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Author Topic: 50 in French - ask me anything  (Read 33333 times)  Share 

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bingoman

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50 in French - ask me anything
« on: December 25, 2016, 07:30:33 pm »
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Hi all,

My name is Anand Bharadwaj and I am a Year 10 student at Trinity Grammar School. This year, I was fortunate enough to receive a perfect study score of 50 in VCE Biology and French. If any of you are interested, I am happy to share any tips that helped me achieve a strong result in French and answer any questions you may have about my study methods, the resources I used, or anything else in general about my VCE journey.

clarke54321

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #1 on: December 25, 2016, 08:10:32 pm »
+1
Hi all,

My name is Anand Bharadwaj and I am a Year 10 student at Trinity Grammar School. This year, I was fortunate enough to receive a perfect study score of 50 in VCE Biology and French. If any of you are interested, I am happy to share any tips that helped me achieve a strong result in French and answer any questions you may have about my study methods, the resources I used, or anything else in general about my VCE journey.

Hi Anand,

Congratulations on those remarkable study scores!  :D

While I will be completing German 3/4 next year, I just wanted to ask you some questions in relation to language learning.

1) Did you study French every day in some form (ie. listen to a podcast, read a book or write)?

2) When alone (with no others to practice with), how did you improve your spoken French?

Thanks very much!  :)
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bingoman

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #2 on: December 25, 2016, 08:36:11 pm »
+10
Studying French daily definitely helped me improve my skills, and I used a wide variety of French books and movies to fine-tune my reading and listening abilities. I also often listened to the SBS news channel for French, which albeit challenging to understand at first, was also extremely useful in allowing me to improve my skills. The second question is an interesting one...I guess I spent the majority of my oral preparation time on actually writing out the content of my general conversation and detailed study and almost rehearsing it mentally and committing the key ideas to memory (spontaneity is key in the real exam, so I wouldn't recommend trying to memorise word for word, it's a waste of time and can easily be detected by the assessors). The big thing in the oral is to map out a path that you want the discussion to take (e.g. family -> relationships -> personal interests -> something specific about the interest -> work -> aspirations for the future) and moulding your responses to fit this path. I'm sure that a similar approach would work well for 3/4 German. Furthermore, I spent a lot of time working on my detailed study and tried to extend myself with a broad set of books, films and articles beyond the set three resources, which was something that permitted me to deepen my understanding and be prepared for virtually any possible question on my topic. Also, I would encourage you to seek out your teachers outside class time for additional oral practice - I found my French teachers extremely supportive and knowledgeable on all aspects of the exam, and they were vital in helping me understand the styles of questions to expect and in allowing me to understand how the assessors craft their questions and set up the discussion in an exam setting. Doing these types of practice exams will make the real oral seem much more manageable...I honestly ended up enjoying mine a lot and found it an opportunity to engage in a real discussion.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask me.
All the best for next year :)

clarke54321

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #3 on: December 25, 2016, 08:42:13 pm »
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Thanks very much for the response!  :)
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bingoman

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #4 on: December 25, 2016, 10:36:32 pm »
+5
Hi excelsiorxlcr, I just submitted my statement of marks request, and it will probably arrive sometime next week, so I'll be happy to let you know my scores then (I'm interested to find out myself). As for learning vocab effectively, I would highly recommend the superb book Mot à Mot by Paul Humberstone. It has vocabulary arranged in structured categories, facilitating easy and productive learning. Furthermore, I was preparing for the SAT French exam midway through the year, so I ended up buying two reference books - the Barron's Revision Guide and the Princeton Review Revision Book, both of which contained a large volume of common vocabulary arranged by topic. In the SAT exam, you are not allowed a dictionary, so that really placed the onus on me to learn the requisite vocabulary to a high level of perfection. In the end, I ended up learning 30-40 new words each day, but of course the amount of vocab that I learnt varied on a daily basis. In the end, doing these one-percenters in learning vocab was paramount to my ultimate success, as the speed with which I could complete reading and listening exercises increased over time, allowing me to complete the exam with minimal dictionary use. On the contrary, having the dictionary was still useful, and I recommend checking it when somewhat doubtful...it's not worth it to lose careless marks when just 50 % certain about a particular word or phrase. Another excellent book that I used was called "Street French - A Guide to Idioms". This had some awesome idiomatic phrases that enriched the content of both my speech and writing, but once again, I would advise restraint...too many idioms, or misused idioms can make you sound either pretentious or incompetent. So in many ways, my practice was focused on achieving a good balance between these different aspects of my writing and speaking.

