AQA A2 French Writing - help!

I'm finding it difficult to get more than 50% on the writing section of the unit 3 exam and was wondering if anyone had any tips or suggestions on how to improve this? Any advice would be welcome :smile:

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Reply 1

negin1347

What are your cultural topics on?

Reply 2

MClu04

I'm studying Le Petit Prince and La France sous l'occupation pendant la deuxième guerre

Reply 3

kitkat16

I find it helpful to make a checklist of good structures (inversion, subjunctive, conditional, en + present participle, rhetorical question, ne...plus, ne...que etc.). Then write a couple of phrases related to your topic for each one, and try and learn them. Hopefully, you can then include these in the exam and know they're accurate.

Reply 4

negin1347

Not sure about the le petit prince as i haven't studied it, is it a play? Book?

I study occupation. I recommend you prepare and learn one essay, the one on how live was during the occupation because no matter what the question is you can talk about it in your answer, so even if the question is talk about one main important character, you should pick Pétain and say how he introduced new laws which affected french people's lives, or if the question is like would you have liked to live during that period, again you can say no because this is how their life was... maybe here you'd also have to adjust it to yourself as well, so if you're a girl then you can say if i had lived during that period i'd have no opportunities.

For the content of people's lives you should include:
- Life of men
- Life of women
- Life of children
- Life of Jews
- Life with the shortages of food and with new rationing system
*And include quotes from Pétain and facts as well
*And make sure you include your opinion as well

For structure:
- Subjunctive
- you can easily use the si + pluperfect + past conditional e.g. If i had lived during that period I would have found it difficult....
- Use things like 'avec laquelle' 'les raisons pour lesquelles' etc.
- Use imperfect tense, this is easy as most of the things you'd be explaining should be in this tense anyway, unless you've used that present historical tense.

The only other thing you would need to know as well is 'three main events' that took place that changed that period, so pick Pétain gaining power or collaborating with germans as one of them since you can talk again about how people's lives changed, but obviously you wouldn't write a lot on this compared to the other essay on just the lives of people, maybe pick 2 of the categories in the content, and the other two events maybe pick an event which changed the life of the jews as you can again use your paragraph for that essay here, and the third one idk pick something else.
Also, they might ask you on two characters, so maybe know things as well about another character i.e. Jean Moulin or De Gaulle. This is all in the syllabus and past exam questions have come on those before.

Reply 5

MClu04

Thank you, this has been really helpful! :smile:

Reply 6

EmilyImpossible

anybody studying a region? predictions of what they'll ask?

Reply 7

atiyaaloveszaynx

Does anyone have any predictions? I'm doing dramaturge and musicien

Reply 8

learner248

any predictions for the literature questions? :smile:

Reply 9

HanifaC

Original post by EmilyImpossible

anybody studying a region? predictions of what they'll ask?

I'm studying a region! They tend to ask an economy related question each year, then a more tourism focused one, or about the pros/cons of living there.

Reply 10

EmilyImpossible

Original post by HanifaC

I'm studying a region! They tend to ask an economy related question each year, then a more tourism focused one, or about the pros/cons of living there.

which region are you studying? :smile:

Reply 11

HanifaC

Original post by EmilyImpossible

which region are you studying? :smile:

La Bretagne! How about you?

Reply 12

EmilyImpossible

Yes me too! It's quite confusing isn't it!

Reply 13

HanifaC

Original post by EmilyImpossible

Yes me too! It's quite confusing isn't it!

Just a bit! The culture is very interesting though, so I've got my fingers crossed that there's an essay on it!

Reply 14

EmilyImpossible

Haha well I haven't done any prep on that so I don't! The thing that confuses me is the transport, some say there is so much dependence on cars yet it says on the internet they have a lot of transports and train links

Reply 15

HanifaC

I'm literally just writing an essay on that now! A lot of Brittany has very bad transport links because it's so rural, and the trains to other regions are very slow (e.g. Paris to Brest is 6 hours). However, they are in the process of building a new train network, which will make the region a lot more connected and modern!