Aqa french gcse help for grade 8/9

Does anyone have any advice for studying french higher aqa??
As its something i struggle with
Anyone got a grade 8/9 in the subject and can give skme advice on how they attained it

Reply 1

always-anxious

Hello

I got a 9 in aqa gcse French and here's what I used to revise :yep:

I used Memrise to learns words/key phrases. I found this website great for finding complex phrases to get into the higher bands. It's also good for learning different tenses as I found this quite difficult.

For reading/listening I did a lot of past papers. This is really important because the only way you can improve on your mistakes. Whenever I made a mistake, I wrote out the word/phrase three times until I memorised it correctly. With the listening papers, I tended to slow down the audio if I missed what they were saying (because they speak so fast :bawling:

) which made it easier to me to understand what they were saying at the 'normal' speed.

For the writing papers, I watched Youtube videos that listed what you needed to include to get a grade 9. French with James on Youtube helped me a lot with knowing what to write to get into the higher bands. There's also a channel called No Waffle GCSE and they have checklists for what to include in the writing paper. Then, when I was in the actual exam, I wrote down what I needed to include (in the 'extra space' section) and I ticked off when I had used the technique.

For the speaking, just make sure you use your planning time wisely. For the unseen questions, I wrote down some words and phrases that could have been useful so I wasn't spending too much time thinking about what to come up with on the spot. Also, I had to make sure I spoke slower that I usually do because I think I recall there being a certain time of you speaking you have to reach to get in the higher bands.

I hope this helps. If you have any questions do let me know and I'll try my best to answer them :thumbsup:

Reply 2

HebaMah

Omg thank you for such a detailed response!
Any advuce for learning the tenses
As its something thts rather difficult to learn
Also
Wanted to ask how u performed in your other gcses as im sure u mustve performed as well as french!
Any other tips u could share for someone who really wants grade 7-9s

Reply 3

HebaMah

Do yoi go to a top sixth form like ncs or lae or Brampton??
Any advice for getting in ?

Reply 4

always-anxious

Original post by HebaMah

No worries :smile:

For the tenses, I had a grid with all of the different tenses in them. First I learnt the 'easier' tenses (eg the simple past/present/future) then I moved onto the more 'complex' ones. Like I mentioned before, memrise was a big help for me to learn the tenses. Also, it was just quite difficult for me to learn because quite a few of the tenses looked similar and my brain didn't like that :erm: