AQA AS Unit 1 French exam 21st May 2013

Hi everyone,

I'm an A2 doing the unit 1 paper as a resit and was just wondering if anyone has any suggestions about what essays may come up/ how everyone's feeling about it :smile:

Reply 1

Amylina

2

I'm the same as you, A2 resitting the AS. I'm hoping to God that sport comes up as an essay question, my teacher predicted it last Summer (because it was the Olympic summer) and it didn't come up, and then he predicted it again in January, and it didn't come up again (although there was a question about fast food, so maybe not).

I'd like to say that I don't think anything to do with family or relationships will come up, but those questions seem really popular so I'm not ruling it out. The January exam was celebrities, fast food, and divorce, so hopefully there won't be anything similar.

I've not even had chance to worry about this exam, I'm much more concerned about the A2 exam, particularly the essay - I need an A too so it's a complete nightmare.

Reply 2

Lozzz..x

OP

Ah yes, what cultural topic are you doing for your A2 essay? I really need an A too and I'm getting like Cs in my essay, I think that and the translation really make a difference to your grade.

Reply 3

Amylina

2

We've studied the region of Normandy and the film La Haine in class, but unless something horrific comes up, i'll definitely be doing Normandy. Which topics have you studied? Translation I'm not too bad at, but I'm worried that there's going to be loads of random vocab that I don't know. Thankfully I've got 11 days between that and the exam before, so plenty of time to revise :smile:

Reply 4

William24

The last time Sport came up was in the Summer of 2009, which was a year after the 2008 Olympics. This is now the Summer of 2013 and here we are a year after the 2012 Olympics.. praying for sport.

Reply 5

username893771

13

Hey another A2 resitter here! I think sport will come up too, with the Oylmpics and all and the fact that it hasn't come up in a while. I have no idea for the other questions though. I'm just praying the grammar section will be nice, I took a look at the last two papers didn't even realise that the present participle came up. I always get caught out with little things like that :frown:

Reply 6

SinghSTAR

6

Hey guys! I'm an AS student doing this exam, I don't think the oral exam went as well as I had hoped so I really want an A in this!

Feeling quite confident about the Reading/Listening sections, just the essay I really cannot do! :-(

Any ideas on how to learn vocab/prepare for the essay? Grammatical points to include in there?

I have some tips for the grammar section Question 9 if anybody needs them? :-)

Bonne chance mes amis! ;-)

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 7

sh7171

Predictions for the essays? Anyone's teachers given predictions?

Reply 8

sandrabondaruk

1

Media didn't come up at all in January, so it has to come up in June...

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Reply 9

Amylina

2

These are the question subtopics for every question from Jan 2013 back to Jan 2010.

Jan 2013: Entre Nous, La Sante, La Mode/Les Tendances

June 2012: La Mode, Les Nouvelles Technologies, Entre Nous

Jan 2012: La Famille, La Sante, La Publicite

June 2011: La Tele, La Sante, La Mode

Jan 2011: Entre Nous, La Sante, Le Cinema

June 2010: Entre Nous, La Musique, La Sante

Jan 2010: Le Cinema, Les Vacances, Les Nouvelles Technologies

Health has been up a lot, whereas Holidays and Sport haven't been up for a long time.
TV, Publicity and New Technologies came up recentish, so maybe that will be the sub-topic that they don't include.
Marriage comes up a lot as well, and Family came up in 2012, whereas Friends hasn't been up since 2010 or before.
Fashion has been up a fair few times, and Cinema has been up a couple of times. Music has only been up once, and not since 2010.

If I had to guess based solely on this, then I'd guess maybe Sport, Friends and Music. However, we can clearly see how much the exam board favours certain sub-topics, so who knows?

Original post by SinghSTAR

Hey guys! I'm an AS student doing this exam, I don't think the oral exam went as well as I had hoped so I really want an A in this!

