AQA AS French - 2016 Official Thread -

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Original post by neil20143

I always use these:
Après Avoir <<infinitive>>
Subjunctive (maybe only one though)
Imperfect & Condition clause
Past Participle (or whatever it is called haha)
Future
Maybe pluperfect but I'm not always keen on it.

Could you also say 'Un probleme dont il est souvent question est....'

A problem which often arises is...

Just to get dont into the intro for example

I am asking so you can correct my mistakes before monday lol

Reply 41

neil20143

Original post by Olmeister

You could say
Après avoir analyse les raisons pour lesquelles....

Sorry, I don't have the right accents on that! But is it not a way to get lesquelles into your piece

Correct me if I'm wrong

That's right I think. Not sure about the other one because I'm not even gonna bother putting dont in XD (One of the many areas that I'm crap at doing correctly)

Reply 42

Olmeister

Original post by neil20143

Last thing I will quote you on haha! Could you use the pluperfect by saying something like... If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said...

'Si on avait demande moi il y a quelques annees, J'aurais dit...

Reply 43

troubleuhu

Original post by neil20143

in the exemplar materials they use

'les raisons pour lesquelles' so will use that
also en so
alcohol is bad and i am going to talk about the problems of it

l'alcool est mauvais et j'en parlerai aux problemes?

Reply 44

fingernagel

Does anyone have a list of all potential essay questions? (started revising yesterday...)
If it's useful at all, the questions for German were on holidays (at home vs abroad), tattoos/piercings, and "does tv ruin family life?" so those are unlikely to come up!

Reply 45

neil20143

Original post by fingernagel

I don't quite think it'll work like that because French and German are two separate subjects. Like Spanish speaking overlapped with French speaking this year in terms of topics that were on the cards so probably not much of an indicator. I think holidays has a chance to come up this year (or smoking) but probably not the other two.

Reply 46

Lottiehere

I'm not sure if this image is big enough but basically its a table I made and thoughts on essays :smile:

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 47

Grace Carroll

does anyone have any idea what sort of essay we could get on music? There's hardly enough advs and disavds to make an entire essay out of and we hardly covered it in lessons as it was our nominated topic for the speaking so it was basically overlooked as a possibility to come up for the essay. Thank you!

Reply 48

zoak

Original post by fingernagel

Having said that, last year advantages and disadvantages of publicity came up in the french and spanish exam last year.

this year's spanish essay titles were not what we had predicted at all! It was:
celebrities
living alone
health

Reply 49

fingernagel

Original post by Grace Carroll

I think advantages and disadvantages could come up - maybe music festivals pros/cons, should schools teach music, why do young people like music so much?

Reply 50

JamesJackson707

Guys I'm a bit stuck on the listening. If you're asked a question should you write down word for word what the speaker said? Or should you paraphrase/write down the information in your own words?

Reply 51

amangill1999

I think one of the essays could be the advantages and disadvantages of tourism. I think that other likely topics include TV, Music, and Marriage.

Reply 52

Grace Carroll

Original post by fingernagel

I think advantages and disadvantages could come up - maybe music festivals pros/cons, should schools teach music, why do young people like music so much?

oh God i'd better do some research on that then, thank you :smile:

Reply 53

Grace Carroll

Original post by JamesJackson707

Guys I'm a bit stuck on the listening. If you're asked a question should you write down word for word what the speaker said? Or should you paraphrase/write down the information in your own words?

When i did practice listenings I didn't get the marks for some of my answers that i wrote down word for word as the mark scheme specifically said 'reject...', most likely because we need to be able to translate and then make into idiomatic english even if the literal french makes perfect sense. Very annoying!!!

Reply 54

thegaddman

Original post by Grace Carroll

Sometimes the best thing you can do is if you have enough time, write down word for word what you hear on the side of the page and try and make sense of it there, I find this much easier. If you really get stuck you can write down the answer as what they say, better off writing that down than leaving it blank and not all mark schemes are that picky so a lot of the time you can still get the marks

Reply 55

chartreux5

sos!!!! Im a native speaker and have never been to an AS lesson, WHAT IS THE ESSAY STRUCTURE SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE

Reply 56

romaiseb

Original post by chartreux5

sos!!!! Im a native speaker and have never been to an AS lesson, WHAT IS THE ESSAY STRUCTURE SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE

The question is structured in 2 (check out the past papers)
10-12 paragraphs, 5-6 answering one side of the question, and the other half answering the other half of the question.
Intro should give a quick context of the topic or a rhetorical question (like "est-ce que les reseaux sociaux sont un bienfait ou un danger?")
Conclusion would probably just be summing up your opinion or your arguments
Make sure to have examples after every point in your essay - you can make up stats if you need

Bonne chance!

Reply 57

chartreux5

Original post by romaiseb

Conclusion would probably just be summing up your opinion or your arguments
Make sure to have examples after every point in your essay - you can make up stats if you need

Bonne chance!

10-12 paragraphs??? You mean lines right?
Do we have to announce the essay plan in the intro?

Merci toi aussi x

Reply 58

romaiseb

Original post by chartreux5

10-12 paragraphs??? You mean lines right?
Do we have to announce the essay plan in the intro?

Merci toi aussi x

No it's not lines, it's 10-12 separate paragraphs - 5-6 paragraphs addressing one part of the question & another 5-6 paragraphs on the other question, with Point Evidence Explain (PEE) incorporated into each paragraph. It might seem like a lot but if you're a native speaker you'll probably have over an hour to write up your essay, and I'm sure you'll have plenty of points/arguments you can include, remember: it's only 5-6 points per question, it's just you have to split these points each into their own paragraph, explained and with examples - hope that makes sense!
Nope, you don't really need to announce the essay plan in the intro, just make a couple of points on the context of the questions as I said in my first response to you x

Check out the specification here: http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/subjects/specifications/alevel/AQA-2650-2660-2695-W-SP-14.PDF (starts from page 5) on the exact things you need to know for the exam, and make a couple plans in your head.

Lemme know if you need any more help

Reply 59

neil20143

Original post by chartreux5

10-12 paragraphs??? You mean lines right?
Do we have to announce the essay plan in the intro?

Merci toi aussi x

It depends. I do 8 with three for and three against and go into detail with each point (then a conclusion and introduction). You can also do loads of mini paragraphs of you want, but it just depends on how you like to go about it. Personally, I think 10-12 is too much as we only have a recommended time of 45 minutes to do it but I guess if you rush through the first two sections then why not?

If you go through some of the examiner marked and analysed essays on the AQA website, you can see people only having 4 paragraphs but getting full marks because of how in depth they go.