Vocabulary for French essays.

Consonata

I'm drawing up sheets of vocabulary to learn off for my French essays and my oral. I have a list of topics to cover:
• La famille moderne
• L’alcool
• La Technologie
• Les Vacances
• L’environnement
• La Guerre
• Le Racisme
• Les Drogues – Les Stupéfiants
• Le Sport (Les Positifs et Les Négatifs)
• La Crise Economique
• La Pauvreté - Les Sans-Abri
• La Santé

I have Family, Drogues and L'alcool covered so far. Anybody got sheets of vocab for any of these topics they would be willing to share? I'd imagine it could help everyone.

linguist

Building up a good bank of vocabulary is very important - but it is not an exam technique. The written questions now are very pointed in almost all cases and require a very specific answer.

So be sure to cover the broad communicative objectives of the syllabus in terms of

- vocabulary for expressing agreement and disagreement (it is very important to know how to disagree since far too many people agree with even nonsense statements on the exam and naturally can't put together a sufficient supporting argument)
- giving advice
- encouraging, facilitating and dissuading certain courses of action
- proposing solutions to problems among the social problems you've mentioned
- making plans and organising things/events etc

The exam paper is really moving down the road of rewarding people who can display a mastery of all that's covered on the course and away from general learned off essays on the topics you mention. People who carry on regardless and ream off the essay without gearing it to the specific question asked are penalised so you must begin to conceptualise this course and the exam differently. Of course the vocabulary of the topic is important but that is also just a canvas onto which you need to show your real, true mastery of the language. Also, look at the written questions on that are asked on very 'ordinary' topics such as this year's 2(b).