French Revision and Support
The course covers a variety of topics that are grouped into three themes. Assessments are based on content from all three themes. Please see a list of topics below. For more information about the course, please see the specification here. This is a new specification (first exams 2026).
Knowledge Organisers for GCSE French can be found HERE
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Theme 1: People and lifestyle |
Theme 2: Popular culture |
Theme 3: Communication and the world around us |
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Topics: 1) Identity and relationships with others 2) Healthy living and lifestyle 3)Education and work |
Topics: 1) Free-time activities 2) Customs, celebrations and festivals 3) Celebrity culture |
Topics: 1) Travel, tourism and places of interest 2) Media and technology 3) The environment and where people live |
Assessment objectives
The assessment objectives are as follows:
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AO1 |
Understand and respond to spoken language in speaking and writing |
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AO2 |
Understand and respond to written language in speaking and writing |
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AO3 |
Demonstrate understanding and accurate application of grammar and vocabulary |
Exams
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Paper 1: Listening (25%) |
Speaking (25%) |
Reading (25%) |
Writing (25%) |
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What does this cover? Understanding and responding to spoken extracts comprising the defined vocabulary and grammar for each tier, and dictation of short, spoken extracts There are 2 sections: Section A - listening comprehension questions to answer in English |
What does this cover? Speaking in French on a variety of different topics and themes, reading aloud in French and responding to visual stimuli. There are 3 tasks: Role-play |
What does this cover? Understanding and responding to written texts, inferring meaning of words, and translating from French into English. There are 3 sections: Section A - reading comprehension questions to answer in English |
What does this cover? Writing responses in French to a variety of written stimuli, and translating from English into French. The tasks are different for Foundation and Higher. Foundation tier:
Higher tier:
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How should I revise? Listening is a skill built up over time, so try to practise listening to French as much as possible. Little and often is best. The more you are familiar with vocabulary, the better, so revise key vocabulary from each topic area. Make sure you listen to the words too so you are familiar with how they sound. Remember that multi-choice questions in the exam often contain traps, so knowledge of time phrases, tenses, qualifiers, negatives and opinions is important as well as topic based vocab. Using past papers/sample papers is a good way to revise. Listen to the audio and do the question as if you were in the exam. Afterwards, check your answers, look at the transcript and listen again. Can you see where you lost any marks? Look up and note down any tricky vocab. Revise the key phonics sounds that you have in your book. This will be helpful for the dictation part of the listening paper as well as the speaking exam. |
How should I revise? Knowledge of question words is important for the speaking exam, so revise key question words. For the role-play, it is crucial that you understand the bullet points, so look at past role-plays and look up any tricky vocab. Then give yourself 5 minutes preparation time to prepare your answers. Remember, this is the only area where you do not need to expand - just give the required piece of information. Similarly, for the photo card, look at examples from past papers/sample papers. Give yourself 5-6 minutes preparation time to prepare your answers (make notes), then practise saying them aloud. Use the end of unit Q+A sheets that we have done throughout the course to help you. Practice answering the questions from these sheets, gradually reducing your dependance on them until you can answer without looking at your sheets. To help remember your answers, write prompts e.g. key words/words you find tricky/the first letter of each word in a sentence. |
How should I revise? As with the listening paper, the more you are familiar with vocabulary, the better, so revise key vocabulary from each topic area. Remember that multi-choice questions in the exam often contain traps, so knowledge of time phrases, tenses, qualifiers, negatives and opinions is important as well as topic based vocab. Using past papers/sample papers is a good way to revise. Read the text once through, then read the questions. Look at the first question and identify the section of the text where you can find the answer. Re-read that section very carefully - look out for traps (different subjects, tenses, negatives etc.), then answer the question. Remember that you can use context and other words you know both in French and English to help you work out unknown vocabulary and make a sensible guess. Once you have completed a past paper question, check the mark scheme. For questions you got wrong, look back at the text, can you see how to get the correct answer? Can you spot where you went wrong? Look up and note down any tricky vocab. |
How should I revise? It is important to practise writing in French when preparing for the written paper. This can be done in a variety of ways: Use my topic revision/self test sheets to practise writing key verbs and sentences on a variety of topics When writing, it is important that you are using a variety of tenses and that verb forms are accurate, so revise key verbs as well as appropriate time phrases. Your Burglar Bill sheet can help with this. You will need to express and justify opinions on all topic areas, so revise opinions vocabulary as well as ways you can uplevel your writing by introducing your opinions. To access the higher grades you will need to ensure you use a variety of structures and some ‘wow’ expressions - use your Burglar Bill/work from class to create your own bank of these that you can use from topic to topic. Make sure that you know some key vocabulary/sentence starters to describe a photo - use your describing a photo help sheet. Remember, you can show me any past paper writing questions you do as part of your revision and I will give you feedback. |
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Resources and useful links
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Resources and useful links
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Resources and useful links
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Resources and useful links
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General links:
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