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AQA A Level French - Paper 1 7652/1 - 18th June 2018 [Exam Discussion]


AQA A Level French Exam Discussion thread


Thread for discussing paper 1 of the AQA new specification A level French and any revision you do in preparation for it!

The exam:

18th June 2018 (AM)

2 Hours and 30 mins

100 marks and 50% of the A level

Assesses our reading, listening and translation skills


As this is the first year of the specification, there are very few resources so if anyone knows any useful websites or revision tips please comment them below!

Some Useful links:
Specification
Specimen Papers
AS Specimen Papers (useful for first year topics)

AS Translation practice

Exam discussion for paper 2 can be found here
(edited 6 years ago)

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Original post by ithinkitslily



AQA A Level French Exam Discussion thread



Thread for discussing paper 1 of the AQA new specification A level French and any revision you do in preparation for it!

The exam:

18th June 2018 (AM)

2 Hours and 30 mins

100 marks and 50% of the A level

Assesses our reading, listening and translation skills


As this is the first year of the specification, there are very few resources so if anyone knows any useful websites or revision tips please comment them below!

Some Useful links:
Specification
Specimen Papers
AS Specimen Papers (useful for first year topics)

AS Translation practice

Exam discussion for paper 2 can be found here

Thank you for these useful links. There's a lot of great vocab lists on Memrise and Quizlet to revise from.
I was wondering if you have any good sites or any tips for revising the speaking exam?
Reply 3
Does anyone know what the grade boundaries were last year? I can’t find them anywhere
Reply 4
This is a new spec so there aren’t any grade boundaries yet for the A level exam- however for the new spec AS exam I think it was like 145/200 across the 3 exams for an A if that helps 😊
Reply 5
Original post by s-roli
This is a new spec so there aren’t any grade boundaries yet for the A level exam- however for the new spec AS exam I think it was like 145/200 across the 3 exams for an A if that helps 😊


Ahhh thank you- that’s not too bad either 😊
Reply 6
Original post by mary_27
Ahhh thank you- that’s not too bad either 😊


No problem 😊
This is a stupid question, but does anyone know how they'll calculate grades this year? Just because the writing exam is worth 20% but is out of eighty and the speaking is worth 30% and out of sixty. Welp, I'm not very good at maths!
Original post by tudorfanatic123
This is a stupid question, but does anyone know how they'll calculate grades this year? Just because the writing exam is worth 20% but is out of eighty and the speaking is worth 30% and out of sixty. Welp, I'm not very good at maths!


the marks for paper 1 and the speaking are multiplied by 2 so paper 1 is 200/400, paper 2 is 80/400 and the speaking is 120/400 :smile:

obvs not sure on the grade boundaries tho lol
Reply 9
Does anyone have the link to French A2 papers which are older than 2014 please?
Reply 10
Original post by mickie-
Does anyone have the link to French A2 papers which are older than 2014 please?


I don’t think they keep papers older than 2014 accessible on the website, but I think your teacher can access them if you ask them :smile:
i cant believe how close this exam is i feel prepared and not prepared at the same time. has anyone got any tips on how to get top marks ?
Original post by ohsnapitstee
i cant believe how close this exam is i feel prepared and not prepared at the same time. has anyone got any tips on how to get top marks ?


I would recommend that you read articles on French news websites, such as Le Figaro or Le Monde, to improve your reading and translation skills. This has been really useful, particularly as so few resources are available!
Does anyone know if the translations are going to be exactly as they were in the specimen paper? One from fr to eng and one from eng to fr and both long literary-style things? I'm confused because that seems like too much translation- I'm wondering if they're going to do one as a paragraph to translate and then have shorter translations for the other, or if there's gonna be two difficult ones right after each other! I wouldn't be that surprised if that is the case I suppose, but I've been told different things haha!!
Reply 14
Original post by kittyhawk
Does anyone know if the translations are going to be exactly as they were in the specimen paper? One from fr to eng and one from eng to fr and both long literary-style things? I'm confused because that seems like too much translation- I'm wondering if they're going to do one as a paragraph to translate and then have shorter translations for the other, or if there's gonna be two difficult ones right after each other! I wouldn't be that surprised if that is the case I suppose, but I've been told different things haha!!


I’m afraid it is the same as the specimen- I do german and my paper one was last week. The last two questions were translations; one into French (this one has like an article or some sort of extract before it which can help with the translation) and the very last question on the paper is a translation into English. Both translations are just chunks of text but they’re not awfully long. If it helps, for german I turned straight to the translations to get them out the way!
Hope this helps! :smile:
Original post by s-roli
I’m afraid it is the same as the specimen- I do german and my paper one was last week. The last two questions were translations; one into French (this one has like an article or some sort of extract before it which can help with the translation) and the very last question on the paper is a translation into English. Both translations are just chunks of text but they’re not awfully long. If it helps, for german I turned straight to the translations to get them out the way!
Hope this helps! :smile:


Thanks so much!! Ahh I wish it was still like the old spec where the translation was only a few sentences haha!!
How did you find the german ones? :smile:
Reply 16
Original post by kittyhawk
Thanks so much!! Ahh I wish it was still like the old spec where the translation was only a few sentences haha!!
How did you find the german ones? :smile:


No problem!! Yeah me too 😂
Pretty difficult tbh 😂 a lot of random vocab that I haven’t come across before so just be aware for that!
Original post by s-roli
No problem!! Yeah me too 😂
Pretty difficult tbh 😂 a lot of random vocab that I haven’t come across before so just be aware for that!


Hopefully u did okay!! :smile: yeah i'm expecting very specialist vocab, thats the thing I hate about translations is if you don't know the exact translation you can't really use a synonym!
Reply 18
im so worried for the exam! what is everyone doing to revise??
Reply 19
Original post by kittyhawk
Hopefully u did okay!! :smile: yeah i'm expecting very specialist vocab, thats the thing I hate about translations is if you don't know the exact translation you can't really use a synonym!


Thank you so much! I hope so too :smile: yeah it was nothing that we expected but hopefully the grade boundaries are lower this year :smile:

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