Predicting LC French topics.

Ballfro

Hi guys,
Just one for all the French teachers out there. How do you chose what to study for opinion questions? Anything could come up, there's no set format and as a relatively new teacher I am struggling with this. I cover the usual topics and last year by pure chance I covered the horse meat scandal... what do you all do?
Thank you :-)

teach88

It's a tough one alright. I try to cover anything topical and more besides.

Admittedly, that's a lot of work but the topics are not supposed to be predictable anyway.

Ballfro

Yes that's true, I understand that but I just want them going in with some sort of confidence. You hope that what you have covered will help them enough to deal with any surprises.
They're always asking how do we know what to study and when I tell them there are no set themes they always say well there is in irish! I like the idea of it not being predictable as it really does test your ability.

vamos!

Really, really hard to know. For the past 2 years I have avoided giving specific, topic-related phrases in French. I make sure students learn opinions (positive, negative, indifferent, controversial, upset, angry, amused) and use these phrases along with sequencing phrases to do an opinion piece on absolutely anything. I do, however, give vocab lists (words not phrases) on anything and everything. It seems to work and removes the panic of having to learn a separate paragraph for each topic. Is a hard one to sell to students at the beginning though as they want their 'notes'! Maybe also worth noting that my students are generally of a high ability. Weaker students might need more spoon-feeding.

Ballfro

Thank you! That's a good idea, they might spend ages learning one topic and it might not come up. I will try that. Makes a lot of sense.

linguist

Cover the course! That is the way it's going with learned off answers that don't address the question asked being heavily penalised.

The exams are being made less predictable, partly because of political pressure. Your students have to earn their marks and their points - the SEC doesn't owe them a future:) So cover the syllabus, do lots of vocab and linking expressions, make sure their grammar is sound, assign them a mix of long general writing exercises and short exam type ones.

Make sure that you are well familiar with past exam papers and in particular recent trends (as in towards questions that require tailored answers based on a really sound overall grasp of topics and vocabulary). If anyone (parents, students, management) questions a broader, comprehensive approach be firm and confident in pointing out the way the exam is going.