AQA GCSE French Exam 2023

I wrote far more than was asked for for each question, writing about 180-200 words for the 90 word question, and 250-300 for the 150 word question. I only used the future, conditional, and subjunctive in the last few sentences, which were definitely well after I had written 150 words, so would an examiner still see that I have included this and give me the marks for this, or would they simply ignore what I had written after 150 words, and not reward me for this. Similarly, for the 90 word question, I had only covered 2 of the 4 bullet points by the time I had reached 90 words, so would I be limited due to the fact that I did not cover all 4 bullet points, even though I had done so after the 90 words, and made it explicitly clear by writing one distinct paragraph on each bullet point? Sorry for writing so much, I am quite worried that this will severely impact my grade.

Reply 1

moccix

Original post by jed0505

i do aqa a level german, but ive had a look at past aqa french gcse mark schemes for you and here's what it says (it says the exact same for 150 words, just replace 90 with 150) :

The band refers to the amount of information that is conveyed, as follows:
9–10: a lot
7–8: quite a lot
5–6: some
3–4: little
1–2: very little
All of these have to be considered with reference to the suggested number of words, which is approximately 90. In other words, a candidate who writes approximately 90 words, clearly understandable and relevant to all four bullet points, will be able to achieve 10 marks, provided the other criteria are met. Conversely, a candidate may write much more than 90 words, but the language is so inaccurate that little or very little information is conveyed successfully and the mark will be much lower. If a candidate writes considerably fewer than 90 words, ‘a lot of information’ will not be conveyed.

so i dont think it matters if you've written a lot! what matters is the quality of language and coverage of the 4 bullet points even after the approximate word count. i think its a lot more lenient at GCSE so I wouldn't worry too much, whereas at A-Level i think they only mark up till a certain point like you said :smile: