Prelim Revision 24-25

How to approach the reading:

• Read over text carefully before attempting to answer questions.

• Read all questions carefully to ensure you understand what is being asked of you.  Who/what/why/when where etc  are commonly misread in exams and basic errors can lose you valuable marks.

• Make sure you check how many marks each question is worth AND write enough information in your answer in order to get them!

• Make sure you answer each question correctly – i.e. that you haven’t written the answer to the next question in the previous one etc.

• Identify KEY word in both text and questions.

• Do not waste time looking up every word in the dictionary.

• Don’t assume you know what all words mean – it is ALWAYS better to check!  Remember your FAUX AMIS!!!!  (Words which look like English words but mean something entirely different)

• Use skimming and scanning techniques to locate essential information in texts. 

• Don’t sit stuck at one question – move on!!  You can always go back to it if you have time.

• And finally – if in doubt, make an educated guess – you might just be correct! 

How to approach the translation:

• Double space your work

• Leave at least 10/15 minutes to do the translation – it’s worth HALF of what the Reading is worth so make sure you leave enough time to do it

• Do the Translation AFTER fully attempting all comprehension questions. 

• Re-read the Translation several times before writing ANYTHING

• Highlight verbs and note what tense each word is in and what it means

• Tick each word as you put it into English, to ensure you haven’t missed any out. Remember, if it doesn’t seem to make sense or be related to the topic, you need to check if any words have more than one translation in the dictionary.

• Once you have finished your first, quite literal translation, re-read what is written, it probably won’t sound like natural English. In the blank line, re-write a corrected, natural version that doesn’t change the meaning of the original

• Check your translation sounds like natural English – if not you will lose marks

How to approach the listening:

• You will hear the audio 2 times with an interval of 1 minute between each playing

• Before the audio begins you have a minute to study the questions, you should spend this time highlighting keywords and if you happen to know any of the keywords in French you could write them above the English

• Once the audio begins you should write everything you hear down on the margin of your paper (this is the far left hand side of the page), do not worry about writing an answer for each question at this point

• Once the first audio has finished you should begin picking through what you've written to see what is useful

• Repeat this until the last playing, remember to cross anything out that you don't want the marker to see!

• Do not leave a blank! You may gain a mark for an educated guess but you will gain nothing from a blank!

How to approach the directed writing:

• It's a good idea to have certain bullet points learned off by heart (where you went/how long for/who with for an introduction + whether you would recommend a trip for a conculsion)

• If you don't have a good grasp of grammar you can't succeed! Revise your tenses, a directed writing should all be written in past or conditional tense. Make sure you have a good knowledge of the perfect and imperfect tense and when to use them

• Double space this and make sure to take a new paragraph per bullet, if you only write in one long paragraph you can only get 4 marks!

• You should attempt this before your reading paper, allocated about 20-30 minutes to it and then move on, you can come back if you have time left over