A Level French what am I doing??

Hiya!
I'm currently in Y12, with one of my subjects (and probably the most difficult at the mo) being French. One thing I am struggling with is having an idea of what I actually need to be learning and studying.
I have two teachers, one of us is currently teaching unit 1 and the other unit 2. I have flashcards for vocab, but other than that I have no idea what I am supposed to be noting down/revising. My teachers just give us worksheets each lesson, which are typically not very useful (think: gap-fills, synonyms, etc.) and have told us very little about the content itself.
For those of you studying MFL at a level, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING!! I got 9s at GCSE, and aspire to achieve A/A* in French, which is why I'm slightly (read: very) concerned about this )
Any pre-written notes or anything of use would be a miracle, also.
Thanks so much!!

Hi, I do Alevel German and am in Y13 now, MFL at alevel is weird because there's not really any textbooks which you can just memorise or whatever. Keep doing the vocab, stay up to date with it, memorise it. Lots of it is already premade on quizlet, so super easy to just start learning. Then in class, focus on grammar taught by your teacher and take notes using a paper, on key grammar ideas and lesson vocab. Turn lesson vocab into flashcards later. The only actual "content" is the facts, knowledge for your speaking exam. Think facts about the topics your doing. My teacher said nothing helpful for this the whole way through Y12, and I reckon most of the speaking facts and knowledge will come from your own research. The guidelines, are the topics from your textbook/spec. For example in German, a small sub topic of school is sitzenbleiben -which is resiting the school year in German schools. I would, after the lesson on it, go home, do extra research and make a pros and cons list of it with some stats on the rates etc. Later in the year you will start a book and a film. For now, focus on vocab and grammar. Essentially these are the foundations which will get you through every skill in the Alevel, translations, speaking, writing are all underpinned by those two key building blocks.
Feel free to ask any questions...even though I am doing German, it's essentially the same revision methods and exam structures etc.

It's still early for revision and what your teachers are doing is what most teachers are doing!
As above, although this suggestion is for A-Level German, the same principles apply and may help you to be more focused in your revision/understanding from now. Look at The Ideal Language School and the video: Boost Your A LEVEL GERMAN Grades - there are 10 useful tips, most of which apply to A-Level French too. Bonne chance!

Hiya!
I'm currently in Y12, with one of my subjects (and probably the most difficult at the mo) being French. One thing I am struggling with is having an idea of what I actually need to be learning and studying.
I have two teachers, one of us is currently teaching unit 1 and the other unit 2. I have flashcards for vocab, but other than that I have no idea what I am supposed to be noting down/revising. My teachers just give us worksheets each lesson, which are typically not very useful (think: gap-fills, synonyms, etc.) and have told us very little about the content itself.
For those of you studying MFL at a level, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING!! I got 9s at GCSE, and aspire to achieve A/A* in French, which is why I'm slightly (read: very) concerned about this )
Any pre-written notes or anything of use would be a miracle, also.
Thanks so much!!

