I have blogged before about the mnemonic CROISSANT. It is a simple tool to remember what to include in your answers to the longer writing questions:

C: Connectives

R: Reasons

O: Opinions

I: Intensifiers

S S: Sophisticated structures/subordinate clauses

A: Adverbs

N: Negative phrases

T: Tenses

This post is going to concentrate on opinions, which are relevant for the 80-90 and 130-150 question (Edexcel and IGCSE) and the 90 and 150 word questions for the AQA specification. Your bullet points might specifically ask you to give an opinion, but I find that giving opinions for any topic can be a good way to reach the word count if you are struggling for ideas.

You will gain marks for using synonyms. On a basic level, this means that rather than use ‘J’aime’ and ‘Je n’aime pas’, try to use ‘Je préfère’, ‘J’apprécie, ‘Je me passionne pour’ (I am passionate about), or ‘Je ne supporte pas’ (I can’t stand).

You can also improve opinions by introducing your sentence with an opinion phrase. Examples of opinion phrases are ’Je crois que’ (I believe that) ‘Selon moi’ (According to me), ‘Je trouve que’ (I find that) or ‘Je trouve ça’ + adjective (I find that + adjective).

There are also opinion phrases that pull more weight because they show off different tenses or complex structures. Infinitive structures like ‘Je dois admettre que’ (I must admit that), ‘Je préfère aller’ (I prefer going), or ‘il est important de’ + verb (it is important to + verb) can help boost your mark for variety of structures. You can see my short video about how to use infinitives here:

The criteria for using time three different time frames and accuracy in tense formations can also be fulfilled by using opinions. ‘Si j’avais le choix, je voudrais’ + infinitive (If I had the choice, I would like + infinitive) includes verbs in the imperfect and conditional tenses. ‘Si j’avais su, J’aurais choisi de’ + infinitive (If I had known, I would have chosen to + infinitive) ticks the boxes for pluperfect tense and the past conditional, even more impressive because you are not expected to use these tenses at GCSE level.

If you have any questions, please comment below 😊