Hey Guys and Girls,
I am currently in Year 11 heading over to the infamous Year 12. I am undertaking French next year and although this forum is not very active, I was hoping someone would be able to shed some light and offer me advice and assistance as I am in hope of scoring a Raw 43+, It would be much appreciated.
1) Being a Francophone (bearing in mind I migrated when I was 4), I have never taken French too seriously but I do have relatively good listening and Oral skills but my Grammar drags these down alongside with writing. Anyone have any tips on how to master French Grammar easily for application? I am sure I am able to pick it up easily.
2) What should I be doing over the holidays and throughout the Year as LOTE subjects really lack clarity and do not have a set study design.
3) What writings should I be doing etc.
4) How should I prepare for SAC's and Exams?
5) Any Oral tips and must dos to increase marks
6) Any good sites for Resources etc.
Thank you 
Hey Maultima!
It's so great to see you setting goals for yourself and really starting to get ready for French next year! Great mindset!
1. With grammar, if it's mostly the case that you know it but you've just forgotten, I'd suggest starting from page 13 of the new study design @
https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/french/FrenchSD_2019.pdf and going through each grammar feature (all the past tenses, sentence types, etc) and making a checklist of which ones you're confident using and which ones you need to learn.
Then, every 2 days for example, take out 20 mins to learn a new grammar feature whether that be going through the Schaum's grammar book and for example studying about how to conjugate in the conditional perfect tense, if that's new for you. Or, these grammar sessions can be as simple as watching a youtube video on any French grammar feature! The grammar section really helps in the study design and once you've mastered each grammar feature (or you sorta know how it is used --- remember, you won't necessarily use each and every grammar feature in your exam, but you stand out, when you have advanced grammar features like the past tenses, y pronoun, reflexive in the past, subjunctive in the present and past).
Once you've learnt a grammar feature, put a phrase using that in a sentence so you can remember that sentence.
For example if you're revising the conditional perfect, this could be a really simple sentence you'll remember for how to conjugate it: Je serais venu
It can be as simple as that, and this sentence could potentially go into a piece of personal writing! This is a good way to make sure new grammar sticks in your brain but also make sure you revisit new things even for 5 mins during the day.
2. The new study design is actually so much better than the last one, in its appearance, organisation, etc and setting out some suggestions of what could come under each topic tested in the different aos. I really recommend reading every word of it in the holidays! But apart from that, over the holidays, what's gonna be useful is you revising the features of every text type. For example, pay attention to the fact that both sender's and receiver's addresses need to be written on a formal letter ; how an article needs to have a big heading and then 2-3 summary lines, etc. So many people's letters or whatever may be extremely well written with little grammar mistakes, but then they forget these 'structural elements' and could lose marks when it comes to that 'appropriateness to the text type' criteria (outlined in the study design). Secondly, during holidays and throughout the year, apart from regularly watching french short films, movies, listening to songs, reading the news, etc, I'd really recommend doing little translation exercises.
This helped me tremendously during the year, especially for reading and writing. So, you go on any English news website, pick an article and pick a paragraph to translate into French! Use your dictionary to translate complicated English words into French, and when it comes to the grammar, really think in your brain how to formulate that sentence or how you can use grammar features that are new to you (it's so tempting to just copy paste a few sentences into google translate or collins translator or whatever, but really give your brain a challenge when you're thinking about grammar when translating from English to French). I've said news articles, but really you can work with anything. If you want to practice creative writing in French, then open up an English short story and start translating! (short stories are great to practice reflexives!) And obviously, this translation exercise can go either way. So open up a French news article, short story, report, speech, etc and translate a small paragraph into English or at least paraphrase it in your mind. This helped me heaps with challenging myself to think about grammar, the tenses especially, and also, I didn't get bored reading, because I'd select different genres of texts every time!
