spanish a-level revision

4

hi i’m currently in year 12 studying spanish
i’m doing ok in it at the minute but i just know it’s gonna get worse
can anybody recommend websites or revision resources for spanish because i can barely find any and i need to get better at the language fast
many thanks

Reply 1

enteraname

11

Original post

by avapackk

hi i’m currently in year 12 studying spanish
i’m doing ok in it at the minute but i just know it’s gonna get worse
can anybody recommend websites or revision resources for spanish because i can barely find any and i need to get better at the language fast
many thanks

Which exam board are you doing? Do you need resources for vocab, grammar, cultural knowledge or anything else? For grammar + vocab I mainly used https://www.spanishdict.com/ as you can practice conjugating verbs across various tenses, focusing on one verb or multiple (it has a bunch of filters but I didn't really use all of them so I can't explain that well sorry) and if you want vocab there's a word of the day thing you can get emailled to you if you want. There are also brief lessons explaining grammar and stuff. I did Spanish last year so I'm willing to help if you need anything else :smile:

Reply 2

avapackk

OP

4

Original post

by enteraname

Which exam board are you doing? Do you need resources for vocab, grammar, cultural knowledge or anything else? For grammar + vocab I mainly used https://www.spanishdict.com/ as you can practice conjugating verbs across various tenses, focusing on one verb or multiple (it has a bunch of filters but I didn't really use all of them so I can't explain that well sorry) and if you want vocab there's a word of the day thing you can get emailled to you if you want. There are also brief lessons explaining grammar and stuff. I did Spanish last year so I'm willing to help if you need anything else :smile:

i’m doing aqa
to be honest any websites or just any ideas on how to revise because i can’t find many websites would be great thank u i just need help in all areas to be honest

Reply 3

enteraname

11

Original post

by avapackk

i’m doing aqa
to be honest any websites or just any ideas on how to revise because i can’t find many websites would be great thank u i just need help in all areas to be honest

I mainly used flashcards based on the vocab lists, I can send you mine from gizmo if you would like? astar spanish has some really good resources for paper 2 and 3, and the conjuguemos website is pretty good for quizzing yourself on different tenses. The best thing to do for paper 1 in my opinion is practice papers, especially the summaries and translation, as they carry the most marks, but I also think a lot of key stuff is covered there in terms of the skills that can help you in the other questions. My teacher set as homework weekly 1 translation or listening / reading summary, as well as a couple of multi-choice listening tasks, and occasionally gap fills because they're awful questions lol. Grammar is probably the most important thing for paper 1, as there are certain patterns that they use in the translations most years to try and trick you (I have a list somewhere that I can add here if you want?) and there's no way you are going to know every word on the paper, so it's more a technique thing than anything else.
Paper 2 seems scary, but it's not actually that bad in my opinion (though I did a bunch of essay subjects so that really helped) and it's only 20% of the a-level so don't stress too much about it. I didn't even read the book I did and somehow got 72/80 in the actual exam (though I probably shouldn't be recommending doing that lol). You don't need to learn quotes, you just need to know key points in the film/book/play and some sort of meaning that you can build from that. By the end of studying them, I sort of had certain scenes / moments that I'd use in any essay because I learnt ones that matched with multiple themes and prepared my analysis of them before the exam. You also should make reference to film techniques in the response to the film question, but it doesn't have to be that deep or detailled, though it depends which one you're doing I guess because I did volver and it's really heavy in the use of colours to link to emotions and stuff. The analysis in Spanish shocked me because you really don't have to go that deep at all tbh. Like every essay I wrote I was so worried because I thought I hadn't analysed / evaluated that well but then it ended up ok somehow, I can also probably find some of my old marked responses if you want to see. As I mentioned earlier, astarspanish is really helpful, as there's printable pages with key stuff on them that summarises it quite nicely, and there's a lot on quizlet.
Paper 3 was definitely the scariest for me, but it ended up being shockingly fine. Once again, probably not the best idea, but my presentation was only finished maybe 1 month before my speaking exam, and during the exam I asked the examiner in English if I should start speaking when they started the timer for my presentation, but it ended up being my best paper. For the IRP, pick something you're interested in, and learn your key facts and analysis of those. I ended up using flashcards with my subheading questions and then writing out my key facts and what that suggested, but not like a full response otherwise it comes across as too robotic and can make you panic if they ask a slightly different question. For the card, I had a 15minute lesson weekly to practice in college, but if you don't have that try to practice at least planning your response. Astarspanish has a walkthrough of paper 3 I think, but my main tip is to focus on evaluating, like if you mention a fact, always try to attatch some sort of opinion to it. I really struggled with it at first because I'm not really into politics or any of that stuff, but it does get easier I think. Also don't worry if you don't mention everything on the card, but try to mention as much as you can, as you'll get asked about anything you haven't mentioned, though it should be a pretty easy question. Also, don't always try to write everything down in your plan, the 5 minutes goes really fast to write 3 questions in full but through practice you can build up a system of skipping / shortening stuff down to make it easier.
For cultural knowledge and general practice, I would reccomend looking at something like BBC Mundo or El País every once in a while. Even if you read it in English before / after, it helps build up your vocabulary and general knowledge, though it can only be trends like one attitude is increasing in popularity in response to one issue or something. My teacher made us tables on powerpoint and excel that we were meant to fill in to see if we had something for each unit and something to say about that thing. It's also kind of useful to look at past papers and use the facts off of there, as I think my teacher said it's unlikely they'll reuse it, but be careful with that I guess.
Sorry this is quite a lot and I don't know if it's that helpful, but it's the stuff that worked for me (and that I can remember rn). Overall, practicing consistently is probably the best idea, focussing on exam technique. There's quite a lot on quizlet and stuff, and I can probably have a look at some of my old stuff and share it or it might help me remember how I actually revised lol. Sorry if this isn't what you wanted I realised I've just not talked a lot about resources and focussed on exam technique but I guess what I'm trying to say is the exams are the best revision resource? That sounds really awful sorry lol I hope this is at least somewhat helpful :smile:

Reply 4

Z_G44

3

Original post

by avapackk

hi i’m currently in year 12 studying spanish
i’m doing ok in it at the minute but i just know it’s gonna get worse
can anybody recommend websites or revision resources for spanish because i can barely find any and i need to get better at the language fast
many thanks

hi I'm in yr 13 and igy it's rlly tricky but I managed to jump from a C to an A in a couple months, - I use https://www.astarlanguages.com/alevelspanish - u can also get a tutor on here if you need help. I found that flashcards were the most helpful - esp when it comes to vocab as vocab is ur best friend, just start early and be consistent with ur flashcards. Also if you would like any flashcard sets lmk! For speaking even tho you don't know what questions you will get I'd say it's always good to have resources prepared, even short answers and a bit of research into each topic which u can transfer onto flashcards - if you start practicing these now you should be fine when it comes to the real thing. Defo keep up momentum with listening and translation tasks etc, and practice a lot, I think that is the key. There is always technique when it comes to exam papers (paper 1 especially ) so if u want to hear more abt that lmk!! Also podcasts, music and films are a good way to passively learn without actually doing too much for when ur tired :smile:

spanish a-level revision

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