subject

French

About

Assessment Requirements

The syllabus for GCSE French builds upon knowledge acquired during Years 7, 8 and 9, extending students’ knowledge of the French language and allowing them to develop their communicative skills across a range of relevant and pertinent topics.

The GCSE is comprised of four papers, each contributing 25% towards the student’s final grade.  These papers assess students’ ability to read, write, listen and speak in the target language.  Throughout the two years of study, students are frequently given opportunities to assess and extend their knowledge in each of the four skills areas.

Course Outline

GCSE French students will cover the following three themes:

1.        Identity and Culture;

2.      Local, national, international and global areas of interest; and

3.      Current and future study and employment

Content

 Each theme consists of several sub-topics and students are supported throughout the GCSE course to develop their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills with regards to each theme and sub-topic.  This support is tailored to suit the individual student where possible and may involve:

 ·         Identifying and developing strategies to boost vocabulary acquisition;

·         Practising writing in order to communicate to different audiences and in different contexts;
·         Using online resources to research and understand grammatical constructs and tenses;
·         Developing skills in order to communicate with greater spontaneity and linguistic agility;
·         Initiating and extending conversations and discussions in French; and Deepening students’ understanding of French and Francophone cultures.

Staff

Expectations

It is a key expectation that students taking GCSE French are interested in communicating in the language and are willing to do so.  In addition, they should be prepared to communicate with relative spontaneity.

 Acquiring vocabulary is also essential to success at GCSE French.  This not only means learning and revising vocabulary frequently, but also recording it in the context of a sentence.

 In addition, the GCSE requires students to have a basic understanding and awareness of French culture and the culture in other, French-speaking countries. 

 Student’s ability in each of these areas is routinely supported and developed through practice tasks in class and through students participating actively in all lessons.

Career Opportunities

Studying any modern foreign language offers an array of exciting, future employment opportunities.  Regardless of the industry into which they enter, many language graduates earn between 5%-20% more than colleagues simply due to the fact that they have learned and acquired a language. 

Universities and college value linguists.  Many academic courses require students to study, or to have studied, a modern foreign language.  Consequently, GCSE French allows you to keep your future options open and can even make you even more desirable to academic institutions or employers.  For example, it is impossible to study medicine at most London medical schools without having first studied a modern foreign language to at least GCSE level.

Moreover, and regardless of students’ career ambitions, they will be competing in a global marketplace against other young people, many of whom will speak English and their own language. 

Locally, studying a language opens door in the following industry sectors:

 ·         Banking and Financial Services;
·         Advertising and Marketing;
·         Legal and Para-legal work; and Military and defence.

Extra-curricular activities relevant to this subject:

A visit to France may be organised for the end of the year if enough pupils want to take part in it.