As for listening, the key is to make effective notes. This year's listening was of a high difficulty in my opinion, and with a lot of content to copy down, I really needed to make notes at high speed. I personally chose to make my notes in French the whole way through...this was much easier for my mind to process without delays in thinking. You should also develop your own abbreviations for high-frequency long words over the course of the year...this really speeds up transferring information as well. For reading, once again, I thought this year's exam was challenging, with a fair few curveballs. The first section is basically translation in my opinion. Just translate the content accurately, and base your answers on this. The second part was a bit more challenging this year...you needed to write a rebuttal to a particular set of arguments, and it required more thought. I recommend learning a wide range of connective phrases and general vocabulary - so that you can form a wide range of sentence structures to impress the assessors. Learning to summarise, reword and synthesise the main argument of content in French, and makeing sure your grammar and vocab are up to speed will allow you to achieve success on this section of the exam.

All the best with everything and let me know if you need any other advice.


exit

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #5 on: December 26, 2016, 07:46:37 pm »
0
Wow your French teachers are awesome. My German teacher would have no idea about any of these exam strategies.

What is the best way to study for maths and content-heavy subjects?

How do you minimise exam errors in the most efficient way possible?

What English subject are you doing and how do you plan to approach it?

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dux99.95

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #6 on: December 26, 2016, 09:50:31 pm »
+1
Hey!!

Congrats on your amazing marks :) Best of luck for your subjects next year!!

My questions:

(I'm doing HSC though not VCE) what was your in depth study for the oral? Not sure if you have this in VCE.

"The big thing in the oral is to map out a path that you want the discussion to take (e.g. family -> relationships -> personal interests -> something specific about the interest -> work -> aspirations for the future) and moulding your responses to fit this path."
Did you map out this route in your head DURING the oral test? OR did you have it planned before. Could you give an answer to this also? And what if the oral examiner asked for relationships not family in the beginning. How would you mould it out then? Also what are the benefits of mapping the path out - after all, isn't it the examiner whose going to map it out by their QUESTIONS?

Thank you!

qazser

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #7 on: December 26, 2016, 09:50:54 pm »
0
Is this the Anand Bharadwaj, the scrabble god?

Edit: 50 Bio as well, Thushan?

@exit, his english score should be very high
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dux99.95

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #8 on: December 26, 2016, 10:07:53 pm »
+1
1)   Did you study French every day in some form (ie. listen to a podcast, read a book or write)?
Studying French daily definitely helped me improve my skills, and I used a wide variety of French books and movies to fine-tune my reading and listening abilities. I also often listened to the SBS news channel for French, which albeit challenging to understand at first, was also extremely useful in allowing me to improve my skills.

2) When alone (with no others to practice with), how did you improve your spoken French?
The second question is an interesting one...I guess I spent the majority of my oral preparation time on actually writing out the content of my general conversation and detailed study and almost rehearsing it mentally and committing the key ideas to memory (spontaneity is key in the real exam, so I wouldn't recommend trying to memorise word for word, it's a waste of time and can easily be detected by the assessors). The big thing in the oral is to map out a path that you want the discussion to take (e.g. family -> relationships -> personal interests -> something specific about the interest -> work -> aspirations for the future) and moulding your responses to fit this path. I'm sure that a similar approach would work well for 3/4 German. Furthermore, I spent a lot of time working on my detailed study and tried to extend myself with a broad set of books, films and articles beyond the set three resources, which was something that permitted me to deepen my understanding and be prepared for virtually any possible question on my topic. Also, I would encourage you to seek out your teachers outside class time for additional oral practice - I found my French teachers extremely supportive and knowledgeable on all aspects of the exam, and they were vital in helping me understand the styles of questions to expect and in allowing me to understand how the assessors craft their questions and set up the discussion in an exam setting. Doing these types of practice exams will make the real oral seem much more manageable...I honestly ended up enjoying mine a lot and found it an opportunity to engage in a real discussion.
 
3)   Also, how much vocab did you learn per day, and how did you go about learning vocab in the most efficient way possible? I have looked at the 3/4 exam reading texts and the vocab seems really random, so I am just worried about how I am going to be able to understand the texts without using the dictionary a lot.