Feeling quite confident about the Reading/Listening sections, just the essay I really cannot do! :-(

Any ideas on how to learn vocab/prepare for the essay? Grammatical points to include in there?

I have some tips for the grammar section Question 9 if anybody needs them? :-)

Bonne chance mes amis! ;-)

Posted from TSR Mobile

To prepare for the essay, practicing is the best thing you can do. Try and do an essay or two a day until the exam, and don't just choose the topics you're good at. If you struggle for ideas, condense your notes into mind-maps, write key points down for each sub-topic, and make sure you'll be able to elaborate on these points. Start big and get smaller, if you need to.

For vocab, the best thing you can do is to memorise it, I'm afraid. If you struggle to do this, then choose a few key pieces of vocab for each sub-topic (say 5 or 6 pieces of subject specific vocab for Television, Families, Holidays etc.) If you're worried you're going to forget it when you go into the exam, perhaps you could look at the essay questions first, and write down your chosen pieces of vocab at the top of the page? Then you could tick it off when you include it?

If you include lots of structures it will look even more impressive :smile:

Good Luck!

Reply 10

The Assassin

18

Original post by Amylina

x

Good stuff! A lot of people thought sport would come in June 2012 + Jan 2013 but it didn't, so I'd be really surprised if it didn't turn up here. Hope the question's something like 'What's your favourite sport(s) and what are the disadavtanges/advantages of playing it?' That would be perfect.

Wouldn't want music or friends though :x. I'd rather have film/cinema, or television if sport doesn't come up.. or even holidays.

I wouldn't be surprised if advertising came up though. What would you like the most?

Reply 11

Amylina

2

Original post by The Assassin

Good stuff! A lot of people thought sport would come in June 2012 + Jan 2013 but it didn't, so I'd be really surprised if it didn't turn up here. Hope the question's something like 'What's your favourite sport(s) and what are the disadavtanges/advantages of playing it?' That would be perfect.

Wouldn't want music or friends though :x. I'd rather have film/cinema, or television if sport doesn't come up.. or even holidays.

I wouldn't be surprised if advertising came up though. What would you like the most?

I actually wouldn't mind music, I'm pretty opinionated haha :biggrin:

I'm best at marriage stuff, quite good at holidays and sport, so I'm hoping that they either bring back sport/holidays, or continue their obsession with relationships.

If publicity or new technologies comes up I might actually start crying. In my speaking exam, I did television as my chosen topic so I could avoid them, because I hated them so much.

When I sat the exam last year, we were expecting something more Olympics based for a sport question - something like 'What effect will the Olympics have upon the country and what are the benefits of doing sport in general', but who knows?

Reply 12

The Assassin

18

Original post by Amylina

I actually wouldn't mind music, I'm pretty opinionated haha :biggrin:

I'm best at marriage stuff, quite good at holidays and sport, so I'm hoping that they either bring back sport/holidays, or continue their obsession with relationships.

If publicity or new technologies comes up I might actually start crying. In my speaking exam, I did television as my chosen topic so I could avoid them, because I hated them so much.

When I sat the exam last year, we were expecting something more Olympics based for a sport question - something like 'What effect will the Olympics have upon the country and what are the benefits of doing sport in general', but who knows?

Haha fair enough. I don't think I'd be too good at music - although I didn't want music to come up as part of my speaking exam but it did, but fortunately, even so, it went quite well :tongue:

. And I agree about technologies/publicity being bad -- I can't stand those...

One question: if we get asked a question like, what are the benefits/inconveniences of sport(s), do you think it be a good idea to describe personal experiences (or make them up)? Or should we only speak about benefits in general...? Because it would be pretty easy to get all the tenses in if we described personal experiences.

Reply 13

Amylina

2

Original post by The Assassin

One question: if we get asked a question like, what are the benefits/inconveniences of sport(s), do you think it be a good idea to describe personal experiences (or make them up)? Or should we only speak about benefits in general...? Because it would be pretty easy to get all the tenses in if we described personal experiences.

