On Wednesday 28th January a group of Year 10 GCSE French students, Mrs Lloyd and Julie, our Foreign Language Assistant, went to Kings Cross for a French Conference. It was very good because we were given lots of hints about what to do in our speaking exam.
We spent the whole day doing some interactive activities, for example working individually and in pairs from booklets, singing some French phrases in a way that we would remember the vocabulary and watching and learning French from an acting group called Scratch. They were great because one sketch showed how a beginner talks to a French waiter and says ‘Je voudrais une toilette’! Another showed a student taking their speaking exam and he replied with one word answers in English with a French accent.
The teacher obviously gave him a very low grade. Of course the moral of the story is to make sure you learn your vocabulary and give detailed answers. We were also given advice about using appropriate tenses when answering questions.
An important piece of advice from the examiners was that we all need to revise the basics so, all of you in Years 7 to 9 learn all the basic stuff and you will find your GCSE exam much easier!
Pradeepan Raviendran 10PRE