As for learning vocab effectively, I would highly recommend the superb book Mot à Mot by Paul Humberstone. It has vocabulary arranged in structured categories, facilitating easy and productive learning. Furthermore, I was preparing for the SAT French exam midway through the year, so I ended up buying two reference books - the Barron's Revision Guide and the Princeton Review Revision Book, both of which contained a large volume of common vocabulary arranged by topic. In the SAT exam, you are not allowed a dictionary, so that really placed the onus on me to learn the requisite vocabulary to a high level of perfection. In the end, I ended up learning 30-40 new words each day, but of course the amount of vocab that I learnt varied on a daily basis. In the end, doing these one-percenters in learning vocab was paramount to my ultimate success, as the speed with which I could complete reading and listening exercises increased over time, allowing me to complete the exam with minimal dictionary use. On the contrary, having the dictionary was still useful, and I recommend checking it when somewhat doubtful...it's not worth it to lose careless marks when just 50 % certain about a particular word or phrase. Another excellent book that I used was called "Street French - A Guide to Idioms". This had some awesome idiomatic phrases that enriched the content of both my speech and writing, but once again, I would advise restraint...too many idioms, or misused idioms can make you sound either pretentious or incompetent. So in many ways, my practice was focused on achieving a good balance between these different aspects of my writing and speaking.

4)   Also, do you have any top tips for reading and listening? And what language would you note take in for each section of the listening?

As for listening, the key is to make effective notes. This year's listening was of a high difficulty in my opinion, and with a lot of content to copy down, I really needed to make notes at high speed. I personally chose to make my notes in French the whole way through...this was much easier for my mind to process without delays in thinking. You should also develop your own abbreviations for high-frequency long words over the course of the year...this really speeds up transferring information as well. For reading, once again, I thought this year's exam was challenging, with a fair few curveballs. The first section is basically translation in my opinion. Just translate the content accurately, and base your answers on this. The second part was a bit more challenging this year...you needed to write a rebuttal to a particular set of arguments, and it required more thought. I recommend learning a wide range of connective phrases and general vocabulary - so that you can form a wide range of sentence structures to impress the assessors. Learning to summarise, reword and synthesise the main argument of content in French, and makeing sure your grammar and vocab are up to speed will allow you to achieve success on this section of the exam.



Heres a list of his questions and answers so far
Sort of an answer wiki
Feel free to copy+paste and then add on

bingoman

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #9 on: December 27, 2016, 11:02:56 pm »
+4
In response to excelsior's second question, I'll say a bit about my oral experience. From memory, the first question was: "Describe your family life." This question seemed similar to "Parlez-nous un peu de votre famille," but with a few different nuances, so I spoke a little about my family coming to Australia from India and the cultural changes that this entailed  this seemed like a good way to integrate the notion of "family life." Equally, I talked about relationships with family (I had explored this in practising with sample questions like "Avec qui vous entendez-vous le mieux"), and about my personal values. Following this, I talked about the things I do with family and friends as social activities  e.g. listening to music, watching movies, going to restaurants, and then finally, I tried to setup an ideal transition with the topic of "board games." While at first, they seemed a little surprised, I moved on to my personal journey as a top Scrabble player in Australia and the international scene, and shared a little about my experience at the World Championships. This then gave me ample opportunity to expand on how my passion for Scrabble has supplemented my interest in a range of other fields, such as maths, English, linguistics, computer programming, etc...Finally, I went on to discuss how I used my passion for Scrabble to support a charitable cause - by playing a series of opponents simultaneously, and receiving sponsorship based on the number of games that I won. I spoke a little on the nature of this cause - it's affiliated with UNICEF, and not only did that give me a chance to build my "story," but it also permitted me to use a lot of vocabulary on humanitarian aid - e.g. analphabet, sans-abri, primordial de renvoyer l'ascenseur à ceux qui sont moins privilégiés que moi et ma famille, etc...It was here that I received a real curve ball - the question: Do you plan to integrate your humanitarian interests with your passion for languages and cultures, in particular the connection you have to your Indian heritage? This was tricky...but I would say that the key to handling hard questions is to think on your feet. What I said was that while I haven't volunteered in India yet, I know that working to unite cultures is a key part of my vision, and in the future, I would perhaps like to advocate for the education of disadvantaged children and the empowerment of women in India, which are two causes that I am genuinely very passionate about.

