French Document

bleach94

Doing this for my french oral, and was planning on doing the French film 'Confession D'un Enfant Du Siecle' which is about a man who moves to Paris and fall in love. The musician Pete Doherty stars in it, and it would give me a chance to talk about music, my own band, drug problems etc if the examiner throws slightly different questions. However, I don't know a whole lot about French cinema, or cinema in general. Should I just pick something more straighforward?

dmca93

bleach94 wrote: »

Doing this for my french oral, and was planning on doing the French film 'Confession D'un Enfant Du Siecle' which is about a man who moves to Paris and fall in love. The musician Pete Doherty stars in it, and it would give me a chance to talk about music, my own band, drug problems etc if the examiner throws slightly different questions. However, I don't know a whole lot about French cinema, or cinema in general. Should I just pick something more straighforward?

If you put in the effort and feel confident doing something like this it is definitely worth it. The examiner will be so sick of holiday photos that this will be a breath of fresh air. It will also allow you to learn off and use difficult vocabulary that you otherwise would not have been able to use. Last year I did a piece on Poverty in the Third world. From looking at my exam papers I worked out that I needed to get at least 94/100 in the oral to achieve an A1 and I feel that my document gave me the edge.

TheUshMan

when you spoke about poverty, In brief what did you discuss? what kind of questions did the examiner ask? and finally, how long were you speaking for without stopping?

dmca93

TheUshMan wrote: »

when you spoke about poverty, In brief what did you discuss? what kind of questions did the examiner ask? and finally, how long were you speaking for without stopping?

My document consisted of two A4 pages with about 5-6 pictures on each. One page consisted of pictures concerning poverty in the third world e.g. deserts, emaciated cattle, soldiers etc and the other page consisted of pictures which were the "solutions" to the problem e.g a school, drinkable water, pictures of people giving out food and medication etc. I basically talked about how poverty was a major problem in the third world and what were the main causes of it and then I talked about what I thought the solutions were. I had the pictures put in order to the way I had learned the vocabulary as well which was really helpful. I probably spoke for 3-4 mins maybe even less, it definitely didn't feel long anyway. The only question the examiner asked me was whether I thought food or education was more important, I said education and he agreed. He didn't even want me to elaborate. I guess I got lucky! :P

TheUshMan

God! your document sounded amazing! I thought the document was just one picture...hmm, thanks for telling me what you did, its given me more of an idea of what I could do for my document...

Leaving Cert Student

Mines just a pic of me in france when I met fabien Barthez

HelloFluffy

Wow, that sounds fantastic in comparison to anything we've been told. I'm thinking about doing a project on French language graphic novels, Hergé, Satrapi, etc. Now I know where the standard is at!

bleach94

Got an A today in my practice oral using the film Document, delighted! Have a feeling the guy was being a bit nice (everyone seemed to come out with decent results) but nevertheless I'm happy, first time doing an oral with anyone other than my actual teacher!

KDII

The document is a great way to improve your oral grade and bag a good few percent for yourself.

Mine was quite similar to dmca. Our school had Kind of a charity league. Everyone was split into groups and you had to raise money for a developing country where the school had ties. In 6th year there was captains and I was one of them.

My document was simply the flag of the country we raised money for. She just asked what the country was, what was going on there etc. she was really impressed just by the break in photos of people on holiday or whatever.

It's by far the easiest way to bank a few marks for yourself. Learn a good bit of specific vocabulary for it but you will find that your all round spoken French will improve from it.

I remember not understanding people who didnt give it much thought. It's pretty much the only part of the exam you can completely cater to your strengths. Use it as a chance to show off what you're capable of- whatever that level is. It will give them a sense of you and add a bit more personality to an otherwise extremely generic human exchange!