** 2014 LC French - all levels - discussion, predictions, practice your French **

Allision2343

Does anybody know where I can get really old French higher level leaving cert exam paper like from1980 s or 1990?They don't have them back that far on examinations.ie and I really need them for study for the leaving cert next year.im looking to get a really high grade in French possibly an A.

Canard

In that case, why not go a little more advanced than what you usually find in LC French? Read real French articles online the way you'd read a comprehension, it's really helpful. There are also books out there with English on one side and French on the other.

As for the written pieces, to get some more of those you could look at the Spanish/Italian/German exams and just use those questions instead. They're usually quite similar.

Allision2343

Does anybody know where I can get really old HL French LC exam papers like back in 1990 or 1980.I know I'm probably digging to deep here...I really want an A in French for leaving cert and I want to be prepared and I need to look through all reading comp for any words that came up.Id be SOOO grateful.someone has to have them!

linguist

There are one or two of the old exams on examinations.ie - the current syllabus was examined for the first time in 1997. However, I fully second Canard's advice. If you're looking to really better yourself in French, go to the source. Read authentic materials in French and get yourself to France. Btw: Disneyland doesn't really count!:)

linguist

As regards reading comprehension 1, I see the light is dawning on people that this wasn't such a sound paper after all. I'd say there'll be some interesting discussion at the conference on those ferocious animals. I really think the lions, tigers and elephants sentence is the one they're after, but as I stated earlier elephants, it could be argued, are not naturally ferocious in the way the other two are. I entirely agree with robman regarding the menagerie - it does not imply dangerous or ferocious animals in any way. However, cancelling the two answers out, that sentence may well be allowed.

If any of next year's Leaving Certs are looking in, can I absolutely second robman's comment about the role your English vocabulary has in French. Read widely and read quality material in English and don't just content yourself with a good passive vocabulary, enrich your active vocabulary too. It's time we got ourselves up off the floor in this country regarding our dire standard of everyday English and got over the nonsense about the greatest English in the world etc. As someone who sees the effects of what Rob is getting at, as a French teacher, it's a real issue. There - rant over:)

dazzy123

Flickka wrote: »

Aww damn. That's so frustrating. I bet that's going to cost me my A

I've seen on some of the old papers that there's more than one accepted so don't worry it's probably the case her as it was not a very clear question

mec1

Got to agree here with Linguist. The system in 1980s was completely different in a lot of respects. Emphasis was placed on reading short stories etc. and adopting a very literary approach towards topics.

TV5 has a good website which can be used. It's up to date topically speaking. frenchrevision. co. uk is now, I think, pay for use but is good for revision. Educationscotland. gov. uk has good revision practice for listening. BBC bitesize is handy for very basic revision in 5th year over certain topics.

Hitting the forums on various websites based in France is good also except that the grammar and spellings leave a lot to be desired.

A lot of work needs to be done on the Listening section. Think about it. 20% of your total goes on this section. It's easy to work on. There is so much material out there and yet, it is the one section that students often do the least amount of work on.

linguist

Hi all, reopening this thread for one last spin. May I ask if anyone was disappointed with their higher French result or if it was at the lower end of their overall marks? I realise that this isn't scientific but I'm a little disappointed with some of mine and would appreciate a sense of whether people are planning to view their French etc. Feel free to PM me if you don't wish to divulge your circumstances in the forum. Thanks!!

a0ifee

linguist wrote: »

Hi all, reopening this thread for one last spin. May I ask if anyone was disappointed with their higher French result or if it was at the lower end of their overall marks? I realise that this isn't scientific but I'm a little disappointed with some of mine and would appreciate a sense of whether people are planning to view their French etc. Feel free to PM me if you don't wish to divulge your circumstances in the forum. Thanks!!

I got a b2 which was kind of disappointing, I think my oral really saved me though because it went really well while the aural went awful for me. It was my lowest grade, I'll view it but I have a feeling I was on the lower end of a b2

Sucette!

linguist wrote: »

Hi all, reopening this thread for one last spin. May I ask if anyone was disappointed with their higher French result or if it was at the lower end of their overall marks? I realise that this isn't scientific but I'm a little disappointed with some of mine and would appreciate a sense of whether people are planning to view their French etc. Feel free to PM me if you don't wish to divulge your circumstances in the forum. Thanks!!