Advice from my teacher regarding personal experiences is do include them, but don't lead with them. So for example, you could say that one of the benefits of sport is that it helps to relieve stress, then expand on it a bit, then you might say that you like to do exercise when you've got exams on or whatever :smile:

only in a sentence or two though, though I do agree that it's an excellent way to include tenses

Reply 14

Lozzz..x

OP

Original post by Amylina

We've studied the region of Normandy and the film La Haine in class, but unless something horrific comes up, i'll definitely be doing Normandy. Which topics have you studied? Translation I'm not too bad at, but I'm worried that there's going to be loads of random vocab that I don't know. Thankfully I've got 11 days between that and the exam before, so plenty of time to revise :smile:

I'm doing the occupation of France during world war 2 and I did do La Haine for speaking but my teacher's advised us we should definitely not do an essay on La Haine. I'm scared about random vocab too, they can be really harsh sometimes.

Reply 15

Amylina

2

Original post by Lozzz..x

I'm doing the occupation of France during world war 2 and I did do La Haine for speaking but my teacher's advised us we should definitely not do an essay on La Haine. I'm scared about random vocab too, they can be really harsh sometimes.

Yeah, we've been advised the same, because apparently people tend to 'tell the story' rather than analyse. I'm also pretty worried about vocab, so I'm practicing as much as I can, but we've done a lot in class all year so I'm hoping it'll be okay. It's the English-French translations that I'm most worried about tbh

Reply 16

flyylikejetz

11

Original post by SinghSTAR

Hey guys! I'm an AS student doing this exam, I don't think the oral exam went as well as I had hoped so I really want an A in this!

Feeling quite confident about the Reading/Listening sections, just the essay I really cannot do! :-(

Any ideas on how to learn vocab/prepare for the essay? Grammatical points to include in there?

I have some tips for the grammar section Question 9 if anybody needs them? :-)

Bonne chance mes amis! ;-)

Posted from TSR Mobile

yes....

Reply 17

SinghSTAR

6

Original post by flyylikejetz

yes....

If you think of it as a game, you'll do well. Imagine in each section the person who wrote the paper is testing you - so if you spot the thing they're testing you on, you'll know what to put!
Okay, here are a few tips:

1. If there is 'en' before the gap, they're likely to be testing us on whether we can spot a present participle - make sure answer ends in 'ant'

2. Modal verbs (e.g. Pouvoir, Vouloir, Devoir) in any tense are always followed by an infinitive. So you literally rewrite the verb in brackets. They might put a pronoun after the modal verb to trick you, but the rule is still the same!

3. Make sure you know the irregular masculine and feminine endings for adjectives (-el or -elle, aux or euses) / where the word changes (e.g. Beau and Belle, long and longue)

4. Look for clues in gender in other adjectives in the sentence - if anything sticks out by having an extra -e on the end, perhaps the noun is feminine?

As long as you work out what the sentence is trying to get you to show off, you'll do well in this part of the exam! Bonne chance!

Reply 18

Renault4

I'm pretty sure something on alcohol might come up... and sport yeah

Reply 19

Dwi3774

Original post by Amylina

Health has been up a lot, whereas Holidays and Sport haven't been up for a long time.
TV, Publicity and New Technologies came up recentish, so maybe that will be the sub-topic that they don't include.
Marriage comes up a lot as well, and Family came up in 2012, whereas Friends hasn't been up since 2010 or before.
Fashion has been up a fair few times, and Cinema has been up a couple of times. Music has only been up once, and not since 2010.

If I had to guess based solely on this, then I'd guess maybe Sport, Friends and Music. However, we can clearly see how much the exam board favours certain sub-topics, so who knows?

My teacher believes that there will be something about reality tv/"tele-poubelle".

But sport, friends and music my god I hate all of them, might have to go with friends if I can learn things friends do, such as be there for you and not spread your secrets, and how a relationship can be broken...all before Tuesday :3

AQA AS Unit 1 French exam 21st May 2013

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