A similar principle to answering questions applies to something like "What would you do if you were principal of your school." The key is to not panic and not hesitate. If you've got to the point that they are asking you challenging questions, you know that you've done well so far. Think about what you might want to improve within your school. Perhaps bringing year levels together, setting up support groups, encouraging greater participation in co-curricular activities. Anything would work...the key is to use the vocabulary that you have in a meaningful way to craft a creative answer. Even for mundane questions, try to appear spontaneous. Don't reply with monosyllabic answers, but still, remain natural. The key is to impress the assessor at this early stage, so what you should do is map an escape route. If say, the assessors ask you: "Do you have any pets?" and you don't have any, don't just say "non." Reply with something like "No, I find that it is a challenge to balance my studies and the tasks required for looking after a pet. I find that while having a pet would be wonderful, my interactions with friends and family more than make up for this." I can't emphasise enough that thinking creatively and clearly is the key. Treat the oral as a friendly discussion, and you'll find yourself giving innovative answers that will garner high marks, while at the same time enjoying yourself.

bingoman

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #10 on: December 27, 2016, 11:13:11 pm »
+1
A reply to Exit's question:
As for studying for maths subjects, I think the key is regular practice and learning from your mistakes. Both understanding and consistency are key. Learn to write thorough and accurate proofs for your assertions, but at the same time, learn to write in a concise and effective manner - there's no point writing essays, but you do need to write enough to earn the requisite marks. What I learnt over time was the importance of reading questions carefully, highlighting key terms, and thinking logically about the steps of a question in the goal of avoiding silly errors. While this is definitely not foolproof, at least you will be more aware of what you are writing in the exam room and will be able to identify any logical flaws or "careless slips." Nonetheless, I still maintain that "practice makes perfect," and that calmness and a clear head under pressure will hold you in good stead to answer the questions with maximum accuracy and speed.
I'm studying Literature next year, and I think it's a wonderful subject, that allows a great deal of creativity, spontaneity and an ability to really appreciate and imbibe the meaning of a work of literature. Literature doesn't allow you to prepare in advance much; instead, you've got to be able to craft cogent pieces from a series of extracts (although I think the tasks are changing next year), and I find the task enjoyable and challenging. I think the key will be to read the texts and a wide range of critical articles from academic journals and other sources, reflect critically on a range of viewpoints, and use these sources to form my own view of what the texts are suggesting and what they mean to me. From here, I'll definitely be doing my best to write detailed, thoughtful and original pieces and hope that this preparation will result in a strong result in the subject.

bingoman

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #11 on: December 27, 2016, 11:27:17 pm »
+1
To saloni 99.95: Thanks for your good wishes, I'm definitely excited for next year :)
There are lots of similarities between the HSC and VCE courses and I used HSC papers extensively to prepare for the end-of-year exam. My detailed study was a French political scandal called the Dreyfus Affair - it was the case of a Jewish officer in the French army being wrongly accused of treason against the Army, a truly fascinating study of anti-Semitism in France and the conflicts, racial prejudice and controversies that took place in a seemingly "serene" period of French history - la Belle Epoque (a period that honestly was anything but 'belle').

As for the notion of a 'path,' this was definitely not something that I just thought of on the spot, but something that I had thought about, evaluated and discussed with my teachers, friends and family before using in the exam. One thing that a lot of people don't mention about the oral is that it's in your control for a lot of the time. YOU need to manipulate the discussion, and mould it to suit an appropriate direction. YOUR answers dictate the flow of the discussion. Check out the answer I gave to excelsior for more information. If I gave an answer about the pets question about difficulty of managing VCE/HSC and caring for a pet, I've steered the discussion to the topic of VCE and the challenges of Year 12. I can now talk about the subjects that I have chosen (this is probably what they are going to ask you next, or if not, you can just mention it. Follow on from your previous point by saying, "puisque/car/à cause du fait que j'ai choisi un ensemble de matières difficiles, cette année a été un défi pour moi." These types of "escape routes" are your roads through the maze/path that I have described. The oral is ultimately a discussion, not an interview. Your responses will pave the way for the conversation itself. In those seven minutes, you need to seize control, and say what you want to say, to share your personal story and more importantly, share your knowledge and skill in French. If you feel that you're wasting time, get out of this point in the path. These "get out of jail cards" will quickly get you back on track, and you will be in good shape to do brilliantly in the remainder of the discussion. Of course, there will be hiccups along the way. No discussion can be "mapped out" beforehand fully. But if you visualise the links through your path, and use them to your advantage, I'm sure that you will be able to discuss what you are passionate about (and most confident about).

All the best for next year...I'm sure you'll do brilliantly :D

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #12 on: December 28, 2016, 04:00:47 pm »
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Congrats! Would you say you are now fluent in French?
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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #13 on: December 28, 2016, 08:56:28 pm »
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Congrats on your amazing study score :)

How much time did you spend studying French? How many hours a day/week?

Thanks
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bingoman

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Re: 50 in French - ask me anything
« Reply #14 on: December 29, 2016, 11:32:08 am »
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Thanks Orson :) I'd probably say that I'm close to fluent now, but of course there's still a lot to learn in the language.