french written section

The King

i was just wonderin if anyone got any good tips for the french written section?did anyone of your teachers seem sure that a certain TOPICAL issue would come up?i know about the journal,letter etc,im more interested in the topical section like drugs,racism etc.cheers

Haedes1987

Theres a good chance that drugs in sport will come up, thats based on the fact that the paper was set around the time of the Cian O Connor case. For tips, look back to what was happening around this time.

segadreamcast

Or if you have the magazine francais plus, have a look at that issue...Cian O'Connor is on the front of it and there are various other articles of the moment - it'll be invaluable, I think/hope.

BraveheartGal

around october time
sorry, was the rugby world cup last year? and the olympics? i actually cant remember
so maybe somethin bout importance of sport

and of course the whole headscarves ("foulards") malarky

BraveheartGal

arse

dont have it, and have nothin prepared for french
dont suppose you have any handy tips/phrases on you?

i know that theres a site where if you type in a sentence in french itll translate it into english for you and vice versa
ill have a gawk around for it

segadreamcast

http://babelfish.altavista.com if memory serves. I don't have the magazine to hand sadly, sorry!

deek

I would SERIOUSLY advise all frenchie people to go take a look at he supervising examiners report. Im in the top honours french class and most of us would be used to getting As and Bs. When we got the mocks back though the results were pretty terrible. Our teacher told us they were badly marked but now after looking at yer ones report I think our results were probably pretty acccurate. This is what I figure we were doing wrong:

Our answers were typically an A4 page long or more (the best student in the class often wrote up to 3 pages). They are actully really strict about being too long and they WILL penalise you for it.

Our answers often had loads of learnt off general sentances. Examiners despise these and can spot them a mile away. Avoid them as much as you can.

I know this is a cliche but simple french is all they want. The most important thing is that every word you write is relevant. This can seem hard to believe but on her report on www.examinations.ie they give sample answers and the marks they got are actually shocking, the shortest dullest french got full marks because they were to the point whereas real attemts at complicated or atry french were heavily penalised for any mistakes and irrrelevance.

You've been warned!

deek

Oh and itd be under exam materiel archive.

*Angel*

deek wrote:

Our answers were typically an A4 page long or more (the best student in the class often wrote up to 3 pages).

OMG 3 pages

sock.rocker*

3 pages is crazy.. i can barely write 3 pages of english

*Angel*

... and the more you write the more chance you have of making mistakes, that's why we were always told to stick to the said amount.

k8e

thanks a mill deek for that website big help thanks.
thank you!!

jo_u_know

My teacher +my grinds teacher seem pretty sure dat sumtin bout d ENVIROMENT or TECHNOLOGY will cum up!!! Hope sport+drugs dnt cum up!!!

Best of luck2all.

mrs. hamlet

My teacher and grinds teacher and my friend's teacher in another skul all seem certain that something about healthy eating/obesity will come up!

But then everyone was certain terrorism would come up for Irish....

So true about sticking to the point! I'm not too hot at french, didn't learn anything off and used very simple first yearish french and got an A2! Shocked is an understatement! :eek:

Won't be happenin' again tho cuz i really messed up my oral! Ah well!

scorpy

what the hell, 3 pages? that's insane! the longest french 'essay' you have to write is 90 words - barely half a page in my writing. I rarely have problems with the mini-essays. they make me happy ^_^

Con9903

Aye generally I write no more than 10 words more than they ask me to, But no less

BraveheartGal

how could you be writing 3 pages??
the longest is 90 words and the others are 75 words



madness

lauraoaktree

i got grinda all yr in the institute for french and all he kept going on about was how little points ur gonna get if u make everything up urself. he couldnt have gone on anymore about how these prepared general sentences, if u stick them in everywhere, u'll get an A

*Angel*

lauraoaktree wrote:

i got grinda all yr in the institute for french and all he kept going on about was how little points ur gonna get if u make everything up urself. he couldnt have gone on anymore about how these prepared general sentences, if u stick them in everywhere, u'll get an A

Was it Serge? Great teacher!

Joe_duffy

The King wrote:

i was just wonderin if anyone got any good tips for the french written section?did anyone of your teachers seem sure that a certain TOPICAL issue would come up?i know about the journal,letter etc,im more interested in the topical section like drugs,racism etc.cheers

I wouldn't bother tryin to guess what topics are comin up cause they don't really arrange the exam around a general theme/topics anymore....they used to do that but then they just got people learnin essays off by heart. you'd be better learning off phrases for expressing your opinion, what the issues are, what came be done to resolve them etc...

deek

Take a look at the report. They are actually insane about relevance. And they see to hate learnt off general sentances because theyre normally pretty blaringly obvious e.g C'est une question forte difficile a resoudre. The sample answers are on pg49 of her report. Take a look at them and you'll see what I mean.

Oh yeah and it wasnt ME writing the 3 pages I could never get more than 1 out of it.

I cant remember who said obesity there but thats already come up. A mere desesperee talks about how kids wont stop eating.