Leaving Cert French

Jinx96

Currently in 5th, wondering how hard it is to do well in French, I got a D in the junior cert as I had the worst teacher ever, the majority of my class got a C and I basically gave up and didn't bother, However now I'm determined to stay in honours and I've started French grinds with a teacher who is a paper and oral examiner, However I'm still worried about doing badly! Any help would be much appreciated

plmko

Hey,
Higher Level French is tough if your not a natural languages person. But if your determined it's definitely possible.
You're about ten weeks into fifth year. I'd recommend you learn an irregular verb a week like aller, etre, avoir etc. in all tenses.
I believe the aural counts for 30%. Work on a possible question and answer once a week also. You can find these in your french book or I'm sure you can find some online.
Keep practicing forming sentences. Listen to french people speaking, even if it's only for a minute a day. I tell you it will make a world of a difference!
Access vocabulary for certain topics. I'm sure your teacher is going through certain topics with you. Learn key vocabulary as you go along. Test yourself every weekend. Ten new words a day is recommended.

Trust me, work for fifth year and you won't be stressed next year!

best of luck! Never put yourself down! You can do it!

evanbeaulieu

Are u interested in french conversational classes? I could help

AtomicKoala

The great thing about French is that the grammar is fairly regular. Don't learn an irregular verb a week. Learn the entire set of 20 or so common irregular verbs one tense at a time every week. And ensure you know your regular verbs even better

A vocab copy is essential. Write down every peace of vocab you care about. If you want to, you can definitely turn that D into a B - into an A if you really desire it

Jinx96

Thanks for the replies, I've been doing grinds for a few months and I'm now a B Student in honours so far, hopefully I can keep that up for the summer exams. I struggle most with grammar. I find listening is my strongest, reading comprehensions are good and my oral has strongly improved however I find writing short essays difficult if not learnt off!

abeilles

I went from a D in English in the junior cert to an A2 in Leaving cert- I think it's all about how you prepare for the exam and to an extent it's about learning things off(someone is bound to give out to me for saying that!) to be honest French is tough but you're in fifth year you can do it! For me I found reading articles really helpful, I would go through them, highlight phrases I didnt know and Look them up, I would take them down and try to utilise them to broaden my vocab. The oral exam is all about practice! Good luck!

robman60

There are only a handful of truly irregular verbs. I mean, lots of the irregulars kind of follow regular trends so I group them mentally in that way. I've never consciously learned the tenses of different verbs since Junior Cert. but I still know all tenses better than most. I think this sort of stuff suits me naturally though as I know others struggle badly in this regard, so each to their own.

Bonne Chance!

Jinx96

FairPlay to you! I got a C in JC English I'm about a B student now in honours and I would kill to get a high B if I dare even say an A in the LC but I don't read often I'm starting to read a few books now. I have good spelling and quite a broad vocabulary however sometimes my sentences need to be rephrased. How did you improve so much in English may I ask?

abeilles

Ok so basically I got grinds for fifth and sixth year but my grades were still bad, I was averaging a c and I think I came out with a c3 in the LC, I also didn't have enough points to do what I really wanted so I went back to repeat. On the advice from my former english teacher I stopped getting grinds- the person giving me grinds had a very different style of writing and tried to get me to change the way I wrote compositions etc rather than helping me improve my own style. This was not helpful, you need to figure out your own style as it is more natural than trying to adopt a false and forced writing style.

So what I decided to do was keep my own style but improve it, work on essays frequently and my teacher would correct them for me and tell me where I needed to improve. I was very fortunate that my former English teacher was lovely and he really wanted me to do well, even though I was no longer in his class.

For the shakespearean drama I learned off an essay(very broad so I could change it to suit several different questions, there are things you can talk about no matter what the question is for example the tragic hero/Machiavellian hero/ Plato which will show you have a great interest in shakespeare!! I also mentioned other Shakespearean dramas in passing but nothing too crazy) and I also ended up using an essay that I had written before for the big essay question.


I also did a good but of prep for the unseen poem as it is a place that many people don't bother with but it is easy marks if you know what to look for/ how to structure your answer.

For the main poetry question, if memory serves, I took a major gamble and only studied four poets, I think one of them showed up but the question didn't suit me so I would advice you not to take risks for the poetry. I would also advice you to learn quotes for everything! Extremely helpful- I quoted Barack Obama in one of my paper one questions (it was a speech I had to write)

The comprehensions are all about practice and I found that with practice I learned how to structure my answers and how to use a broader vocab so for this it's all about practicing with old exam papers.


It's six years since I did my leaving cert so I'm not sure how the exam has changed so I hope some of this is still relevant!

What is your teacher like? It is i important to be practicing these things now so even if you are unfortunate enough to have a bad teacher I would recommend just working on these things yourself.

Jinx96

Great advice thank you! God poetry seems to be worst for learning off! I have a good English teacher at the moment however she is filling in for the year as my teacher is on sick leave and to be quite honest the other teacher is crap! We will either get on or another next year depending so hopefully I stick with who I have now!