Elective Name: French (100 hours)
Continued from Year 9 or picked up in Year 10?: Continued from Year 9
Workload: Fairly demanding as it is a languages course.
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
- Oral test
- In class reading, listening and writing exam
- English and French presentation of a selected area in France
* I cannot remember the weighting for each assignment I'm afraid.
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
Structure obviously differs for each school as each French teacher had their own way of teaching and testing the subject. I found the reading and writing parts of the exam quite easy as we had a slight idea on what was going to be involved from the exam notification. However, the listening part was particularly difficult, not only because of the stereo we had to listen from, but it was especially different hearing French from native speakers compared to listening to your teacher and classmates in class.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
Quoi De Neuf 2 (textbook and activity book)
Recommended Other Resources:Language Perfect got me through French both from Year 8 til I completed it in Year 10. It was a great online game that allowed you to memorise certain phrases and forced you to repeat every question til you got them right! You also got to compete with other people in your class, gain points and earn rewards which was also a great motivation to go on the site.
Year of Completion: 2015
Rating: 4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade:~83% average, third in class
Comments:French is truly a beautiful and wonderful language to learn and a part of me wished that I had continued it during my senior studies. The subject definitely allowed me to appreciate a different culture than my own. The activities in class were certainly interactive which I credit my teacher who made them engaging. Though to really get into the nitty gritty of learning a language, you obviously need to practice it daily. I found that this derailed my performance in my other subjects, hence influencing my decision to drop the subject at the end of Year 10. However, it's definitely a skill worth knowing as our world is slowly growing each and every day!