VCE French cheat sheet

Unit 1 has three prescribed themes shared with Unit 2: the individual, the French-speaking communities, and the world around us; each theme carries prescribed topics and subtopics set by the study design.

Unit 1 Outcome 1 assesses listening and speaking: students demonstrate comprehension of spoken French and exchange information and ideas orally on familiar topics.

Unit 1 Outcome 2 assesses reading and writing: students read and respond to written French texts and produce written texts for specified audiences and purposes.

Unit 2 Outcome 1 assesses listening, reading and viewing, requiring students to extract and compare information from spoken and written texts.

Unit 2 Outcome 2 assesses writing in French, including the ability to adapt register and text type to purpose, audience and context.

The four language modes assessed across Units 1 and 2 are listening, speaking, reading and writing; viewing is embedded within reading and listening tasks.

Text types prescribed for Units 1 and 2 include personal letters, emails, diary entries, notices, advertisements, short articles, conversations and interviews.

Assessment in Units 1 and 2 is school-based and graded against the outcomes; a Satisfactory (S) or Not Satisfactory (N) result is recorded for each unit, not a numeric study score.

Key knowledge and key skills are paired in each area of study: key knowledge covers vocabulary, grammar and text conventions; key skills cover comprehension, production and interaction.

Unit 3 Outcome 1: students participate in a conversation in French on a topic drawn from the prescribed themes, demonstrating comprehension and fluency in spoken interaction.

Unit 3 Outcome 2: students analyse and respond in writing to spoken and written French texts, including a listening comprehension and a written response to a text.

Unit 4 Outcome 1: students produce a detailed written response to a text studied in class, plus a listening and reading comprehension component.

Unit 4 Outcome 2: students present a detailed oral response in French, including a discussion of a topic or text studied during the year.

School-assessed coursework in Units 3 and 4 contributes 50 per cent of the final study score; the two end-of-year examinations contribute the remaining 50 per cent.

The written examination assesses listening, reading and writing, and includes a section on the prescribed themes and a text-response section.

The oral examination consists of a conversation in French on the prescribed themes and a discussion based on the student's detailed study.

The detailed study requires students to research a topic linked to a prescribed theme and to discuss it in French, drawing on at least one French-language text or source.

Grammar and vocabulary are assessed across all outcomes: accuracy in verb tenses, agreement, register and text-type conventions is part of the marking criteria.