Should I really risk Honours French? :(

BrittneyC_xo

Okay so, I'm doing all honours subjects right now apart from Maths ( ew! ), but I've really been struggling with French. My vocabulary in French is little to non-existant.. seriously! The thing with French is that in order to do well in the Written paper, I have to learn off phrases/essays & pray to god that those topics will come up.. so I think it is really risky!? My French oral was fine, but then again.. my Examiner paused the tape and told us half of the questions she was asking in English while the tape was paused, so I probably would've done terrible if I didn't have an Oral examiner like that! Oh and as for the listening.. I got 21/60 in the Mock? Yeah, terrible.. I know!

Overall though, I got 48%.. nothing spectacular but was surprisingly one of the highest in my class! Thing is, I only need a D3 in French but I'm really nervous that I'll fail the paper. Is it worth the risk? I plan on including it in my six results, so it would really put me off if I were to fail it and get well.. zero.

Also, is the Ordinary level paper much easier? Or is it basically the same and just marked harder!? I wish I didn't choose French to begin with, since I'm able to use Irish as my 'Foreign' language even though I'm almost fluent at this point. (yay for living in a Gaelteacht area!) Any help & suggestions would be much appreciated, thanks (:

Canard

Well if you're fluent in Irish you should get an A1 right? The listening in French is out of 80 though is it not? And I think it might be 100 at OL to compensate for the oral or something.

But then again, you wont miss out on colleges if you have Irish as a foreign language, so I guess theres no harm in improving and hoping for the best.

(As an aside, how is Irish counted as a foreign language when you live in a gaelteacht area? :pac:)

BrittneyC_xo

I only got a B1 in the Mocks.. I said near fluent! But I must say an A1 would be nice

Oh, maybe it is 80.. I'm just so lost with French! Yeah, the fact I can use Irish as my language is handy, I suppose!

I wasn't born in Ireland and moved over here only a few years ago, so I'm able to use Irish as my foreign language.

Canard

Ahh close enough :P

Thats mad that you got a B1 and only started a few years ago :O Unless you think failing French would mean missing your course by ~45 points (i.e. what you'd get for a D3 in French) then I think you might as well keep it.

BrittneyC_xo

Well, I came over here hoping it wouldn't be so hard to make friends & then I realized that everyone in the same area as me were speaking a different language! I think that intensified my willingness to learn the language. Plus, having friends speaking it all the time.. you get used to it over-time! (: Still, my Oral examiner found it hilarious how good my Irish was even with an overly American accent!

Yeah, I'm terrified French would bring me down 45 points.. and I really don't want to put my only pass grade in there because I hate that subject also!

Togepi

Were you told any of what was coming up for your French mock? Loads in my class got Ds and they're not dropping. I'd say try to stick at it for the points, if you do ordinary it's fairly different and you'll still have to learn off phrases to get your marks!

Canard

Haha, American Irish, sounds gas. :P

Maybe OL is best then - 45 would be a lot to lose! But if you dont count French youll still count maths, however few points that might be, so its not all bad I guess and it could go well, you never know.

I just learn off general phrases and things to express opinion but French comes pretty naturally to me, but if you managed to pick up Irish so quickly I imagine you'd be able to do HL French if you really want to. :P

BrittneyC_xo

Oh , I should've mentioned that! Someone told me the Journal, so I sort of had that part learnt off by heart. So maybe I could've failed if I didn't know that?

I just don't think I'd get near a B in Pass.. it just sounds so horrible to me since I'm finding French so difficult. And no, I honestly can't pick up French. I'm one of those people that either loves or hates a subject, and clearly I don't really like French. I guess I didn't help myself by never bothering with it since I found it so hard to begin with?

I could try and rely on Maths. I got a C1 in the Mock.. I think that is 30 points? So hopefully I can up that a little, if I fail French!

Siobhnk

I do pass French, it's SO much different to honours. I was in the same boat as you on the border, and dropping was the best thing I ever did. You dont have to write any journals. You have 4 comprehensions, you answer 2 in English and 2 in French, not that hard. You then have the option to do a cloze test (fill in the blanks) or a CV. then there's the written section. You pick one thing out of a possible 6, and it's BASIC French like for a postcard "me voici a Nice. Il fait beau et chaud". You have time in the exam to do the cloze test and the cv, and then all 6 written pieces if you wish. Listening for the most part isn't too bad

That's basically the ordinary paper, just thought I'd sum it up for you. If you think you can pass the honours paper by all means go for it. With my own situation I was constantly getting Ds with effort put it, I'm not a language person at all. I dropped to ordinary and I got an a1 in the mocks, which is worth much more in points than a d3 in honours. Hope I can get that in the real thing, we just have to see how the oral went :rolleyes:

spurious

48% is a long way from a bare pass.
Do you know where you lost your marks?
Are there areas you can improve on?
Did you leave out any sections?

BrittneyC_xo

Spurious, technically I failed the listening exam with 18/80.. I don't know why I did so bad, though! Normally I do better in the Listening.. and my written answers weren't exactly brilliant either because like I said before my French isn't exactly 'strong', so I'm really unsure whether to keep with Honours!

Oh and Siobhnk, thanks so much for your reply! I was hoping someone doing Pass would reply & give me an insight to how Pass differs from Honours (since my class is Honours only!). Choosing 1 out of 6 is actually winning me over right now since I think Honours is 3 out of 4? Haha, it's late and I'm too tired to look at my exam papers!

Thanks for all the replies, guys. I think I'll talk with my teacher tomorrow and see what she thinks since she already knows I'm struggling with the subject. Thanks (:

biohaiid

Hey, a few of my friends moved down to pass and said there is a huge difference, waaay different!
Its actually like tick the box and fill in the box for some of it!haha
If you think you might fail I'd drop, and try to improve on your strong subjects to compensate the points.
Up to you at the end of the day though.

Gumbi

The honours course is very manageable if you prioritise correctly. The listening is simple to prepare for. just sit down and do all of the questions for the past 10 years. Try to get a transcript so that you know what is being said. the same type of pieces come up every year; there's only so many topics they can cover. You'll see a pattern after you've done a few years' worth of it.

Next is the oral. It is very easy for you to control the flow of the conversation. Indeed, the examiner will gladly grant you that control, as long as you don';t sound like a parrot. Just revise certain topics and you should be fine. Make sure you know your tenses, and practise orals with a friend. This will build your fluency.

If you concentrate on these, you should be fine. the written paper is slightly more difficult, but the same general rules apply. know your basics, and practise papers beforehand. You should be fine.

Lausie93

I am on the fence aswell about dropping to ordinary, i've been doing honours since JC and got a D2 in the mocks (i just wrote down any bit of french that came into my head) i can get almost full marks in the comprehensions with key words translated but will only do half as well without those key words. I haven't any postcards or anything learned off and i can really barely make anything other than baby sentences. My oral went well i think, and i plan on practising the aural flat out this week, should i drop down? I really need my third language to do my course and won't even be counting french!Any help would be appreciated!

gaahurling

You said it yourself...... you get zero points for a fail..... take the ordinary level

Siobhnk

Reading back on my answer there, I made a typo, its 2 out of 6 sorry But that includes the cloze test and cv! So out of the other 2 sections on the paper it's 1 out of 4, if you decide to do the cloze test/cv