There is no magic formula for answering questions such as “How do I get a Grade 9 in French?” or “How can I improve my mock result by two grades?” However, there are some key things I regularly encourage my students to focus on to make sure they are meeting the criteria for the highest grade bands.
In this blog post, I’ll give you a brief overview of some of the techniques I teach in my one-to-one and group lessons. These are also skills I focus on in the exam-skills Masterclasses I run during the school holidays, particularly in the run-up to mocks and the final exams.
First impressions count
When an examiner marks your speaking or writing, it is important to make your knowledge as easy as possible to identify. Unlike reading and listening questions, where answers are often simply right or wrong, speaking and writing are marked against a range of criteria.
Examiners are looking carefully at what you can do with the language, and they want to award you marks for the skills you demonstrate. So your job is to show them what you know as clearly as possible.
Examiners are diligent, but they are also human. Don’t make them hunt through your answer to find your best language! If you have a complex structure, an impressive opinion or some ambitious vocabulary, make sure you use it clearly and confidently.
In particular, I encourage my students to put some of their strongest language early in their answer. The examiner needs to get a clear impression of your level from the outset, so first impressions really do count.
Develop your answers
One of the things that can hold back an otherwise strong student is a lack of developed answers.
Of course, you should vary the length of your sentences, but you should aim to include several well-developed answers containing three clauses – in other words, three linked pieces of information, each built around a verb.
A simple way to achieve this is:
Opinion + fact + justification
or
Statement + opinion + justification
For example:
Je dirais que je mange sainement car j’adore la salade.
This is much stronger than simply saying:
Je mange sainement.
The second sentence communicates an idea, but the first develops it by adding an opinion and a reason.
Add complexity
The word complexity can sound rather intimidating, but it doesn’t necessarily mean using extremely difficult grammar.
I encourage students to think of complexity as anything that goes beyond the simplest way of expressing an idea.
For example, instead of:
J’adore la salade.
you could write:
Je dirais que je mange sainement car je suis accro à la salade.
Here, je dirais que and je suis accro à make the language more interesting and sophisticated without requiring a complicated grammatical structure.
Complexity can come from a range of things: an interesting sentence starter, a less predictable opinion, a more precise verb, an unusual adjective or adverb, a sophisticated connective, or a more ambitious grammatical structure.
For example, choosing captivant instead of amusant shows that you can select vocabulary more precisely rather than relying on the most familiar word you know.
The key message
Getting into the top grade bands isn’t about trying to make every sentence complicated or cramming as many impressive words as possible into your answer. It is about showing a range of language accurately and naturally, while developing your ideas and making the examiner’s job as easy as possible.
So, when preparing for your next French speaking or writing exam, don’t just ask yourself “What do I need to say?” Ask yourself:
Have I developed my ideas?
Have I included some language that goes beyond the obvious?
Am I showing the examiner what I can really do?
These small changes can make a significant difference to the quality of an exam answer. And, importantly, they are skills that can be practised and improved – you don’t have to wait until the exam to discover whether you can do them!
This is exactly the kind of exam technique I work on with my students throughout the year, helping them to move beyond simply knowing French and towards using the language in a way that demonstrates their full potential.