I’ve got my GCSE and iGCSE mock results. Now what?

So, you have recently taken your GCSE mock exams in all subjects at school, among which are German and French, and you've received your results. If you are one of those people that are very happy with their results, if you have achieved your predicted grades, then you can sit back, take a deep breath and continue with what you have been doing up until now. However, if you are one of those many students who are rather disappointed with their mock exam results, I can promise you that it is still not too late to get your wished for grades. With some work, you can manage to eliminate those nasty little mistakes and build your vocabulary further.  

How can I build my vocabulary?

One widely spread wrong assumption is that you need to be absolutely fluent to understand all of the texts in the reading paper. Luckily, this is not the case at all. Yes, you must learn your topic vocabulary and know a variety of different words, but you do not need to understand all of the words in a text to get the gist of it. Obviously, the more words you know, the higher your chances of understanding more of any given exam text. First of all, I suggest you use either your school text book or any other GCSE vocabulary booklet. I find this one very useful: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vocabulary-GCSE-German-Philip-Horsfall/dp/0748762906/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519378593&sr=8-1&keywords=gcse+german+vocabulary Or you can find lots of GCSE relevant vocabulary on these websites: https://www.memrise.com/course/81839/aqa-german-gcse-vocab-list/ https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/languages/gcse/german-8668/subject-content/vocabulary http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/68532-vocabulary-list-by-topic.pdf  Once you have your relevant vocabulary, I suggest you go through it with a highlighter and mark the words that you are not familiar with. Go through the words and phrases topic by topic. Once you have marked all of the topic related unknown words, write them out, either on flash cards or into an exercise book. This is a rather time consuming method but it will pay off. Trust me! Once you know which words you will need to revise, try to go through them for at least 10-15 minutes every day. You could do 5 minutes before breakfast, 5 minutes on your way to school, 5 minutes when you get back home before doing homework and 5 minutes before going to bed. Once you split the revision time evenly throughout the day, it becomes much easier to do some revision here and there. Your hard work will pay off!  

How can I pick up vocabulary for the listening exam?

Lots of my students keep telling me that they find the listening exam extremely difficult, that it's almost impossible to understand the quickly spoken longer text passages towards the end of the exam paper. Once I show them the transcript of the text passage though, they are able to identify the words easily. One reason for this? They will have learned the written form of a word, but they never actually took their time to say the words out loud. So here's my tip. Whenever you learn a new word or phrase, try to say it out loud each time as well. This way, you will not only learn the written form but you will also learn the phonetic form at the same time. This will not only help you to memorise the word more easily, but it will also increase your chance of recognising the word or phrase when you hear it in the listening exam.  

How can I get more points in the written part of the exam?

In my experience, the “4” method has proven to be very useful in scoring more marks in the written part of the exam. With this method, you are adding as much information in one sentence as you can, which will help you to score as many content and vocabulary marks as possible. The “4” method means that you include a time phrase, an adjective, a connective and an opinion phrase in your sentence. One question could be: “Was machst du um im Haushalt zu helfen?” Your answer could be: “Normalerweise helfe ich meiner Mutter beim Abwaschen und ich denke, dass das gerecht ist. (Normalerweise = time phrase; adjective = gerecht; connective: und; opinion phrase: ich denke, dass). Here, you have written an absolutely great sentence that contains all four components of the “4” method which will score you full marks. When you go through your written answer (this method also works for the oral exam questions), check whether you have included these four components. Remember to use lots of different connectives, such as: und (and), aber (but), weil (because), da (because), jedoch (however), obwohl (although), etc. In French you can use: parce que (because), car (because), cependant (however), mais (but), donc (therefore), puisque (since), etc. More examples can be found here:

For German:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zxnkj6f/revision/3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zxnkj6f/revision/4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zxnkj6f/revision/5 and http://www.germanteacherresources.com/improve-your-german-word-mat/

For French:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/z9jdwmn/revision http://www.frenchteacherresources.com/improve-french-word-mat/  

Where can I find more exam practice papers?

Most likely, you will have done a few mock exam papers prior to your mock exam. However, from my experience I can say that it is good to go through as many exam papers as possible in order to revise your vocabulary and to get familiar with the exam style questions. I suggest doing one full paper every fortnight. Once you have done a paper, you can correct it yourself as most past papers can be found online together with the relevant mark schemes. It doesn't matter what exam board you practise you can always pick up some new words here and there and hence increase your vocabulary. Every bit counts! Here are some mock papers for you:

For German:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/german/mocks/ https://revisionworld.com/gcse-revision/german/past-papers/aqa-gcse-german-past-papers http://www.fastpastpapers.com/GCSE_AQA_German.html http://www.igcse2009.com/igcse-languages/edexcel-german-pastpapers/

For French:

http://www.cambridgeinternational.org/programmes-and-qualifications/cambridge-igcse-german-foreign-language-0525/past-papers/ https://revisionworld.com/gcse-revision/french/french-gcse-past-papers/edexcel-gcse-french-past-papers   So, as you can see,  it is still not too late to step up your efforts and to practise your skills in the next few weeks. Make it a habit to revise your vocabulary regularly and try to do one past paper every fortnight. Your efforts will pay off and you will see an improvement in no time.

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