This is the THIRD time I am typing this out because this silly website keeps randomly refreshing and deleting what I’ve written. Apologies if I’ve not phrased things super well, I don’t have time to write things out fully for a third time
Tips from a former A Level French student, now an A Level French teacher:
No 1 tip = follow @/brutofficiel on instagram / whatever social media you use. They do lots of short, clear videos about current affairs in France which will help you keep up to date with what’s going on. It’s so much easier to do than going to Le Monde and reading full news articles, but it’s just as useful. Also, follow French political meme accounts (e.g. @/memespolitiques on insta) to stay up to date with the big French news stories in an easy and fun way.
Cultural topics:
- Once you’ve finished a topic in class, try to condense the key facts that you will try to remember onto one or two pages of A4 paper. This makes it far easier to revise from, because you’re not trying to look back through all your notes and remember absolutely everything
- I don’t know what exam board you’re doing, but using the AQA textbook and the resources on Kerboodle was very useful for me. I learnt the vocabulary lists it gave for each topic, and there are revision pages at the end of each topic which you can use (unless you’ve already done them in class, but even so, if it’s been a while they can still be useful to redo)
For learning French in general:
- Learn your verbs. It’s not fun, but it is necessary. Especially learn your irregular verbs, starting with the key ones like avoir, être, aller, faire, and then move onto ones which are particularly useful for A Level e.g. promouvoir. Make sure you know the 3rd person forms in particular because this will be what you use for the essay. I have an app called vatefaireconjuguer which I can’t recommend enough - it’s free and is just all the conjugations of all French verbs in a very clear format, with the endings and irregular forms clearly marked. If you can, consider asking your teacher to give you regular tests on irregular verb forms to make sure you’re learning these little and often, and not trying to cram them all in the night before the exam. I used to be given 2-3 irregular verbs, usually with similar conjugation patterns e.g. venir and tenir, and then had a test /10 in class, usually just in the present tense, but obviously you need to know those 4 key ones in all tenses. Being able to use irregular verbs accurately will do wonders for your final grade, so although it’s not the most fun, it’s absolutely worth doing. When learning them, write them out by hand, then cover them up and see which ones you can remember. Check, then repeat again, focusing on any you didn’t get right. Then, test yourself again a couple of days later by trying to write out all conjugations from memory, and seeing which ones you struggled with. If your teachers won’t do verb tests in class, try to get a friend to do it with you and you can test each other - it’s really useful to have someone to hold you accountable so you actually learn these verbs, because you cannot cram these the day before the exam; you’ve got to learn them little and often over the next year.
Okay, fun things now:
- ALWAYS watch TV with French subtitles, when available. This is so much better than watching in French and using English subtitles, because I find you usually just tune out the French and just end up reading the English. Keep a notebook by you and write down common/useful words you see pop up as you watch. It’s a very small change, but you see so much French in context, and it can be very helpful to see how certain tricky English phrases are translated into French. Be aware that the subtitles won’t be 100% accurate translations, as they aim to convey the most important ideas in a short number of words.
- Watch French TV / films / Youtube videos etc, in French, with French subtitles if you want subtitles. Again, the subtitles won’t always be 100% accurate to what is being said, but it will have the same meaning. I personally used to watch a lot of a show called Au Service de la France, which is sadly no longer on Netflix, but finding something with short episodes which you enjoy watching is a good, fun way of listening to authentic French. If I really didn’t understand what was happening in a scene, I would rewind and put the English subtitles on, but try not to use this as a crutch too much.
- Also, if you play video games, change the language to French if possible
- Make a French music playlist!!! And look up the lyrics and read them while listening to the song, then look up the meaning of new words and listen to it again to try to follow what the lyrics mean. This is a really good way of remembering new vocab because music will stick in your brain, and you see how words are used in context too. Some basic recommendations: Angèle, Stromae, Louanne, Hoshi etc
- Find fun, short, French videos (Things on YouTube: Cyprien, the ‘bref’ series (although this is normally VERY fast), UnJourUneQuestion, etc) and use these to practise transcriptions. Watch them as many times as you need, and write down what they say, trying to be as accurate with grammar as possible. At the end, you’ll end up with a French paragraph. If the video has subtitles (not automatically generated though, because these won’t help you at all), then you can ‘mark’ your transcription yourself. Otherwise, ask your French teacher to have a look at it ask if they can mark it for grammatical accuracy. This is a really good way of getting used to French pronunciation and writing!
- Honourable mention to WTF France w/ Paul Taylor though it’s in English with French subtitles for some French cultural stuff. Very silly, very short videos discussing different elements of French culture.
- Find something fun to read in French that you genuinely enjoy. Le Petit Prince is always very sweet, and I remember my school library had some books in French which were summaries of classic French novels which you could look out for. I also really enjoyed the book ‘Allah n’est pas obligé’ by Ahmadou Kourouma which is about the life of a child soldier. It’s written from his perspective, and so the language is generally fairly simple, although it also uses a lot of African slang (which is also usually explained within the text itself) - it’s available on Internet Archive if you want to check it out. Also, if you're doing L'étranger as your literary work, I'd really recommend Kamel Daoud's Meursault, contre-enquête which gives an Algerian perspective to L'étranger which is sorely missing in Camus' work.
- Do some creative writing in French! Even just small paragraphs! Alternatively, practise by translating small paragraphs from English into French
- If you want to practise speaking French, but feel self conscious about it, go on a walk and pretend you’re on the phone to someone. Also, sometimes you just have to sit in your room repeating ‘rire’ to yourself until you get confident with that ‘r’ sound.
- Final, personal recommendation: check out Lilian Thuram’s anti-racism work. He has written a couple of books, has done lots of interviews and even a TEDxTalk. He is incredibly eloquent (and can at times used a lot of technical / philosophical language, so I’d recommend the TEDxTalk as a place to start because it was intended for a general audience and so the language is more accessible). He is a personal hero of mine, and I couldn’t not recommend him here.
Bonne chance!

