AQA AS French writing exam help

Hello

I'm a year 11 student who did AS french last year (year 10) and I got B's on units 1 and 3 but a C on the unit 2, the writing exam. It came out as a B overall, and because an A2 in one year with one hour a week and lessons often cancelled would just be ridiculous to attempt, so i'm retaking it and I really want an A so I can do A2 in year 12.

I'm pretty happy with the other two (my biggest problem is basically changing the language I use in unit 1 because you get extra marks for that) but I'm quite worried about the writing exam because I am worst at it.

Can anyone give me any advice for getting my mark up in it?

Thanks in advance!

oh so helpful.

What topics are you studying for it?

Reply 3

Ziffachan

Well I intend to do Pollution, Conservation and Environment, Mass Media or perhaps Immigration and Multiculturalism for it

But because I'm like the only person doing it and we have one lesson a week which is cancelled so often we don't study specfic topics in lessons. It's pretty much completely independent work but i'm starting to sort out all my work and get a set of notes about everything.

But I'm looking for general advice about the exam really.

Reply 4

Simon-J

The most important thing is:
-> Point
-> Evidence
-> Analysis

AQA are very keen on students being able to analyse what they write about, rather than it being a very superficial or descriptive piece of writing. Don't forget that the majority of marks available are for the "Knowledge of Society" aspect to your essay, so make sure you are quite well-read in your chosen topic(s) - that is to say, make sure you have some facts about the topic to use in an essay (though some people have managed to blag their way through quite well!). I made some notes a while back for the Environment section (2 years since I sat this exam!) - they are available on the Wiki here.
I also did some Mass Media notes, which are probably lurking somewhere on my laptop. If you think they may be useful, feel free to PM me or something.
You probably know this already, but to quote from the preliminary booklet won't score you as many marks as independent research/reading.
Look at some of the past papers for this unit, as in all honesty, the questions are similar every year!
Bonne chance!

Reply 5

Ziffachan

Merci!

Yes I have noticed the questions are always similar.
I certainly have no clue about France and Europe or the Francophonie so I think i'll just ignore those topics :wink:

Can I ask though... what do you mean by analysing my points? I am certainly used to it in a literary sense but I don't quite understand what you mean in this instance. I'm sure if you explain it to me I will realise that I've probably done plenty but even so... :wink:

Reply 6

Ziffachan

Do you suggest I concentrate on the one topic for the writing exam? I don't think it would be realistic to try to do a lot of work on all five topics and I would rather get a lot of information on the Pollution topic and do that in the exam. I have found an awful lot of information and i'm much more confident with that than any of the other topics.