some good points right there, thanks Ella. Apart from that, I would reckon to form a list of synonyms of words that are used frequently such as increase, decrease, worsen or something like that. That's what I'm doing at the moment and I find it quite effective as whenever I write an essay, I got loads of synonyms to use. Lastly, catchy phrases can be found everywhere in French newspaper such as Lemonde.fr, I think the vocab used in there is the most complex among other French online newspaper so better to keep a record of some idioms and phrases from the website, and the fact that there are about 12 questions to choose, it wouldn't be a really big problem though. Just out of interest, how much do you guys need for this A2 exam? for university for example?