This is the THIRD time I am typing this out because this silly website keeps randomly refreshing and deleting what I’ve written. Apologies if I’ve not phrased things super well, I don’t have time to write things out fully for a third time
Tips from a former A Level French student, now an A Level French teacher:
No 1 tip = follow @/brutofficiel on instagram / whatever social media you use. They do lots of short, clear videos about current affairs in France which will help you keep up to date with what’s going on. It’s so much easier to do than going to Le Monde and reading full news articles, but it’s just as useful. Also, follow French political meme accounts (e.g. @/memespolitiques on insta) to stay up to date with the big French news stories in an easy and fun way.
Cultural topics:
- Once you’ve finished a topic in class, try to condense the key facts that you will try to remember onto one or two pages of A4 paper. This makes it far easier to revise from, because you’re not trying to look back through all your notes and remember absolutely everything
- I don’t know what exam board you’re doing, but using the AQA textbook and the resources on Kerboodle was very useful for me. I learnt the vocabulary lists it gave for each topic, and there are revision pages at the end of each topic which you can use (unless you’ve already done them in class, but even so, if it’s been a while they can still be useful to redo)
For learning French in general:
- Learn your verbs. It’s not fun, but it is necessary. Especially learn your irregular verbs, starting with the key ones like avoir, être, aller, faire, and then move onto ones which are particularly useful for A Level e.g. promouvoir. Make sure you know the 3rd person forms in particular because this will be what you use for the essay. I have an app called vatefaireconjuguer which I can’t recommend enough - it’s free and is just all the conjugations of all French verbs in a very clear format, with the endings and irregular forms clearly marked. If you can, consider asking your teacher to give you regular tests on irregular verb forms to make sure you’re learning these little and often, and not trying to cram them all in the night before the exam. I used to be given 2-3 irregular verbs, usually with similar conjugation patterns e.g. venir and tenir, and then had a test /10 in class, usually just in the present tense, but obviously you need to know those 4 key ones in all tenses. Being able to use irregular verbs accurately will do wonders for your final grade, so although it’s not the most fun, it’s absolutely worth doing. When learning them, write them out by hand, then cover them up and see which ones you can remember. Check, then repeat again, focusing on any you didn’t get right. Then, test yourself again a couple of days later by trying to write out all conjugations from memory, and seeing which ones you struggled with. If your teachers won’t do verb tests in class, try to get a friend to do it with you and you can test each other - it’s really useful to have someone to hold you accountable so you actually learn these verbs, because you cannot cram these the day before the exam; you’ve got to learn them little and often over the next year.
Okay, fun things now:
- ALWAYS watch TV with French subtitles, when available. This is so much better than watching in French and using English subtitles, because I find you usually just tune out the French and just end up reading the English. Keep a notebook by you and write down common/useful words you see pop up as you watch. It’s a very small change, but you see so much French in context, and it can be very helpful to see how certain tricky English phrases are translated into French. Be aware that the subtitles won’t be 100% accurate translations, as they aim to convey the most important ideas in a short number of words.
- Watch French TV / films / Youtube videos etc, in French, with French subtitles if you want subtitles. Again, the subtitles won’t always be 100% accurate to what is being said, but it will have the same meaning. I personally used to watch a lot of a show called Au Service de la France, which is sadly no longer on Netflix, but finding something with short episodes which you enjoy watching is a good, fun way of listening to authentic French. If I really didn’t understand what was happening in a scene, I would rewind and put the English subtitles on, but try not to use this as a crutch too much.
- Also, if you play video games, change the language to French if possible
- Make a French music playlist!!! And look up the lyrics and read them while listening to the song, then look up the meaning of new words and listen to it again to try to follow what the lyrics mean. This is a really good way of remembering new vocab because music will stick in your brain, and you see how words are used in context too. Some basic recommendations: Angèle, Stromae, Louanne, Hoshi etc
- Find fun, short, French videos (Things on YouTube: Cyprien, the ‘bref’ series (although this is normally VERY fast), UnJourUneQuestion, etc) and use these to practise transcriptions. Watch them as many times as you need, and write down what they say, trying to be as accurate with grammar as possible. At the end, you’ll end up with a French paragraph. If the video has subtitles (not automatically generated though, because these won’t help you at all), then you can ‘mark’ your transcription yourself. Otherwise, ask your French teacher to have a look at it ask if they can mark it for grammatical accuracy. This is a really good way of getting used to French pronunciation and writing!
- Honourable mention to WTF France w/ Paul Taylor though it’s in English with French subtitles for some French cultural stuff. Very silly, very short videos discussing different elements of French culture.
- Find something fun to read in French that you genuinely enjoy. Le Petit Prince is always very sweet, and I remember my school library had some books in French which were summaries of classic French novels which you could look out for. I also really enjoyed the book ‘Allah n’est pas obligé’ by Ahmadou Kourouma which is about the life of a child soldier. It’s written from his perspective, and so the language is generally fairly simple, although it also uses a lot of African slang (which is also usually explained within the text itself) - it’s available on Internet Archive if you want to check it out. Also, if you're doing L'étranger as your literary work, I'd really recommend Kamel Daoud's Meursault, contre-enquête which gives an Algerian perspective to L'étranger which is sorely missing in Camus' work.
- Do some creative writing in French! Even just small paragraphs! Alternatively, practise by translating small paragraphs from English into French
- If you want to practise speaking French, but feel self conscious about it, go on a walk and pretend you’re on the phone to someone. Also, sometimes you just have to sit in your room repeating ‘rire’ to yourself until you get confident with that ‘r’ sound.
- Final, personal recommendation: check out Lilian Thuram’s anti-racism work. He has written a couple of books, has done lots of interviews and even a TEDxTalk. He is incredibly eloquent (and can at times used a lot of technical / philosophical language, so I’d recommend the TEDxTalk as a place to start because it was intended for a general audience and so the language is more accessible). He is a personal hero of mine, and I couldn’t not recommend him here.
Bonne chance!

