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A Level Languages for Native Speakers Dilemma

Hi everyone,

I'm doing A level French and German (as well as psychology and maths) and I'm a fluent German speaker because my family is German so I expected it to be slightly easier. Obviously I find french f*****g hard because its...hard but German seems unusually impossible. I usually get around A/A* for German (and A* for speaking and paper 1) but I just find it weird that as a native speaker I still find the first paper hard and obviously the second) and don't always get 90+%. Do any other native speakers doing French/German/Spanish A level have this issue or is it just me?
Original post by stressedanddead
Hi everyone,

I'm doing A level French and German (as well as psychology and maths) and I'm a fluent German speaker because my family is German so I expected it to be slightly easier. Obviously I find french f*****g hard because its...hard but German seems unusually impossible. I usually get around A/A* for German (and A* for speaking and paper 1) but I just find it weird that as a native speaker I still find the first paper hard and obviously the second) and don't always get 90+%. Do any other native speakers doing French/German/Spanish A level have this issue or is it just me?

It's not surprising to be honest. I remember in school when the native Spanish speaker got a decent A but I got 100%.

I think the thing is - when you study a foreign language at high school, you really have to show off. Even if it doesn't sound natural to use the subjunctive clause or relative clause in French every single sentence, that's what you need to do to get the best marks.

When you're speaking or writing in German, you're probably writing what comes naturally to you. You need to elevate your language: embellish everything and anything you produce - use plenty of idioms, sophisticated words and extremely difficult grammatical structures.

As for the content of what you produce, that's also very important - remember to have meaningful and eloquent answers.

If you're not getting high marks in reading or listening components, then I'm afraid I can't help you - you really should be getting full marks on those. I'd just recommend practicing.

Regarding French, it is a tough language; the way you can score easy marks is, again, by showing off with the language.


I studied French and Spanish at high school by the way. At uni, I did French, Spanish and Japanese.
Here's a document I created when I was in high school. I continuously edited and built upon it until midway in university. I hope it comes in handy and useful.

You should use this as a base and build upon it or make your own document. I also recommend picking your favourite phrases to use and continuously using them.
Original post by stressedanddead
Hi everyone,

I'm doing A level French and German (as well as psychology and maths) and I'm a fluent German speaker because my family is German so I expected it to be slightly easier. Obviously I find french f*****g hard because its...hard but German seems unusually impossible. I usually get around A/A* for German (and A* for speaking and paper 1) but I just find it weird that as a native speaker I still find the first paper hard and obviously the second) and don't always get 90+%. Do any other native speakers doing French/German/Spanish A level have this issue or is it just me?

Aha! So you're the native German speaker who skews the A-level statistics making it impossible for non-native speakers to get A*s, then!

No, seriously I know of several native speakers who like you have found the exams tougher than they thought. You still have to learn and practise a bilingual skill - translating into and out of English for one thing, and you have to produce a range of constructions in your speaking and writing which may not match everyday spoken and written German.

You also need to engage with literary texts, albeit in your native language. This doesn't come easy to everyone.

If you read comments elsewhere on TSR regarding the Asian languages, you will find that many students find it well nigh impossible to get even half decent grades in their community languages. Speaking a language at home and writing an A-level in it are two very different things.

And French isn't all that bad, is it?
Original post by 学生の父
Aha! So you're the native German speaker who skews the A-level statistics making it impossible for non-native speakers to get A*s, then!

No, seriously I know of several native speakers who like you have found the exams tougher than they thought. You still have to learn and practise a bilingual skill - translating into and out of English for one thing, and you have to produce a range of constructions in your speaking and writing which may not match everyday spoken and written German.

You also need to engage with literary texts, albeit in your native language. This doesn't come easy to everyone.

If you read comments elsewhere on TSR regarding the Asian languages, you will find that many students find it well nigh impossible to get even half decent grades in their community languages. Speaking a language at home and writing an A-level in it are two very different things.

And French isn't all that bad, is it?

Yeah sorry lol I make it a point to apologise whenever I can to the 2 other people doing german in my school... No need to worry about the second paper though, speaking the language gives you very little advantage as I get exactly the same scores in German and French (must just be really bad at essays).I find like UNDERSTANDING the language very easy but then when it comes to like skills such as translation and summarising its difficult just like you've said. Literary texts are more an issue for me in French because the language tends to be slightly more complex in French, and thankfully they don't ask us to translate them! I'm less worried about the speaking and first paper because with practice you can perfect it but I feel like it's unrealistic to ask people to learn so many quotes like... how does one even remember them lol?? I love French I really do, I just feel like for me, since GCSE was done in a really bad style (memorising) I need a good year extra to get to a decent level with speaking and other skills...
Original post by Quick-use
Here's a document I created when I was in high school. I continuously edited and built upon it until midway in university. I hope it comes in handy and useful.

You should use this as a base and build upon it or make your own document. I also recommend picking your favourite phrases to use and continuously using them.

Hi thank you! This is super useful! We have documents sent to us from teachers but those phrases tend to be very difficult to get in there! I'm going to start merging all my docs together after mocks this is great!

My personal opinion is because it seems to be difficult for native speakers and also people learning the language... the exam should stay just as hard with similair grade boundaries but I feel we shouldn't be doing a project, a stimulus card, a listening/reading/writing paper AND a book and film. I think it would be tolerable if there were one or two topics less, and if we only did a book/film. The curriculum seems a bit overloaded personally. For ALL subjects, even maths and psychology.
Original post by stressedanddead
Hi thank you! This is super useful! We have documents sent to us from teachers but those phrases tend to be very difficult to get in there! I'm going to start merging all my docs together after mocks this is great!

My personal opinion is because it seems to be difficult for native speakers and also people learning the language... the exam should stay just as hard with similair grade boundaries but I feel we shouldn't be doing a project, a stimulus card, a listening/reading/writing paper AND a book and film. I think it would be tolerable if there were one or two topics less, and if we only did a book/film. The curriculum seems a bit overloaded personally. For ALL subjects, even maths and psychology.

You're most welcome.

I remember in my final year of high school getting full marks for every single piece of writing/speaking I did for both French and Spanish. This meant that I had a safety net in case the other aspects of my course like listening etc went badly. I actually remember doing a mock where I got 40% or something for listening, but then I got 100% for writing/speaking and 80% for reading. I ended up getting a really high mark for that mock regardless of my listening.

If you can, make your language extremely sophisticated as I said previously.

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