Section A (AQA GCSE French): Revision Note

Let's look in more detail at the types of question in Section A, and how to achieve top marks.

Section A: reading

• Section A is worth 40 marks at both tiers

• All answers will either be letters or writing in English - you will not need to write in French

Tips for success

• Always read the questions carefully so you know what information you are looking for

• Highlight or underline key words and sentences to help you home in on the correct answer

• Don't get carried away with highlighting - use it sparingly to focus your attention

• Make a note of the English translation of these words and sentences

• You do not need to understand every word in a text to successfully answer the questions - focus on key details

• Write your answers

Multiple-choice questions

• In this type of question, you need to identify factual details

• You may be given a selection of correct options to choose from, you may have to choose the correct sentence ending, or you may have to decide who says what

• Answer these questions by writing letters in boxes

• Make sure you write the correct number of letters

• This will help you to listen out for important information, but beware of distractors

Positive, negative, positive & negative

• In this type of question, you need to identify if a speaker's opinion or experience is positive (P), negative (N) or positive and negative (P&N)

• A strong knowledge of opinion phrases and adjectives is essential for success in this type of question

• Look out for phrases which introduce contrasting opinions, e.g. mais (but) or cependant (however)

• Look carefully for negative constructions like ne ... pas (not) which change the meaning of a sentence

Responding in English

• These are open-ended questions, which means that there are no options provided to choose from

• You may have to complete sentences in English, or answer questions in English

• The mark for each question is provided in brackets (e.g. [2 marks]), and tells you how much detail to include

• Do not provide too much detail - incorrect information could invalidate a correct answer

• Focus on communicating the key idea

Identifying time frames

• In this type of question, you need to decide whether actions described refer to the past (P), now (N) or the future (F)

• Look for adverbs of time, e.g. hier, demain, maintenant

• A strong knowledge of tenses and time frames is essential

• Remember that there can be more than one tense for each time frame, e.g. both the perfect and imperfect refer to the past

Inference

• There will be one question where you need to work out the meaning of a word which is not from the vocabulary list

• You will be given three options to choose from

• Use context to help you - the sentence the unknown word is in will give you a clue to the correct answer