Clara - Higher Level

Well,that was a little beauty of a paper! Honestly-the hardest part of this morning so far has been getting out of bed after going to see a concert last night :P Let's dive right in and get down to the specifics:Aural: This was one of the easiest I've come across to be frank. Even the most difficult section (Section E I thought) was not overly challenging and was pleasant to listen to.Comprehensions: Again,this was child's play! Very basic with the usual format of 9 pieces with some questions at the bottom. These were interesting and the questions were very good for the most part - although there were a few more difficult ones peeping through. Nothing impossible.Written section: Postcards! Nooooooo!!! I had anticipated a note so when I saw this it was a moment of sheer panic. However, I told myself to calm down and re-read. I coped on that I DID know what to say and got writing. Very stereo-typical,"you're on holidays" postcard to a French pen-pal. Some of the points were a little unusual though, the one about celebrating your mother's birthday? No matter! Onwards to the letter I went. I wasn't surprised to see a formal and informal letter - I had studied both and therefore had a real choice here but in the end I went for the informal one. I was really happy with the letter I produced, the points were more like previous years here thankfully!The only thing there is, anyone reading this who really struggles with French will completely disagree - keep in mind it's one of my favourite subjects and I was therefore almost looking forward to this exam.Overall, I found this paper fun and easy. Au revoir and bonne chance avec l'histoire!

Shahed - Higher Level

Le Français? C'est très, très facile!I was both nervous and calm going into this exam. I had done very little French revision lately (I was mostly focusing on History), but after reading through the whole paper, I was relieved - it looked like a piece of cake!The first section of the exam was the listening comprehension. This has always been my favourite part of French exams, I do quite well on it. It was quite straightforward, nothing difficult at all.The next section was the reading comprehensions. This was incredibly easy, which is a little unusual. There are always some very difficult questions in most years, but this time, there was only one or two which were a little tricky. All in all, this was an easy section.Finally, the written section. This was the section that I had been dreading the most. There was a postcard and then either a formal or informal letter. The postcard was like every other year, nothing too unusual. For the letter, I chose to do an informal letter; I don't know formal letters very well, we hadn't done them much. I was so relieved when I saw informal letter. One of the points I had revised just before going into the exam had come up! This helped to put me at ease for the rest of the exam.As a whole, this was a straightforward exam. I was finished with about an hour left over, though I stayed and went over everything. I was quite happy coming out of it. That's another exam to tick off the list!

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