I got an A2, would have been borderline A2-A1 all the time.
Towards the end I thought I had brought myself up to an A1 standard, (my teacher agreed). I was a little dissapointed, but got the points I needed and more for my course so I cant really complain.

In general we would have had a class with an extremely high standard. Yet there was only one A1, 4 A2's and the majority gathered in the B1-B3 area. Compared to more or less the same class for Irish where there was at least 6/7 A1s. I thought I was better at French than Irish, but obviously not!

linguist

I now know only too well that I'm among the high achievers here. I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate you all on your performance and I know that many of you here really excelled. I'm putting my 'ordinary teacher's' coat very much back on this week so I'm really looking to get a sense of how much actual disappointment there is out there with French. You'll know from the stats that the national percentages are down at the higher end. What I'm interested in is how that's translated into people's actual result versus what they expected. Your answers so far are very helpful.

HelenAnn

I was happy with mine - I managed an A1. French has always been one of my best subjects though and I was hoping to get that. I wonder if the marking schemes for the listening and reading comprehensions were particularly strict this year because a lot of people seemed to find them easy?

FHB

Despite doing some real scrutinising of the reading comprehensions and listening comprehensions and panicking a little bit as I realised how many things I didn't get fully correct(You may remember this linguist ) I ended up with an A1 in the end. I was really aiming for one, so I'm happy. I thought it could have gone either way between an A1 and A2, but luckily I must have done just enough to get over 90%. I'd say the written pieces and oral really helped me out.

AtomicKoala

I was really worried I had gotten an A2, but in the end I got an A1. I wasn't particularly fantastic at French (I got a B in the JC), but I worked hard at it once I scraped into the top class in 5th year. I never felt I had a particular flair for it, but I wanted to be able to speak another language

I made mistakes in the comprehension section and the listening, but I was more worried about the Oral than anything else. Anyhow, I was very happy to get an A1 in the end - I gave myself about a 40-50% chance of doing so

mec1

linguist wrote: »

Hi all, reopening this thread for one last spin. May I ask if anyone was disappointed with their higher French result or if it was at the lower end of their overall marks? I realise that this isn't scientific but I'm a little disappointed with some of mine and would appreciate a sense of whether people are planning to view their French etc. Feel free to PM me if you don't wish to divulge your circumstances in the forum. Thanks!!

Not a large concern but one C1 will be looked at when the papers arrive back as thought she would get at least B1.

A number of years ago we did have an issue in the school. The Oral marks appeared to be lower in many instances than those received in the written paper so would not be surprised to see this as a worry for some schools.

The written section can be marked differently from examiner to examiner so slight variations can result in differences. For example, if I give 20/30 for one and you give 23/30 for the same one, multiply that by 3 answers and its 5 or 6 marks.

linguist

mec1, Thanks very much for this. Yes, the oral is a real issue and I have specific concerns about this year's one which I won't detail here in public view. All candidates need to know that only a sample of their recordings will have been listened to at this point and that the marks awarded by each examiner will have been altered in the light of that process. As a result, it is highly desirable for candidates who feel the oral brought them down to appeal on that basis. It is the only guarantee that your recording will be listened to and that you will be credited with the exact mark you deserve. Your oral mark will not appear on your script and you will have to calculate it. Thus, if your written + aural come to 62pc and your final grade is a C3, you know that your oral would be down between 55-58/100.

Daniel2590

I knew my chance of an A1 went out the window after my oral - the examiner was interrupting me every sentence I spoke (asked me my daily routine and interrupted before I got to breakfast), so I ended up getting quite annoyed during the oral and may then have made mistakes. Ended up with an A2 in the end but I'm having a look at my paper just to see :P

linguist

In fairness Daniel, s/he may simply have realised they were dealing with a very good candidate and sought to move the conversation along in order to maximise the level of your knowledge you were able to demonstrate. Having examined the orals, I can assure you that is entirely possible. Don't draw any conclusions until you've looked at your written and aural. If they're safely in A2 territory, it'll be difficult to find the marks on the oral.

IrishLoriii

BUMP This may be a very helpful for 2015 LC French

Peregrine

IrishLoriii wrote: »

BUMP This may be a very helpful for 2015 LC French

I don't think having both threads open will be practical. I'll leave a link to this one in the 2015 thread.

If you want to speak in French, you could always do it the 2015 thread too