Galicia PAU French - Second Foreign Language / Francés II Lengua Extranjera common mistakes
Galicia PAU French - Second Foreign Language / Francés II Lengua Extranjera · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering comprehension questions by copying a whole sentence from the text that merely contains a keyword from the question, without checking that it actually answers what was asked (e.g. question asks for a cause, copied sentence states a consequence).
Under time pressure candidates scan for a matching word and stop at the first hit; PAU texts are built with lexical echoes and distractors that reward surface matching, so keyword-hunting feels productive but bypasses the actual question type (cause, purpose, contrast, opinion).
What to do instead
Before reading the options or writing, underline the question's operative word (pourquoi / dans quel but / selon l'auteur / qu'est-ce qui prouve). Then locate the relevant paragraph and reformulate the answer in your own words in one short sentence, checking it against the question word. If your answer does not contain a cause when 'pourquoi' was asked, it is wrong regardless of how well it matches the text.
Treating true/false/justification items as a coin flip and justifying with a quote that is only loosely related, or writing 'vrai' when the text says the opposite with a negation the candidate skimmed past.
Justification items look easy so candidates allocate seconds to them; French negation and restriction markers (ne...que, loin de, ce n'est pas que, en revanche) invert meaning at a glance, and students read for gist rather than for logical connectors.
What to do instead
For each item, find the exact sentence in the text and mark its logical connector before deciding. Justify with the shortest segment that logically entails your verdict, and verify the verdict by negating the statement: if the negated statement matches the text, the original is false. Practise on connectors lists (or, donc, cependant, bien que, sauf, ne...que).
Writing the composition well under the required word count, or padding it with a memorised generic introduction and conclusion that say nothing about the prompt.
Candidates run out of ideas because they plan in Spanish and translate, which is slow and produces short sentences; memorised openers feel safe and buy words, but the rubric penalises relevance and coherence, so the padding earns nothing and crowds out content.
What to do instead
Before writing, list three concrete ideas specific to the prompt (an example, a personal experience, a counter-argument) and one example for each. Aim for roughly 10 percent above the minimum. Replace any opening sentence that could fit any topic with a direct answer to the prompt. Count words at the end and add a developed example, not a formula, if short.
Producing a composition with no visible paragraph structure and no connectors, so ideas run together in one block of short, juxtaposed sentences.
Candidates write in the order ideas arrive, treat connectors as decoration, and avoid them because they are unsure of register or construction (e.g. 'malgré que', 'd'autre part' misuse), so the text reads as a list rather than an argument.
What to do instead
Impose a fixed skeleton: one-sentence stance, two or three body paragraphs each with a topic sentence plus support, one-sentence conclusion. Insert at least one connector per paragraph from a short memorised, verified set (d'abord, en outre, par exemple, cependant, en revanche, par conséquent, enfin). Check each connector's construction: 'bien que + subjonctif', 'malgré + nom', never 'malgré que'.
Translating Spanish structures word for word into French, e.g. 'je suis d'accord avec que', 'il faut que je vais', 'je me rappelle de', or using 'actuallement' and 'réaliser' with Spanish meanings.
Spanish and French share enough lexicon that candidates trust cognates and calques; the transfer is automatic and unnoticed because the output 'sounds' plausible to a Spanish speaker, and false friends are precisely the words that look safest.
What to do instead
Keep a personal list of the twenty highest-frequency false friends and calques (actuellement = currently, se rappeler qch vs se souvenir de qch, il faut + infinitif, espérer que + indicatif) and rewrite each Spanish calque you produce into the attested French pattern. In the exam, flag any verb followed by 'que' and check the mood: obligation and emotion take the subjunctive, espérer and penser take the indicative.
Mixing up verb morphology in production: wrong auxiliary with movement and reflexive verbs, missing agreement of the past participle, or using the imparfait where the passé composé is required for a single completed event.
The compound past is taught early and then assumed, so candidates stop monitoring auxiliary choice and participle agreement; narrative writing forces rapid tense switching and the imparfait/passé composé distinction collapses under time pressure.
What to do instead
Drill a short list of être-auxiliary verbs (aller, venir, partir, arriver, entrer, sortir, naître, mourir, rester, tomber, monter, descendre, plus all pronominals) and apply agreement rules aloud: with être, agree with the subject; with avoir, agree only with a preceding direct object. In narratives, mark each event verb as a single event (passé composé) or background (imparfait) before writing the sentence.
Failing transformation items because the candidate changes the meaning while changing the form, e.g. turning an active sentence passive but dropping the agent, or reporting a question with 'si' when it is a wh-question, or leaving the original word order in indirect speech.
These tasks test one grammatical operation at a time, but candidates rewrite the whole sentence from scratch and lose control of tense backshift, pronoun changes and word order; the instruction's constraint (keep the same meaning, use the given opening) is not checked.
What to do instead
Apply a fixed procedure: identify the operation, apply only the required change (tense backshift one step, pronoun and time-marker shifts: aujourd'hui → ce jour-là, demain → le lendemain), keep everything else identical, then re-read both versions to confirm the meaning is unchanged. For indirect questions, remember yes/no questions take 'si', wh-questions keep the question word and revert to statement order.
Leaving blanks or writing a Spanish word in gap-fill and word-formation items instead of attempting a French form, and ignoring the sentence context that signals the required part of speech.
Candidates judge the item by the target word alone rather than by the syntactic slot; when the correct form does not come immediately they freeze, and a blank scores zero while a plausible derived form can still earn partial credit in holistic marking.
What to do instead
Read the whole sentence and decide the slot first: after a determiner you need a noun, after 'très' an adjective, after a subject a conjugated verb, after a preposition an infinitive or noun. Then derive the form with the standard affixes (-tion, -ment, -eur, -eux, -iser, in-/im-/dé-) and check gender and number agreement with the surrounding words. Never leave a blank.
Answering culture questions with vague generalities ('la France est un pays riche en culture') or confusing institutions and geography of France with those of the francophone world (e.g. attributing Belgian or Swiss features to France, or not knowing which countries use the euro and which do not).
Cultural knowledge is often revised as trivia lists without a mental map, so facts blur; candidates also assume the exam only covers France, whereas the syllabus explicitly includes la francophonie, and they have rarely been asked to distinguish, for instance, Belgian, Swiss, Canadian and African francophone realities.
What to do instead
Build a one-page fact sheet organised by country (France, Belgique, Suisse, Canada/Québec, Sénégal, etc.) with columns for political status, currency, capital, one cultural marker and one linguistic particularity. Revise by self-testing with 'which country?' questions and by explaining each fact in one French sentence, which doubles as writing practice.
Register and address errors in writing tasks: using 'tu' when the prompt implies a formal letter or article, using 'vous' inconsistently mid-text, or writing an informal email with no opening and closing formulae.
Candidates focus on grammar and content and treat register as cosmetic; Spanish academic writing habits and the informal tone of social media bleed into the exam, and the conventions of the French lettre formelle (Madame, Monsieur / Cordialement) are often only half-remembered.
What to do instead
Decide the register from the prompt's instructions (destinataire, type de texte) before writing and note it at the top of your plan. Memorise one formal frame (Madame, Monsieur, ... Je vous prie d'agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées) and one informal frame (Salut ... À bientôt), and check pronoun consistency in a final pass, since mixing 'tu' and 'vous' is one of the most visible errors to a marker.