; all the health stuff goes together; relationships spills over into gender issues and so on. Get the vocab from the internet and then talk to each other about the topics, using the stimulus cards to set you off.

To practise the general conversation, you could meet up over lunch every day and just chat about everything in French over lunch. Ten to fifteen minutes a day adds up over the weeks and will increase everybody's confidence massively.

Your stress levels will drop steadily as you work steadily. You will need to study French every day but, as I said, you'll find that it does get easier as you progress. In the exam itself, your great support will be the stimulus cards themselves which will contain a lot of information and vocabulary. You have 15 minutes to prepare - spend half of that on each card and jot down some notes for ideas and essential vocabulary in response to the questions.

I do hope that some of these ideas help. Bonne chance!

Reply 2

rileystringer1

11

What Anna said is great, use your classmates :smile:

You're clearly all in the same position, so you can lend each other knowledge on certain topics or even just nice phrases.

I did this exam last year and my biggest tip (in hindsight) would be not to worry. I did no work for it (really), I made lots of notes one each topic but didn't use them because I was lazy. I still came out with an A with 57/60 marks in the oral, worrying just makes you feel worse which can make you lose concentration in the exam.

ACTUALLY, send me your e-mail in private message and I'll send you my notes. I made notes on all of the topics and got them marked by my teacher; at least then someone will get some use out of them!

Original post by Exotic-L

my school's received the date for the French oral exam (wjec) its pretty soon -21st march. the big problem is that we had a few issues with the teachers and so far we havnt even covered 1 of the topics. the questions on the oral can be from any topic and a teacher is gonna give us a vocab list for all the topic to learn in a month- something that's gonna be intense and stressful.
Im not the most confident with speaking and my French isn't great- but I really want to pass this exam.
im DESPERATE everyone is freaking out.
pls give me some revision tips, what I need to work on, how to deal stress advice, and just any general tips. im really worried pls help.
thanks in advance

Reply 3

Mr_L

Original post by rileystringer1

What Anna said is great, use your classmates :smile:

You're clearly all in the same position, so you can lend each other knowledge on certain topics or even just nice phrases.

I did this exam last year and my biggest tip (in hindsight) would be not to worry. I did no work for it (really), I made lots of notes one each topic but didn't use them because I was lazy. I still came out with an A with 57/60 marks in the oral, worrying just makes you feel worse which can make you lose concentration in the exam.

ACTUALLY, send me your e-mail in private message and I'll send you my notes. I made notes on all of the topics and got them marked by my teacher; at least then someone will get some use out of them!

Could you send me your notes as well, I've got my oral exam in may, and my first mock in a week and I'm freaking out!! :smile:

Reply 4

rileystringer1

11

Original post by Mr_L

Could you send me your notes as well, I've got my oral exam in may, and my first mock in a week and I'm freaking out!! :smile:

Bien sûr! See the thread linked below, post #5
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3880499&p=62607723#post62607723

Reply 5

Mr_L

Original post by rileystringer1

Bien sûr! See the thread linked below, post #5
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3880499&p=62607723#post62607723

Merci beaucoup!! :biggrin:

Reply 6

Exotic-L

OP

10

thanks soo much for the replies and advice, im trying to learn vocab but I feel like I shouldn't just learn a bunch of words for eash topic, im just gonna pick a few words from each topic so that I can learn them well and I will actually remember them esp since there are soo many topics.
we talked to the teachers and they've given us huge lists of vocab which is great! makes our lie much easier

Reply 7

rileystringer1

11

Original post by Exotic-L

thanks soo much for the replies and advice, im trying to learn vocab but I feel like I shouldn't just learn a bunch of words for eash topic, im just gonna pick a few words from each topic so that I can learn them well and I will actually remember them esp since there are soo many topics.
we talked to the teachers and they've given us huge lists of vocab which is great! makes our lie much easier

I'm against vocab learning à vrai dire. I feel like the only one that doesn't find it useful to sit there and rote learn lists and lists of vocabulary. Like, if you get a card on renewable energy, you're gonna be sitting in front of the examiner thinking "what was the word on the 3rd list that meant wind energy?", just use what you know I say.

edit: of course you've got to learn some specialist topic vocab, without it you wouldn't be able to hold much of a conversation but people in my class are compiling long lists for each topic which I just can't be bothered to do

Reply 8

Exotic-L

OP

10

Original post by rileystringer1

What Anna said is great, use your classmates :smile:

You're clearly all in the same position, so you can lend each other knowledge on certain topics or even just nice phrases.

I did this exam last year and my biggest tip (in hindsight) would be not to worry. I did no work for it (really), I made lots of notes one each topic but didn't use them because I was lazy. I still came out with an A with 57/60 marks in the oral, worrying just makes you feel worse which can make you lose concentration in the exam.

ACTUALLY, send me your e-mail in private message and I'll send you my notes. I made notes on all of the topics and got them marked by my teacher; at least then someone will get some use out of them!

omg soo much for the document its great ! itll dme me a lot of time and research ! u did great in ur oral! im a bit worried since im probably the weakest in French out if all my clasmates and I really stress out when it comes to exams esp orals I remember freaking out with my GCSE's even though I did it with my teacher and I just had to learn what I wrote down. do you have any tips for this? ik trying to not stress is the best way to go about this but I stress a lot ! also in school we tried a prac of the stimulus cards and the tech just tells us to write down the whole thing but I tried it with bullet points and I sounded like a "pancake" (what one of my classmates said when we were doing it in front of everyone) I have no flow and make soo many errors! idk how we will suddenly have to do it like that on the day wihout practicing. how can I improve confidence and fluency ? its so difficult!
thanks for ur reply and help its really appreciated !

Reply 9

Exotic-L

OP

10

Original post by rileystringer1

I'm against vocab learning à vrai dire. I feel like the only one that doesn't find it useful to sit there and rote learn lists and lists of vocabulary. Like, if you get a card on renewable energy, you're gonna be sitting in front of the examiner thinking "what was the word on the 3rd list that meant wind energy?", just use what you know I say.

edit: of course you've got to learn some specialist topic vocab, without it you wouldn't be able to hold much of a conversation but people in my class are compiling long lists for each topic which I just can't be bothered to do

I know what you mean that's what im worried about - not remembering and then just sitting there in the middle of it all triying to remember but im gonna learn 10-20 words for each topic and learn a few advantages and disavantages for each topic (soo happy about ur doc!!)
in ur doc are they set phrases? can I just learn them ? it would make my life soo much easier lol
ive been I denial since I made this thread that's why I replied so late

Reply 10

sammymiller

5

Original post by rileystringer1

What Anna said is great, use your classmates :smile:

You're clearly all in the same position, so you can lend each other knowledge on certain topics or even just nice phrases.

I did this exam last year and my biggest tip (in hindsight) would be not to worry. I did no work for it (really), I made lots of notes one each topic but didn't use them because I was lazy. I still came out with an A with 57/60 marks in the oral, worrying just makes you feel worse which can make you lose concentration in the exam.

ACTUALLY, send me your e-mail in private message and I'll send you my notes. I made notes on all of the topics and got them marked by my teacher; at least then someone will get some use out of them!

Hi