The French higher paper was a topical paper which covered relevant issues and overall students seemed quite happy with it.
Both reading comprehensions were manageable with the 1st reading comprehension a bit more of a challenge. Students would have had to use the strategies learnt during the year such as manipulating their answers, finding synonyms and demonstrating a good understanding of both texts. A few words like ‘produits perissables/ envisager’ might have caused some students some trouble. In the 2nd reading comprehension, there were a few traps to avoid. Hopefully students realized that in paragraph 1, ‘pétrifiée’ in the question matched =’ peur’ in the text and in the multiple choice question, (Paragraph 3) I hope student did not get not sidetracked by the fact that the word ‘peur’ was in the text and in the options. . But overall students have had lots of practice and there wouldn’t have been many surprises.
For the compulsory questions of the written section, students would have been delighted to have a choice of 2 opinion questions. The 1st one was on environmental issues which would be quite a favorite topic for our students. Again lots of preparation was done on this and the students would have been very confident on this topic. The other opinion question about acting kindly would have required a bit more delving into expressions / topics seen in class to come up with a more personal answer.
The rest of the written paper was really lovely and students in Yeats could have answered any of the questions which were widely prepared throughout the year (drugs, sport to bring peace, tolerance and respect/ The advantage of learning foreign languages and voting (A great opportunity to talk about Brexit and the referedum!)
The ‘Journal Intime’ was about going to a concert, a very open ended context which left the door open to imagination. The e-mail task would have also been quite easy.
The listening comprehension was the task to watch out for however. Whilst well paced and not too fast, it did require the knowledge of very specific vocabulary and expressions.
On the whole, it was a good, relevant paper with some challenges but students who were well prepared and worked regularly all year(s) round would have had no major issues.
