WACE French Background Language ATAR common mistakes
WACE French Background Language ATAR · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the personal response or opinion piece as a neutral summary of the topic (e.g. listing arguments for and against without ever committing to a position), so the assessor cannot find a clear stance or a sustained line of argument.
Candidates rehearse the content of the topic but not the rhetorical task; they treat 'discutez' or 'qu'en pensez-vous' as an invitation to report what people say rather than to argue a view, often because classroom practice has focused on comprehension and vocabulary rather than on stance-taking.
What to do instead
Before writing, draft a one-sentence thesis in the target language and check every paragraph against it. Build a fixed skeleton: introduction with explicit position, two or three developed arguments each with a supporting example, a counter-argument acknowledged and rebutted, and a conclusion that restates the position in new wording. Practise by taking past stimulus topics and writing only the thesis sentence plus topic sentences for five minutes, then checking that each topic sentence advances the position rather than merely naming a theme.
Justifying opinions with bare assertion ('je pense que c'est important parce que c'est important') or with a single unsupported adjective, instead of giving a reason, an example, or a consequence.
Under time pressure and with limited topic vocabulary, candidates fall back on formulaic opinion frames they have memorised and then run out of things to say; they have learned the phrase but not the habit of extending it, and they confuse fluency of opinion markers with quality of justification.
What to do instead
Train a three-part expansion pattern for every opinion: claim, reason, illustration or consequence. Drill connectives that force extension (parce que, étant donné que, ce qui explique que, par exemple, si bien que, ce qui risque de). When revising, underline every opinion marker and check that at least two of the three parts follow it; rewrite any that do not.
Producing a response that is well argued but formally inappropriate for the specified text type and audience, e.g. writing an informal chatty message when the task asks for a formal letter to a public authority, or omitting the structural conventions of an article such as a headline and byline.
Candidates focus entirely on ideas and grammar and treat text-type conventions as decoration; they also carry over the register of their own speech community into formal writing without noticing the mismatch in greetings, pronouns and formulaic closings.
What to do instead
Keep a one-page reference sheet of conventions for each text type likely to appear (letter, article, blog post, speech, review, report, email), with the required openings and closings, register markers, and typical layout. Before writing, spend two minutes annotating the task: who is the reader, what is the relationship, what conventions are expected. After writing, do a dedicated register pass checking tu/vous consistency, formulaic openings and closings, and absence of spoken fillers.
Answering comprehension questions in the target language by lifting whole sentences verbatim from the text rather than reformulating, and thereby failing to demonstrate understanding or to match the required response format (e.g. a summary in a set number of words).
Copying feels safe and is faster than reformulating; candidates also fear that paraphrasing will introduce errors, so they copy and then add nothing, which the marking criteria penalise as non-transformation.
What to do instead
Practise a two-step routine: identify the relevant sentence, then close the text and rewrite the idea from memory in your own words, changing structure and vocabulary while preserving meaning. Practise summary discipline by condensing a paragraph into a set word count and counting words explicitly. In the exam, always check whether the question demands quotation, paraphrase or summary, and note the word limit before starting.
Treating a text as a flat information source and ignoring stance, tone and implied meaning, so that irony, hedging, or the author's critical distance is reported as straightforward fact.
Candidates read for content words and answer literal questions competently, but have had little practice in noticing modality, evaluative adjectives, scare quotes, rhetorical questions or shifts in register that signal the writer's attitude; they therefore miss the analytical layer the higher-mark questions target.
What to do instead
Annotate texts for evaluative language before answering: circle modal verbs and adverbs (devrait, sans doute, prétendument), underline evaluative adjectives, mark connectives that signal concession or contrast. For each text, write one sentence identifying the author's purpose and one identifying the tone, with a quoted word as evidence. Practise questions of the form 'what does the writer imply' and require yourself to cite textual evidence for every claim.
Comparing or synthesising information across two or more written texts only at the level of listing what each says, without identifying where they agree, where they diverge, and why the divergence exists.
Candidates answer each source separately because that is how comprehension practice is usually structured; synthesis is a distinct skill and students have rarely been taught to organise a response by theme rather than by document.
What to do instead
Use a comparison grid: themes down the side, sources across the top, and evidence in the cells, then write the response theme by theme rather than text by text. Explicitly use contrast language (alors que, en revanche, contrairement à, tandis que, les deux sources s'accordent sur). Also practise explaining the reason for a difference, such as audience, date, or the writer's role.
Losing marks in the listening section by answering from general knowledge or from the first few seconds of the recording rather than from what was actually said, especially when the speaker corrects themselves, changes their mind, or uses negation.
Recordings are played a limited number of times, so candidates start writing during the first listening and stop attending; they also miss self-repair and negation because they anticipate the topic and hear what they expect.
What to do instead
Use the reading time to predict likely vocabulary and question focus. On the first listening, write only keywords and note the question numbers as they are addressed; do not write full answers. On the second listening, confirm or correct, paying particular attention to markers of revision (en fait, finalement, je me suis trompé, plutôt) and to negation. Practise with authentic audio at natural speed and transcribe short segments to build decoding accuracy.
Mishearing or mis-transcribing numbers, dates, times and proper nouns in spoken French, and then building a wrong answer on them, including confusing pairs such as quatre-vingts and quatre-vingt-dix, or deux and douze.
French number formation and liaison make these forms acoustically difficult, and candidates have often learned numbers in writing rather than through listening; they also fail to use context to sanity-check an implausible figure.
What to do instead
Drill listening specifically for numbers, dates and times in connected speech, including liaison and the dropped final consonant before a vowel. In the exam, note the figure with its unit and check it against context (a price, a year, a duration). Learn the regular formation patterns (soixante-dix, quatre-vingt-onze, cent, mille) so that an unfamiliar form can be reconstructed rather than guessed.
Writing extended French that is structurally English: literal calques of English idioms, English word order in subordinate clauses, and overuse of the passé composé where the imparfait or plus-que-parfait is required for background, habit or anteriority.
Background speakers often have strong oral fluency but limited explicit knowledge of tense aspect and idiom, so they translate idiomatically from English and choose tenses by feel; the resulting errors are frequent and systematic rather than random.
What to do instead
Keep a personal error log of calques and tense slips drawn from your own writing and review it before each assessment. Do targeted tense-contrast exercises: narrative passages where you must choose between imparfait for setting and habit and passé composé for events, plus plus-que-parfait for prior events. Learn idioms as whole chunks with their register noted, and check any expression you are about to translate literally against a monolingual dictionary.
Producing a response that answers the task only partially, for example covering two of three required bullet points, or writing well below or far above the indicated length, because the planning stage was skipped and time was spent polishing the opening.
Candidates begin writing immediately, run out of time or space, and only discover at the end that a required element is missing; length overruns also introduce errors and can breach task conditions.
What to do instead
Allocate the first three to five minutes to a written plan that lists every required element from the prompt and assigns a rough number of sentences to each. Budget the remaining time proportionally and keep a final three minutes for checking required elements, word count, and agreement. Practise under timed conditions so the plan-write-check rhythm becomes automatic.