Advice on French GCSE Revision

[WhatwouldTimRigginsdo]

I would be very grateful if anyone has any targeted advice on revision for AQA French GCSE post mocks. I know there is a lady who is excellent on MFL who sometimes posts, but I don't know her name.

DD achieved a low 7 in the mocks but is very ambitious and is aiming for a minimum Grade 8. I practiced with her for her speaking mock which went well (c.40/50). Her written work was not bad but her reading mark was poor and she tanked the listening - I can't remember the score but a handful of marks.

I think she has been focused on revising for the speaking, writing, verbs/tenses in recent months and I'm thinking that she has neglected her vocab (which she was fab at in younger years). I've printed off the AQA vocab list and we are trying to incorporate some vocab practice most days in short bursts (in the car, bus, after dinner etc) through physical flashcards as quizlet does not seem to work for her.

For the written section, is it worth trying to write some model answers for each topic? Neither she/nor I have gone through lots of the past papers yet, but I'm wondering if they tend to ask similar style questions on each topic?

She has been watching some Peppa Pig in French on/off since the summer, but given her listening result - I'm thinking thats not working for her.

Any other suggestions or ideas that have worked for people in the past would be much appreciated.

I don't think this particular teacher and her gel in terms of style of teaching/learning and she has done much better with MFL in earlier years/different teachers. The methods for revising humanities, maths & science come more easily to her at this stage.

Hi @WhatwouldTimRigginsdo MFL is my subject so I may be able to offer some help.

Got to run somewhere just now but will post a proper response in a bit.

Thanks @RedDogBlueDog. You've given some really helpful suggestions. I hadn't considered podcasts and am off to research today. They could be really useful for short bursts on the move. Also newsinslowfrench is a great idea. I didn't know that existed.

Its a very valid point about more general French exposure.

@clary thanks so much for your post. I'll keep an eye out for you.

Hi again OP - apols huuuge post incoming

Ok so (I am assuming btw she is yr 11) you have just over three months to work on reading and listening (exam 22 May), a couple of weeks longer for writing and approx two months to continue her good effort on speaking (depending when the exam is, but as a rule sometime in April).

That’s not long so I think the thing to do is focus on exam technique and ways to actually gain more marks. The difference between a low 7 and a medium 8 is about 30-odd marks overall. Depending on what she scored in the listening and reading this may be achievable.

This is my advice:
Speaking: 40/50 is a very good mark already. I imagine she has learned a series of answers to questions, some of which her teacher will ask her in the exam. Remember to extend answers on the photocard but there is no need to do so on the role play. Remember the exam board also wants spontaneity in the general convo, so she needs to maybe extend some of these and learn phrases that will be useful – google higher-level phrases for French speaking to come up with a few – then she can include these. They will also be useful in writing.

Writing: You asked about drafting model answers. I am not sure there would be sufficient benefit in this when assessing it against the work that would be needed – you would have to draft out and learn so many. The 16-mark question is quite structured, so it’s unlikely that your dummy essay on holidays would cover the necessary elements. Much better to continue your good work on vocab – think about opinions and reasons, time phrases, a variety of adjectives and intensifiers, a range of tenses used and also different people – don’t just say I will play xysz or like abc or did fgh, use we and he or she as well. Use futur proche and simple, use perfect tense with avoir and etre, use imperfect tense as well as present. It’s fine though to draft out some key phrases that you will use if you can learn a few like “apres avoir fait xyz, j’ai decide de abc; a mon avis c’etait formidable, parce que j’adore fgh” (apologies for lack of accents). All of that is good for speaking as well. Obviously look at past papers but it’s harder to mark your essay in French as a student.

Listening: This is where she can really pick up marks so I would focus on this. Is there any way you can get hold of her paper for listening that she did so badly on and see where she went wrong? A lot of people panic in the listening as you can’t go back over it as you can reading; you have to learn to let it go and move on to the next one. Exam boards include all the things mentioned in the answer in the audio, so she needs to listen out carefully for negatives. Tone of voice can also help. TBH the best thing to do at this stage is do lots of practice questions, mark them against the mark scheme and then see where you have gone wrong. Is it lack of vocab knowledge? Is it panic? Is it not listening properly? There are only so many past papers of the current spec (2018, 2019, November 2020 and 2021) but there is nothing to stop her trying listening tasks from Edexcel, or even from legacy AQA/OCR/Edexcel papers (they are out there if you have a look) – as long as she bears in mind that in those cases the structure of the exam will be different.

Reading – all of what I said for listening applies here too – it’s a bit easier as you have the text there, but the text is usually more challenging. Watch out for negatives; also when the questions are in French (second section) they will use different words with the same meaning, so it is a good idea to learn the multiple words for the same thing (such as content/heureux – obv a simple example). But again, doing practice questions from past papers is the way forward. If there is a pattern that may help her see what she needs to do.