Another thing you could do during the holidays is, come up with 3 idiomatic phrases for each text type. For example, "Tant va la cruche à l'eau qu'à la fin elle se casse" (basically means Enough is enough!) could go into a speech that involves some collectivist action or something. A really simple one such as "La cerise sur le gâteau" could easily go into a letter when you're describing your positive emotions, for example. These idiomatic phrases really help you stand out and lets the assessor know that you're really thinking about 'cultural elements' (in the criteria), when you use these. As I said, the 3 best ones for every text type that you think you'll write, should be enough and try memorising them as much as possible!
Also, during the holidays, think about what topic you would like to do as your detailed study! Make sure there's a strong cultural connection to French society and/or social problems. For example, development of French fashion, the French cuisine (a really popular one!), or think of something unique and get it checked from your teacher next year. If you're really hyped up about detailed study, you could even start collecting 3 'texts' (for example a movie, an article or a big image) which you'll consult to help you prove your detailed study question. I found these 3 texts during the holidays and this helped me tremendously to stay organised and reduce my time during the year (especially time during Term 3 when it gets the busiest with SACs and exam prep for other subjects too). But this detailed study thing isn't an absolute necessary thing to do, so don't freak out if you don't have an idea before school starts. Still plenty of time
3. With writing, I would look at the list of text types that can be assessed in each aos, and practice writing in one of the text types every week. Hopefully writing 250-300 words throughout the whole week shouldn't be too hard. For example, one week, you might practice writing an informal letter, the next week an article, etc. As you change between text types, you'll very clearly, notice the differences in your grammar features. For example, an article would have heaps of formal grammar like using the passive, and definitely not any colloquialisms like quoi de neuf? which would go perfectly in an informal letter, on the other hand. Things like this help you memorise useful grammar phrases as well!
Also, if you decide to do any writing SAC (or actually any SAC) under timed conditions, make sure you leave at least 5 mins for proofreading at the end, so you can hopefully pick up any conjugation, agreement errors. make a small checklist of these errors as well and write them in a small diary, like I carried a really really small cute diary with me full of French useful phrases, verbs, and my errors, with me everywhere I went haha!
4. Do practice SACs under timed conditions, as you get closer to your SACs. With exams, it's great when you have the time to do full on practice exams under the 2 hours (and you should be doing at least 2 of these), but if you don't have time to do the complete exam, you can just do individual sections of it under timed conditions, for example, make sure you can finish the reading section both eng and fre in 40 mins for example, or make sure you can finish your writing in 50 mins, etc. When you're preparing, I recommend making a list of useful vocabulary relating to that theme you're studying. For example when we studied immigration and cultural diversity, I had a vocab list relating to this and then I'd review it every few days. This sort of thing especially helps for a listening SAC, because when you have a variety of good vocab, then there's a higher chance you can detect complex words in the recording
5. When you're practicing for an oral SAC, make sure you can pronounce your words correctly and for this I recommend using google translate to type in any word which you're ensure how to pronounce, and then clicking the sound icon on google translate to hear its pronunciation. As you hear different sounds, you'll notice how certain combination of vowel sounds are pronounced, etc. Be alive to these! For example, look at where the nasal is used and where it isn't. The assessor is really impressed when you pay fine attention to your pronunciation!
Another really big thing is, please try and practice staying 'free' when you speak. Although you might have memorised an answer, make it seem that you're saying it as if you're not prepared! Really make sure your facial expressions are switched on haha! Because I've seen so many people just not looking at the assessor, not using their facial features and instead looking around the room, because they're trying to recall what they've memorised. The conversation just doesn't seem 'real' if you know what I mean? So be natural and switched on in terms of your communication strategies - eye contact, vary your tone a little big, raise your voice here and there, speak softly, etc)
In the oral exam, having 3 si clauses (with different tenses) can make you stand out, because the assessor knows that this person can use si clauses not just in writing!
6. There are absolutely amazing websites on AN, like these:
https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=172648.0 -- amazing guide for every skill written by Kate
https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=136390.0 -- huge and amazing list of resources both online and suggested textbooks
Additionally, search up small articles, short stories, podcasts, videos, you name it in French! Keep practicing listening, reading and speaking amongst people in your class or to your teachers!
Sorry for the long post, but I hope some of these things help!
Good luck!! and make sure you enjoy some free time in the holidays too! Don't study all the time!
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