Hey everybody, I'll be doing French Unit 3/4 in 2018, and am currently studying units 1/2. I was just wondering how difficult it is to manage a study score of around 32 for french. I'm averaging okay- around an 80- at the moment and would love to get a high score for the subject. I was also wondering whether anyone had any advice/tips for anything in general related to french. What should i do to improve my oral/listening skills? How can I start rolling my r's and is it hard doing the subject in yr 12 alongside everything else? Thanks so much!! 
Hi there
RE: difficulty - how long is a piece of string? Difficulty is different for everyone - just depends on your strengths and weaknesses. It's definitely quite feasible to juggle French and all your other subjects - in fact, I found French to be pretty chilled next to a lot of my other ones (certainly with less assessments during the year). All it took twas a small amount of regular practice, rather than huge chunks of work like you might have to do with other subjects.
In terms of advice:
- Vocab - with the topics you cover in class, try staying up to date on new words and useful words and all that - all it takes is typing stuff up on quizlet, and it'll really help expand your vocab and make it easier to be confident in your writing and speaking.
- Practice your writing skills - try submitting a practice writing piece (just use past VCAA exam prompts) to your teacher every fortnight or every week or whatever. With this, make sure you know the conventions of the different text types - i.e. when you need headings, addresses, titles, etc.
- To pick up errors - read your work backwards, because if you read it in the normal direction you're likely to just skip past your errors.
- Practice listening - ask your teacher for tracks and stuff, or just use past listening sections from the VCAA exams. You just need to get your technique down pat - get used to not using your dictionary whilst the track is playing (and just writing words you're unsure of phonetically), dot pointing answers on the side (then writing them down once the track has stopped playing, etc.) - and all that stuff.
- Practice speaking! See if you can organise to do a weekly or fortnightly thing with your teacher (and failing that, a friend in your class or something) where you discuss stuff - my teacher provided us with really good booklets that gave us topics to talk about, which is not only good for helping your speaking ability but is also giving you practice for the general conversation aspect of the oral exam.
- I found the key for improving my accent, aside from practice, is making your voice softer. Our Australian accents can make words seem quite harsh, and for want of a better word, bogan lol. French is softer, so get used to speaking softly - that doesn't mean whispering, though haha. Might be better to ask your teacher for advice here as well.
- Another thing is make sure you're using things like "euh" as a break between words rather than "um" - "euh" helps you move smoothly into saying the words with the appropriate accent.
Overall, the key message is just practice, practice, practice! Speak as much French as you can, and you'll be amazed at how much you develop your skills over the course of the year. In year 11, I could hold a basic conversation in French, and by the end of year 12 I could confidently hold a conversation, comfortably speak with the French exchange kids that came to my school about all sorts of different topics, and I could understand a lot more.
All the best
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