How is she on translation? The translation into English (reading paper) will have words you don’t know – so use what you do know to work out what the sentence must say, then fill in a reasonable word for the unknown one. It may be correct. Don’t do either of these things: 1) jump at a word you know and create a sentence that makes sense in English but bears no relation to the grammar and structure of the French sentence or 2) think ‘I can’t translate this’ and just write down a series of guesses which don’t even make an English sentence. I’ve seen both of those. A lot. With the translation into French, again, there will be vocab she doesn’t know; pull together the sentence as best she can in structure, then if she can’t think of the word for ‘tennis competition’ can she do ‘tennis match’ instead? Often an alternative answer is acceptable.

Wow what an essay. Sorry about this. But hope it is helpful

Oh also - meant to say a good tip for vocab learning for teens is to have it recorded in French and english and listen on the way to school (or whenever)

Hi OP

I did French as my sole subject at degree level and the way they worked on listening comprehension with us was having us have it on ALL. THE. TIME. and then being able to present back about it.

I'd find a French news channel on the radio / tv, podcasts as others have said, French songs and have people at home ask her what they are saying. It'll get her used to listening for the meaning rather than every single word too if she's interrupted to explain.

I'm not a teacher and my GCSEs were a long time ago now so proper teachers will possibly say my approach is wrong but exposure is what they got us doing at uni and then of course when we did our year out all our listening was in French. It's by far the hardest part as it can't be easily revisited in an exam!

@WhatwouldTimRigginsdo to add to this, Memrise is a good website for vocab revision which might suit her better than quizlet, you can search AQA gcse French and there are full study sets on there. The other thing to remember is that the reading and listening papers are notoriously difficult and the grade boundaries reflect this- last year it was circa 50% (or even slightly less) to achieve a grade 7 on the listening paper, and not too different in the reading- this was similar even pre covid. This is psychologically very difficult for students and they often inadvertently "give up" towards the end and miss out on valuable marks, worth practicing some past papers (question papers, mark schemes and audio files available on AQA website) and coming to terms with the fact that she may not be comfortable with a good chunk of the paper but not to give up!
BBC bite size also have good listening practice questions!
Also, just to flag- the speaking is out of 60 so worth checking if they did a "full" exam style mock and, if not, what part will she still need to practice.
Finally, remind her that if she has learnt some answers for her general conversation for the speaking, don't forget that she can use chunks of these answers for the writing (adapted to the bullet points as necessary)! Good luck :)

Ooh good point @Girlinglasses the speaking is out of 60 - the listening is out of 50 (and then that mark is factored up as each element has 25% value).

Also yy to Memrise, great website.

I am not sure you can talk about a listening mark needed to achieve grade 7, as the exam is marked by totalling marks overall afaik - so in theory you could do badly on one paper and then well on the other three and the grade would be the average?

The AQA website says:
"Students’ final marks will be calculated by adding together the scaled marks for each component. Grade boundaries will be set using this total scaled mark."

The only mark that is actually scaled is listening (x 6/5) as it is out of 50; the total possible mark is 240 (4 x 60), so if you got 0 on listening and 60 on the other three papers (I mean this is vanishingly unlikely but still), you would get 180 marks - which is probably a high 7/low 8. You don't get a grade for each paper then the average of those.

www.languagesonline.org.uk/Hotpotatoes/frenchindex.html
As chunking works well , I'd also do 10 minutes of "gaming" on the vocab games on here. There are basic ones but also ones on topics like environment
www.languagesonline.org.uk/French/FrenchVocab/Environnement/Index.htm
The new photocard gap fills also look good.
www.languagesonline.org.uk/French/French_Photocards/PhotoJ1.htm
And of course daily duolingo.

@clary yes that's right, sorry I didn't mean to imply that the individual paper grades count, it was more just to point out that the reading and listening are notoriously the hardest parts of the exam and I have found with my students that preparing them psychologically for the fact that they are really difficult is nearly as important as the actual language learning, otherwise I have had students who easily miss 5-10 marks towards the end of each of the papers that I know they could have gotten, but they have just given up because they think "this is impossible, I've obviously failed" when in reality, from memory last year an overall mark of just over 60% across all papers would have gotten you a grade 8! So if you have a student getting around 80% or more on the speaking and writing sections, then they can afford to get a fair bit less than 50% in reading and listening and still achieve a grade 8 (which is insane to me and a clear indicator that the exam board need to sort their 💩 out but that's a whole other issue!)

I am bowled over by the absolutely amazing advice, responses and resources. Ladies thank you so much. I will be back to respond properly and individually but getting up at 4am tomorrow to go away for half term and just wanted to say a huge thank you initially. I will re-read this info several times and also get DD to read. There is so much fantastic knowledge and guidance on this thread.

Ah I see @Girlinglasses yes very much agree re not giving up. There are marks to be got all the way through. I've known a student leave an entire reading page blank bc they didn't think they knew it - but it is certainly always worth having a go.

This is really useful for me as well. I’ve just downloaded memrise-how do I find aqa gcse french? Do I need to use the paid version? Annoyingly I couldn’t find anywhere on their website or app to ask the question!

If you have ££ to spend (£50 per hr) I can recommend a good tutor. He worked with my ds to get his grade from a 7 to a 9, concentrating esp on listening and speaking. My only hesitation is that it's rather late in the day - ds worked with him bw Nov and March last year. PM me if you want details.

