French A level- How to get an A?

I did AS last year and got a B (A in speaking, C in writing, which i’m planning to resit this year), I didn’t realise how difficult the A level was as I was pretty confident with my language skills after getting an A* at GCSE. I’m super worried for uni as I applied for Law with French Law and most unis want me to get an A at the end of the year. I love French A level and find it super interesting which motivated me to do a joint degree at uni but I’m really worried about how realistic it is that I’ll get an A.

Does anyone have any tips for getting an A/A* because I found out the hard way that the grade boundaries are brutal and you basically have to be fluent to get an A* and it’s difficult to get an A

Reply 1

perry545

Hi,
First of all, congratulations on your grades! Law with French Law sounds super exciting.
So, I do French A level alongside Music and English Language and I can tell you that the jump from GCSE to As level was wild - like most A level subjects!
I recently did my year 12 mocks and I got a D. I defintely did not revise enough, and so I'm trying to lock in this year.

Here are some things I'm doing at the moment - and hopefully you will find some of these things useful. I'm going to split this post into the 5 main areas: speaking, writing, reading, listening and translation - as well as the dreaded grammar!

Speaking
Use your Language Assistant!
If you have a lang assisant at your school - use him/her! They will tell you the things you are doing right and what you can improve in.
Also, if you don't have a lang assistant then use your friends/family. Even if they don't understand what you are saying its really good practise and will improve your confidence in speaking the lagnuage. Another person suggested lunchtime speaking sessions where you and your friends who do A level languages meet up at lunchtime and speak together. This can be about the topics or anything else.

Writing
In this section I will talk about the film and book. I'm studying Le 400 coups and Un Sac de Billes. The best thing to do for these is practise writing essays. You can do this by planning them (using point evidence explanation and then a link) and then time yourself writing them. Also grammar is really important in these as use of proper grammar get you the marks as well as writing about the content.

Reading
Read, Read and Read more! Read articles, books whatever you feel comfortable reading. I've been reading english children books like 'the worst witch' translated into French. Grammar is also important here too for the exam questions e.g. reading summarys and articles.

Listening
Little and Often! Listen to like 20 mins of french a day.Your training your ears to a new phonetic system so it is important for your ears to get used to what it sounds like, because then it will be so much easier to pick out what people are saying in exam questions. For example the listening summarys and the listening comprehension.

Translation
Little and often - again. Practise using past exam questions and then go through the mark scheme. Learning vocab = key and I like to use quizlet to put in the vocab from each topic!

Grammar Grammar and more Grammar!
I'm sorry to say but the only way to improve on french grammr is to practise little and often. Find something you struggle with - this could be a tense or present participles and practise them until you can't get them wrong! For me I really like to use bbc bitesize. If you just type in 'Imperfect Tense French bbc bitesize it shows you how to form the tense and then has quizzes at the end to test understanding.

I hope this helps a little!

Thea