Higher French 2016/17

Glad to be of help
Think it's better to have them later cause more of the course is covered by this point, our school used to do them in mid November which was way too early

I prefer them being late november/early december as it gives me longer to bring back up my bad grades haha. I failed every prelim except French last year but ended up passing all 7 Nat 5's

Well done, that's amazing

That's a really good point, with less than 100 days till the May exams, I really need to improve my maths

thank you!

yeah, me too! got a B at nat5 but higher is SO much harder

Hey guys, I was just wondering how everyone is finding the listening part of the exam? Is it just me that thinks its so damn hard?
Does anyone have any tips on how to do better? I didn't pass it in my prelim and i've been doing a few listenings and only get half marks or just over half marks? I get a lot of info down but the marking scheme is so specific.
It would really be a shame if the listening let me down in the exam because i'm aiming for an A to take it at AH and the other parts of the exam i'm fine with.
Thanks!

You shouldn't worry too much because many people who get A's in French only get half marks in the listening. How well do you do in the reading and the 2 writings? Because if you do well in those then you can afford to lose marks in the listening.

However if you want to improve your listening, coming from someone who got 20/20 in the prelim...
You need to be able to really concentrate and block out everything else around you, just focus on the French and make sure you can pick up as much as possible. I find that when I am less focused during a practice listening in class, perhaps i am tired, then I am unable to pick everything up.
In order to hear the words you don't know and write them down to look then up in the dictionary I would certainly recommend trying something called dictation. Basically it is where you listen to French and try to write down everything that you hear accurately in French not English, correct spelling and correct accents. Our teacher has done it with us a few times but if you search around online I'm sure you can find exercises that will do the same thing.
Additionally, although it might be a bit late now, if your knowledge of vocab is not good you should probably improve it...
And if you have no clue what something means just write an educated guess based on the question...

If I think of any more advice I will let you know!

Even listening to French music might help. A friend of mine (who also does very well in listening) introduced me to a French cabaret singer from the 1950's called Edith piaf

I would not aim for 20/20 btw very few people do that well, very few people even get over 17. So getting anywhere from 12-15 I would say is a perfectly good mark

Hey! Thanks for replying. Yeah, in reading and DW I get close to full marks so thats all good and i *think?* I did good in my speaking. I got less in my other writing that comes after the listening in my prelim, but I think that's just because our teacher hasn't taught us about it and we didn't really cover it at all, but i'm learning lots of phrases to use so I can do better. Do you have any advice for that bit other than just learning generic phrases and linking words/openers etc?

I will try out that dictation idea because I've tended to stop doing that now, and writing stuff in English actually does distract me from listening to the next thing they're saying. As for vocab, tbh I have been trying to teach myself as much as I can, because my teacher this year has been less than desirable and hasn't even covered the whole course properly so that sucks. But I know enough I think, every listening I do I look at the transcript afterwards and note down things I didn't know.

Also... French music is great! Edith Piaf is wonderful. I actually have a big playlist for French music

For the essay that comes after the writing... I would say that to do well, I would memorize some set phrases but also know your grammar so that if essay questions come up that you don't have set phrases for, you can manipulate the language to say what you want if that makes sense. I can post some set phrases for different topics? I'm pretty sure our teacher gave us a couple of booklets but I'm at the library at the moment so will have a look when I get home if you want? I also could tell you some fancy sentence starters that will impress the marker?

Hahaha yes I do love French music! Do you have any other favourites?

Both of those would be super helpful if you dont mind

Oooh there's so many... but I love Elephant! And Renaud who has a really distinct voice but a pretty classic French vibe imo. What about you?

I only really know of Edith piaf, zaz and stromae, thank you i will check out your reccomendations tonight as well as posting those resources when I get home from the library
Do you plan on studying French at uni?

I like them too! Tysm that will be so helpful And yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards for uni, you?

Both of those would be super helpful if you dont mind

Oooh there's so many... but I love Elephant! And Renaud who has a really distinct voice but a pretty classic French vibe imo. What about you?

Both of those would be super helpful if you dont mind

Oooh there's so many... but I love Elephant! And Renaud who has a really distinct voice but a pretty classic French vibe imo. What about you?

I like them too! Tysm that will be so helpful And yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards for uni, you?

I like them too! Tysm that will be so helpful And yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards for uni, you?

I like them too! Tysm that will be so helpful And yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards for uni, you?

I like them too! Tysm that will be so helpful And yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards for uni, you?

More topic phrases, again if you need translations let me know. I hope this all helps you, I've been given way more sheets than this throughout the year but can't find anything lol but if I find more useful stuff I'll post it

Ahhh thank you! These are really helpful, i'll definitely use them!