Thank you so much @Clary for the very valuable advice you've taken the time to provide. DD & I read through it all several times over the last few days.

She is year 11 and your comments about the time left before each exam were a great start to get us focused. I didn't realise that the speaking exam was so soon. Yourself and @Girlinglasses are absolutely right, I made a mistake with the speaking mark in the mock. It was 50/60.

Your comment on 'extending answers on the photocard but there is no need to do so on the role play' - has been noted. We have begun to google higher-level phrases for French speaking. Great tip that I wouldn't have thought of.

I am concerned that DD has not been working diligently enough on vocab this year and has fallen behind a bit. We are having a massive push at the moment. We've got a print out of the AQA vocab and have made physical flashcards for her current topic and the next. I'm not sure what is a reasonable no of words to be able to retain each day but she is aiming for around 25-20 words 5 days a week. We loved your suggestion about recording the vocab and listening to it on the journey to/from school. I think she is getting on much better with the combination of physical cards/recording than she was with quizlet.

DD was set over 200 words to learn over half term and definitely started to panic. Each set she learned, she seemed to forget the last ones. She has also been working on speaking for her current topic, set by her teacher this week. I am finding these recent topics (social & global) quite a challenge as its not vocab I learned at school so all new to me!

Listening: we haven't had a chance to go through her listening mock yet but its next on the list and she has scheduled in some time over the coming weeks to do some listening & reading past papers. All your tips for approaching the exam were most helpful. Also the steps to take in the translation. I think she may have had a tendency to 'jump at the word you know' and draw a wrong conclusion about the sentence meaning.

Having only recently gotten involved and its been a very long time since I studied french (in another country's school system), I have been surprised at the standard required to achieve a high grade. It seems like high level vocab and some quite complex sentence structures are absolutely required as well as being absolutely concrete on the tenses. Not a whole lot of room for error. I'm not sure if its too big a gap for DD to close but she will give it her best effort.

@Girlinglasses thank you for the information about the grade boundaries which we weren't aware of. The advice on using vocab/sentences from speaking revision for written revision is most helpful and a good reminder. We are going to explore memorise as I hadn't come across it before.

The 'not giving up' advice is to be remembered and reiterated. I can see how it would be so easy to get overwhelmed and do so.

@WingingIt101 Very helpful advice about exposure. I am really trying to find ways to add this into her daily routine. By the time she has finished school, GCSE drama practice, done homework, daily vocab - shes finding it hard to fit in any actual GCSE revision during weekdays. I can see the panic start to set in and am trying to figure out how to help her balance it all. Emotionally as much as the time management element.

@SequinsandStilettos Thank you also for those really helpful languagesonline links which are so useful. Again all new to me.

There is such a wealth of information on this thread. Thank you all for being so kind to give your time. Its greatly appreciated and I hope it can help others as well in future.

Listening was going to be my DC2's downfall too, until they decided they really liked a French Basque singer whose music the teacher shared in class (Kendji Girac). Very catchy stuff, some in dialect but quite a few songs in 'proper' French (Elle m'a aimee).

That led on to Charles Aznavour, who enunciates beautifully, and the immersion in music really helped. It's also easier to let it wash over you instead, whereas you tend to 'make' yourself try to understand speech. It's about teaching your brain to recognise a lot of standard phrases automatically.

I would also highly recommend 'Sur ta Peau' by Ricciardo Cocciante for the playlist.

The other thing for listening is to read as much of the question paper as you can and look out for key words in the audio. If you're told people are going to be talking about hobbies, dredge up that vocabulary and focus on listening for that.

pointy
Loving Kendji Girac thank you.

Stromae is brilliant lyrically.
Bigflo et Oli have some decent tracks.
Black M too.
Carla Bruni easy to follow.

@SequinsandStilettos thank you for the tips! I'm very multilingual and am alwys up for some new foreign language music. It has to be said that my current thing (Mongolian folk metal by a band called the HU) is something I can't understand a word of, but it's incredibly compelling.

My DD also got terrible scores in Listening so this thread has given me some great pointers.

Thank you :-)

I went through this with DD last year (although we did start earlier). Got her a grade 8 in the end which we never would have anticipated.

What worked for us were the CGP books (workbook and question book). Find them on Amazon. Brilliant book that is divided into a topic per 1/2 pages and would test each of the disciplines (translations/reading/writing/listening). Answers are in the back and the workbook would give a grammar lesson and key vocab. Easy to access the listening questions too.
Bite size questions so easy to pick up and do a bit here and there so not overwhelming. Long lists of vocab are too much!

Also any past papers with mark schemes really helped. Good luck.

We have signed up as a school to thisislanguage.com and our students are doing daily practice of listening videos which has been great for their listening skills. Not sure if you can buy a single login but would definitely recommend if you can.

So many useful resources on here, I'm not the OP, but thank you!

i learnt french as an adult, so apologies if this is off base. But the best exercise my teacher gave me was to take extracts of say, Dix pour cent, listen, and write down exactly what they said. It’s boring, but it really focuses your attention on every last syllable.

Oh, and there is a really nice podcast by RTS called Washington d’ici which is great because it is contemporary and involves a wide range of accents, but still formal french.