This is the THIRD time I am typing this out because this silly website keeps randomly refreshing and deleting what I’ve written. Apologies if I’ve not phrased things super well, I don’t have time to write things out fully for a third time
Tips from a former A Level French student, now an A Level French teacher:
No 1 tip = follow @/brutofficiel on instagram / whatever social media you use. They do lots of short, clear videos about current affairs in France which will help you keep up to date with what’s going on. It’s so much easier to do than going to Le Monde and reading full news articles, but it’s just as useful. Also, follow French political meme accounts (e.g. @/memespolitiques on insta) to stay up to date with the big French news stories in an easy and fun way.
Cultural topics:
- Once you’ve finished a topic in class, try to condense the key facts that you will try to remember onto one or two pages of A4 paper. This makes it far easier to revise from, because you’re not trying to look back through all your notes and remember absolutely everything
- I don’t know what exam board you’re doing, but using the AQA textbook and the resources on Kerboodle was very useful for me. I learnt the vocabulary lists it gave for each topic, and there are revision pages at the end of each topic which you can use (unless you’ve already done them in class, but even so, if it’s been a while they can still be useful to redo)
For learning French in general:
- Learn your verbs. It’s not fun, but it is necessary. Especially learn your irregular verbs, starting with the key ones like avoir, être, aller, faire, and then move onto ones which are particularly useful for A Level e.g. promouvoir. Make sure you know the 3rd person forms in particular because this will be what you use for the essay. I have an app called vatefaireconjuguer which I can’t recommend enough - it’s free and is just all the conjugations of all French verbs in a very clear format, with the endings and irregular forms clearly marked. If you can, consider asking your teacher to give you regular tests on irregular verb forms to make sure you’re learning these little and often, and not trying to cram them all in the night before the exam. I used to be given 2-3 irregular verbs, usually with similar conjugation patterns e.g. venir and tenir, and then had a test /10 in class, usually just in the present tense, but obviously you need to know those 4 key ones in all tenses. Being able to use irregular verbs accurately will do wonders for your final grade, so although it’s not the most fun, it’s absolutely worth doing. When learning them, write them out by hand, then cover them up and see which ones you can remember. Check, then repeat again, focusing on any you didn’t get right. Then, test yourself again a couple of days later by trying to write out all conjugations from memory, and seeing which ones you struggled with. If your teachers won’t do verb tests in class, try to get a friend to do it with you and you can test each other - it’s really useful to have someone to hold you accountable so you actually learn these verbs, because you cannot cram these the day before the exam; you’ve got to learn them little and often over the next year.
Okay, fun things now:
- ALWAYS watch TV with French subtitles, when available. This is so much better than watching in French and using English subtitles, because I find you usually just tune out the French and just end up reading the English. Keep a notebook by you and write down common/useful words you see pop up as you watch. It’s a very small change, but you see so much French in context, and it can be very helpful to see how certain tricky English phrases are translated into French. Be aware that the subtitles won’t be 100% accurate translations, as they aim to convey the most important ideas in a short number of words.
- Watch French TV / films / Youtube videos etc, in French, with French subtitles if you want subtitles. Again, the subtitles won’t always be 100% accurate to what is being said, but it will have the same meaning. I personally used to watch a lot of a show called Au Service de la France, which is sadly no longer on Netflix, but finding something with short episodes which you enjoy watching is a good, fun way of listening to authentic French. If I really didn’t understand what was happening in a scene, I would rewind and put the English subtitles on, but try not to use this as a crutch too much.
