Irish is over forever

DS

Oi, what are you at writing pages of French? 90 words right? Anybody thinking of impressing the examiner with massive French essays, I'd be VERY careful. Basically the more you write, the more mistakes you can make. You don't gain marks in French, you lose them, so the more you write the more you lose. Just do exactly what they ask and nothing more. It sounds awful, but you're really trying to hide your French rather than show it off. If you write a piece in incredibly simple French, yet answer the question asked, they can't touch you with the marking scheme.

penguincakes

Originally posted by Dr. Loon
Believe me... you will. Pop back on here in 7 years and we'll see what you think. Doesn't matter what structure you like with languages... it's supposed to be "our" language, and bugger all of us can speak it. Myself included. I truly regret not keeping it up.

Fair play to those keeping it going, and good luck in the rest of the exams all.

Speak for yourself, we're not all like you.

claire h

Originally posted by Discharger Snake
Oi, what are you at writing pages of French? 90 words right? Anybody thinking of impressing the examiner with massive French essays, I'd be VERY careful. Basically the more you write, the more mistakes you can make. You don't gain marks in French, you lose them, so the more you write the more you lose. Just do exactly what they ask and nothing more. It sounds awful, but you're really trying to hide your French rather than show it off. If you write a piece in incredibly simple French, yet answer the question asked, they can't touch you with the marking scheme.

I tried that in the mocks and got crappy marks. My teacher has been telling me all year that I need to write longer pieces. *sigh* Hoping the real examiners will be more lenient and sensible when I hand up my 90 or 75 word pieces and nothing more.

DEmeant0r

Well my letters are usually half a page long, and they take in or around 7-9 minutes on a clear minded day to do, so double that time and it's around the 15 minutes. Of course I wouldn't write pages of French, I was just comparing the slowness of my Irish compared to my French.

DS

I tried that in the mocks and got crappy marks.

You sure that wasn't because of mistakes you made? If they ask you for x words, you're wasting your time writing more. They don't tell you how much to write for the laugh, or so you can write more than what they tell you to impress them. Anyway, I wouldn't take much from the mocks, the people who correct those are pretty clueless in general, from what I've heard.

My teacher has been telling me all year that I need to write longer pieces.

Most teachers say this about everything. It's just the simplest thing for them to do. When's the last time you heard a teacher tell you you're writing too much? They can't lose if they tell you to write more, whereas if they get you into a minimalist mindset, they could cost you marks. In my school I find (found) my teachers appalling for actually knowing what examiners are looking for from you. Any time we asked something specific they'll just give us a wild stab in the dark, like "I think they're probably looking for..... but I'll check it out for you", and they never do. What we should be hearing is "Well when I was at the examiners conference last year they said X about X", and we'd all be sorted. My teachers were so crap really. Apart from French, she's unbelievable.

claire h

Originally posted by Discharger Snake
You sure that wasn't because of mistakes you made? If they ask you for x words, you're wasting your time writing more. They don't tell you how much to write for the laugh, or so you can write more than what they tell you to impress them. Anyway, I wouldn't take much from the mocks, the people who correct those are pretty clueless in general, from what I've heard.

Nope, there was one or two small mistakes but nothing to justify all the marks they took off, so I thought. Ah well, languages aren't my strong point so I don't have huge hopes for a great grade in French anyway.

subway_ie

You shouldn't be sticking rigidly to the 90 word thing... if you need to write 110 words to get your point across and finish up nicely, then it's alot better to write the 110 words than to write 90 and not get your point across or have a good, definite ending. Also, I think they usually say "environ 90 mots", don't have exam papers with me right now, but I'm nearly sure they've said that a few times. You'll have loads of time in the french exam - if you're fairly good at french, then write more than 90 words but just keep checking it over and over again.

DS

Yeah exactly. I was kind of talking more about people who think writing a whole page is great.