The background essay can be difficult because of the freedom that you’re given to do whatever you want, but that also provides scope for originality and excellence, even.

I wrote on French cinema and the government subsidies provided to it, and found it very hard. By the end I had actually lost interest in my topic – I hope the same happens to you.

The French Revolution sounds like a great area, though yes you would need to narrow it down a bit. If I remember correctly, the background essay is quite short so the topic should be quite tightly focused. I don’t actually know much at all about the Revolution – I only recently found out that there was more than one!

My advice is just to read up a lot about Revolutionary France (probably starting with Wikipedia!) and once you get really into it a line to take in your essay will probably become apparent. Maybe some key events that lead to the revolution, that kind of thing.

However it’s been a while since I did my essay and I’ve forgotten the requirements of the background essay. Obviously you’ll have to make sure it does what it’s supposed to!

The first question’s a bit tricky I’ve pretty much forgotten such details. I remember finding the past papers quite difficult actually, and being suprised that I did quite well in my prelim. The actual 2009 exam I felt was probably a bit easier than previous years, but overall I think the level of all the papers that I did was quite consistent.

For the writing, I think learning phrases is much more important. Phrases can be used in many situations, but whole essays are more limiting in their flexibility. Of course, if you’ve got a super memory you could learn both, but if you’ve learnt phrases, you’ll find that you can easily string them together into a sensible (and hopefully impressive) essay.

Good luck on the 18th!

Whew! I’m glad this site’s been helpful and it’s great that you want to be a modern languages teacher.

It’s a shame about the grades though. My first thought is that, having got an A at Higher, you must know what you’re doing and have quite good all-round skills. As far as I remember Higher wasn’t a complete doddle – although, yes, Advanced Higher is a lot harder.

If you think you’ve done well in your speaking and folio, that’s a large chunk of the ~70% needed for an A.

First off – for discursive writing there’s not much I can say. You’ve been doing writing for your whole time learning French, getting more complicated each year, and over 6th year you should have amassed quite a collection of writing pieces on all topics. You just need to take all the time to polish them up and learn them to the extent that you think you need to. You’ve still got plenty of time. Even just learning a handful of general purpose, but very good sentences could be very handy to weave into your writing. You’ve said you’ve looked at past papers so you’ll know: if you have a selection of good writings, a suitable question is almost guaranteed to come up.

Listening. I always found listening the hardest, but whilst revising for my AH exams, it finally clicked for me. I always had great difficultly listening and writing down my answers, until I tried not writing anything until the sound had finished. Try it – you’ll be surprised how much your brain has remembered when it comes to answering the questions, and you’ll get a much clearer overview of the conversation.

If you think that, if the listening transcription was read to you by your teacher, you’d do better, than that would say to me that it is just an issue of practise. If you know the words themselves, which I’m sure you do, you just have to get used to hearing them in full sentences spoken by proper French people. As much as you might not want to hear it, AH French really is very hard – you’re learning a whole knew skill, not just learning a few facts like you might in History.

For translation, first thing is not to rush it or leave it right till the end like I did (which meant I didn’t get time to finish it). Don’t rely too heavily on the dictionary. Technique: just be as faithful to the style of the sentence whilst making it sound natural in English. If the sentences translates directly as “A Man old with his boy and brown dog had walk”, you want all that information (old man, brown dog, boy, walk), which is what you’ll be marked on, and as long as you get it into a good enough English form: “An old man went for a walk with his boy and brown dog” you should get all your marks. There isn’t only one way of translating each sentence.

I often am conscious of my English word choice and structuring – having a blog and all – so my experience here probably made this part a bit easier for me.

I know say that you’re not improving with practice, I’m sorry but I think that’s the only way you’ll get better and gain experience. You could go to French websites and translate sections if you’ve run out of past papers, and ask your teacher to compare them.

Keep the tense the same, retain all details (abjectives etc) and meaning, but apart from that, rearrange it as you like to suit English.

Reading is similar, the marks will be given for facts or points that you show that you’ve picked up on the meaning and have understood it. It doesn’t have to be word for word, but include all relevant information. It’s like close reading in English – it’s all about whether you’ve ‘got’ the passage, it’s not a translation.

Your NAB is obviously your priority. Remember, the exam isn’t trying to trick you – enter it with a clear head, not thinking you’re going to fail. Read the passage so that you can understand it (that’s what going to French lessons for the past 6+ years should have trained you for). Then answer the questions just as if the exam was your friend asking a few questions. Don’t rush. For each question there is a specific part of the passage where the answer will be found. They’re usually in the same order as the questions – Q1 at the beginning, Q2 after that, Q3′s answer after that etc.

That’s all I’ve got. I hope some of this has helped.