- Also, if you play video games, change the language to French if possible
- Make a French music playlist!!! And look up the lyrics and read them while listening to the song, then look up the meaning of new words and listen to it again to try to follow what the lyrics mean. This is a really good way of remembering new vocab because music will stick in your brain, and you see how words are used in context too. Some basic recommendations: Angèle, Stromae, Louanne, Hoshi etc
- Find fun, short, French videos (Things on YouTube: Cyprien, the ‘bref’ series (although this is normally VERY fast), UnJourUneQuestion, etc) and use these to practise transcriptions. Watch them as many times as you need, and write down what they say, trying to be as accurate with grammar as possible. At the end, you’ll end up with a French paragraph. If the video has subtitles (not automatically generated though, because these won’t help you at all), then you can ‘mark’ your transcription yourself. Otherwise, ask your French teacher to have a look at it ask if they can mark it for grammatical accuracy. This is a really good way of getting used to French pronunciation and writing!
- Honourable mention to WTF France w/ Paul Taylor though it’s in English with French subtitles for some French cultural stuff. Very silly, very short videos discussing different elements of French culture.
- Find something fun to read in French that you genuinely enjoy. Le Petit Prince is always very sweet, and I remember my school library had some books in French which were summaries of classic French novels which you could look out for. I also really enjoyed the book ‘Allah n’est pas obligé’ by Ahmadou Kourouma which is about the life of a child soldier. It’s written from his perspective, and so the language is generally fairly simple, although it also uses a lot of African slang (which is also usually explained within the text itself) - it’s available on Internet Archive if you want to check it out. Also, if you're doing L'étranger as your literary work, I'd really recommend Kamel Daoud's Meursault, contre-enquête which gives an Algerian perspective to L'étranger which is sorely missing in Camus' work.
- Do some creative writing in French! Even just small paragraphs! Alternatively, practise by translating small paragraphs from English into French
- If you want to practise speaking French, but feel self conscious about it, go on a walk and pretend you’re on the phone to someone. Also, sometimes you just have to sit in your room repeating ‘rire’ to yourself until you get confident with that ‘r’ sound.
- Final, personal recommendation: check out Lilian Thuram’s anti-racism work. He has written a couple of books, has done lots of interviews and even a TEDxTalk. He is incredibly eloquent (and can at times used a lot of technical / philosophical language, so I’d recommend the TEDxTalk as a place to start because it was intended for a general audience and so the language is more accessible). He is a personal hero of mine, and I couldn’t not recommend him here.
Bonne chance!

I love mersault, contre-enquête ! I've never seen it mentioned before! As an Algerian I found a lot of étranger lessons in alevel super uncomfortable just because of the misinformation around Algeria and the heavy coloniser perspective on what was one of the worst times of my country's history, I really appreciated this book as well as some of Fanon's works.
Currently sitting my A-levels with only paper 2 left!

Hiya!
I'm currently in Y12, with one of my subjects (and probably the most difficult at the mo) being French. One thing I am struggling with is having an idea of what I actually need to be learning and studying.
I have two teachers, one of us is currently teaching unit 1 and the other unit 2. I have flashcards for vocab, but other than that I have no idea what I am supposed to be noting down/revising. My teachers just give us worksheets each lesson, which are typically not very useful (think: gap-fills, synonyms, etc.) and have told us very little about the content itself.
For those of you studying MFL at a level, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING!! I got 9s at GCSE, and aspire to achieve A/A* in French, which is why I'm slightly (read: very) concerned about this )
Any pre-written notes or anything of use would be a miracle, also.
Thanks so much!!