As an ESOL teacher abroad, it always strikes me as odd that native-language teachers who teach English encourage their students to fear exams. It reminds me of my long-ago school days, when my teachers would invoke our certain academic demise by failure and ineptitude whenever exam season was at hand.
Teachers probably don't mean to scare the wits out of their students; they probably only want to impress upon them how difficult their upcoming ordeal is, and that they must diligently prepare. Pointing out the challenges that lie ahead and any possible pitfalls could work as an incentive to study harder and practice more...
But why does it always feel as though they secretly believe we're all going to fail?
Superprof takes a different tack. Rather than trying to impress upon you the gravity of your situation and, along the way, imply that you will never be well enough prepared to meet the challenge, we want to equip you with a positive approach to nailing your French GCSE 150-word question.
| French GCSE 150-Word Question Thinking Points: |
|---|
| 1. What does 150 words look and feel like? |
| 2. What topic are you assigned to write about? |
| 3. Do you have to write at least 150 words? |
| 4. Practise writing 150 words to get an idea of what it feels like. |
| 5 Practise writing 150 words in French. |
French lessons are certainly the best starting point for any issues you might be having with learning the language. Now, let's explore each of these ideas in-depth.
Getting Over the Fear Factor
We'll not deny that sitting GCSEs is a stress-inducing activity. Much of your future hangs in the balance; not just whether you can continue with your academic studies and, eventually, land the career of your dreams. Even employers want to see decent GCSE marks before they'll make a hiring decision.
In itself, that is reason enough to fret and worry over your GCSE results.
Advising you to neither fret nor worry is not going to help you, we know. But recommending stress release tactics such as meditation and keeping yourself organised - setting up a revision schedule (and sticking to it), managing your time so that you maintain a satisfying study-life balance and rewarding yourself appropriately for reaching study milestones are all recommended.
You'll find that, as you focus more on managing your workload, you'll have less time and energy to waste on counterproductive, psychically draining activities such as worrying.
Another helpful aspect of taking charge of your study: you are in control. Your exams - and, by extension your worries and woes over them don't control you, you get to manage it all. And you'll be great at it!
Now, for that ominous-sounding GCSE French writing task...
Answer this question: what do 150 words look like? What does it feel like to write 150 words? And, better yet: what does it feel like to string together 150 words in such a way that they will convey a clear idea; paint a true image of your thoughts?
For now, don't think about 150 words in French; the point is to get a handle on what, exactly, 150 words represents.
At this stage in this article, the word-meter stands at just over 450. You can divide what you've read so far into three parts to give you a rough estimate of what 150 words looks like. Or you can open your document-writing app and write until the word counter reaches 150.
Go ahead; we'll wait for you.
Once you know what 150 words feels and looks like, you may consider the terror of 150 words banished, and focus on other aspects that will make it easy for you to nail this question... like knowing all of the words on your GCSE French vocabulary list.
Know What You Have to Write About
Don't we all love those game shows - Who Wants to Be A Millionaire and The Weakest Link, shows that host admittedly brilliant players who are put on the spot by questions they weren't prepared to answer? In fact, we mostly like them for the looks of confusion and, let's admit it, the failure of those supposed clever ones being deemed the weakest link.
Unless you've been a contestant on such a game show, you have no idea about how much preparation the players get, or even how they're selected. We have no idea if they're told beforehand what the questions will be or, at least, what subject/topics they'll be questioned on.
The same is not true for your GCSE French exams.
Probably everyone from your teachers to your parents and, if you have them, older siblings, have advised you to look at past papers and marking schemes. Even we have, throughout this Revising for GCSE French series of articles.
Fortunately for you, the AQA website already has GCSE French writing papers for 2021/2022 up. Downloading and going over them means knowing what the 150-word question is. Now, it's just a matter of knowing what you want to write about.
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To make things even easier, you're given two aspects of the topic and instructed to write about each aspect. You could reason that around 75 words per aspect would help you narrow down your focus by first addressing one and then the other.
We would suggest you do it a bit differently:
- write an introduction - your connection to the topic (around 30 words)
- address the first aspect (around 45 words)
- address the second aspect (around 45 words)
- write a conclusion summarizing your main points (around 30 words)
As you review materials to practise for your GCSE French reading ordeal, you'll note that many of the texts are structured in that manner. Admittedly, many omit a concluding paragraph but that's mainly so you can draw your own conclusions; the better to answer the related questions.
Knowing what you'll be tasked to write about and establishing a clear idea of how to proceed will banish any remaining qualms you have about this part of the GCSE French exam.
Know What's Expected of You
Of course, you know what's expected of you: write 150 words in French on a certain subject and earn the highest marks possible. But how? By following the instructions, of course.
Your examination booklet provides generous guidelines for how to ace your writing exam. Those instructions inform you that you will have a choice of three prompts to write about; you only need to address one of them.
And then, it gives further instructions: to earn the maximum number of points, use a variety of grammatical structures and deploy your full range of French vocabulary. You should also include your opinions on the topic you've chosen and the reasons you hold those opinions.
Keep in mind that you can download and review this booklet ahead of your exam. That means that, in effect, you can walk into the testing room knowing exactly what's expected of you regarding this task.
But that's not all the preparation you're offered. AQA also publishes their Examiners' Report.
This report dissects students' performances on past exams. The authors draw on statistics to quote the average number of students who did well or poorly on any aspect of the test and, most importantly, they write why the students performed poorly/well.
There is no better guide to how you're expected to perform on this assessment than the Examiners' Reports. The examiners themselves tell you what was expected, how many students met those expectations and how future students could do better.
You can find Examiners' Reports for every aspect of your GCSE French, including the oral examination portion, where those dreaded speaking questions will feature.
One more nugget of wisdom, straight from this report: you don't have to write a full 150 words, provided your answer meets all the other criteria.
If you've addressed the question and touched on both aspects given in the prompt; if you've used a satisfying array of adjectives, adverbs and grammatical structures; if you've injected your opinions and rationalized them... You will have earned your 32 marks whether you've written 150 words or only 138.
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How to Ace the 150-Word Question
By now, all of your fears should be dispelled. Knowing what you're up against, they've replaced with confidence and assertiveness. You were never the type to let 150 French words terrify you, anyway, right?
Besides getting a feel for what 150 words feels like, knowing what you'll write about and the criteria your performance will be measured by, there are a few more tactics to help you prepare for this question.
Do you journal?
If you keep a diary, write your daily entries in French. Doing so is a stress-free way to get used to writing your thoughts and opinions about topics relevant to you in your target language. If you don't journal, now would be a great time to start.
Choose one standout topic of your day to write about.
Just like your exam will call for, examine two aspects of that single topic. It might be something that happened in school that day or your thoughts on commuting to school. Maybe you're frustrated with having to wear uniforms? Make that your topic of the day. Or school lunches, or... anything.
Maintain the structure and format you're expected to keep on your exam writing: a short introduction, two salient points and a summary of the day's topic.
To make the activity more challenging, choose a set of words from your vocabulary list - preferably words you're not entirely familiar with, and build a narrative around them. This serves the dual purpose of vocabulary-building and writing practice.
You might also copy complex grammar structures and insert different words to suit your daily narrative. In particular, find those that use different French verb tenses so you can get used to using them, too.
All of these exercises will condition you to address your exam's 150-word question with ease and confidence.
Won't you let us know how you did?
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