Valencian Community PAU French II common mistakes
Valencian Community PAU French II · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Translating the French text word by word into Valencian/Spanish in your head and then answering from the translation rather than from the French wording, so negations and quantifiers get flipped (e.g. reading «peu de gens» as 'some people').
Candidates under time pressure fall back on the L1 reading habit; the PAU reading text is short but dense, and a single misread negation invalidates the true/false or multiple-choice item.
What to do instead
Before answering, underline every negation (ne...pas, ne...jamais, ne...que, sans, aucun) and every quantifier (la plupart, quelques, guère, tous) in the relevant paragraph, then justify each answer by quoting the exact French clause that supports it. Do two full past-paper texts per week under timed conditions and check answers only against the quoted clause, never against your memory of the gist.
Answering open reading questions with a full copy of the source sentence instead of reformulating, or with a single word where a complete sentence is expected.
Students learn 'copy the text to be safe', but the PAU rewards demonstrated comprehension, and graders penalise both literal copying and telegraphic answers because neither shows the candidate has processed the meaning.
What to do instead
Practise a fixed reformulation routine: identify the key idea, change the subject/verb structure, replace at least two lexical items with synonyms, and keep the sentence grammatical. Do five such transformations per text and have them checked for whether the meaning survives the paraphrase, not just for grammar.
Confusing French grammatical gender and noun-adjective agreement in production, writing things like «une problème», «des idées intéressant», or «la personne est fatigué».
Spanish and Valencian gender patterns interfere (el problema, la personne), and adjective agreement is rarely audible, so learners do not notice it while writing quickly.
What to do instead
Keep a personal list of high-frequency gender traps (le problème, le système, la personne, le voyage, la fois, le côté) and drill them weekly. In every written task, do a dedicated final pass reading only nouns and their adjectives, checking for -e, -s, -x endings, before touching anything else.
Mishandling the passé composé / imparfait choice and the agreement of the past participle with être verbs or preceding direct objects (e.g. «elle est allé», «les lettres que j'ai écrit»).
The two past tenses map imperfectly onto Spanish pretérito/imperfecto, and participle agreement is a rule with no direct equivalent in the candidate's active grammar, so it is applied inconsistently.
What to do instead
Learn the decision test explicitly: imparfait for background, habit and description; passé composé for a completed event. Then memorise the être-verb list and the 'preceding direct object' rule, and in each composition highlight every past participle and annotate why it does or does not agree.
Using Spanish/Valencian calques and false friends in vocabulary items: 'realiser' for 'to realise', 'assister à' for 'to attend to', 'actuellement' for 'currently' confused with 'actually', 'attendre' for 'to attend'.
The lexical overlap between Romance languages creates strong transfer, and candidates trust resemblance instead of verifying meaning in context.
What to do instead
Build a false-friends table (réaliser/se rendre compte, assister à/être présent, actuellement/en ce moment, attendre/assister, éventuellement/le cas échéant) and test yourself on it in context sentences, not isolated words. In the use-of-French section, always substitute your chosen word back into the sentence and check the sentence still makes sense.
Writing a composition with no plan: paragraphs that repeat the prompt, no clear thesis, and a conclusion that merely restates the introduction.
Time pressure pushes candidates to start writing immediately, and the PAU composition prompt (opinion, narrative or letter) rewards structure and development, so an unplanned text loses coherence marks regardless of grammar.
What to do instead
Spend the first five minutes on a skeleton: thesis in one sentence, two or three supporting arguments with one example each, and a conclusion that opens or recommends. Write to that skeleton, then check that each paragraph has one idea and that connectors (d'abord, en revanche, par conséquent, certes... mais) mark the links.
Producing a short, under-length composition with simple sentences and no complex structures, missing the register required by the task (e.g. writing a formal letter with 'tu' and no formulaic opening/closing).
Candidates write only what they can say safely, and they do not rehearse the conventions of French formal writing (Madame, Monsieur / Je vous prie d'agréer...), so they lose both length and register marks.
What to do instead
Memorise two or three templates: formal letter opening and closing, opinion essay frame, and narrative frame with time markers. Deliberately insert at least three complex structures per text (a relative clause with dont/auquel, a hypothesis with si + imparfait + conditionnel, a subordinate with bien que + subjunctive) and count words at the end to confirm you are within the required range.
Losing the thread during the listening task: trying to transcribe everything, then missing the next answer because you are still writing the previous one.
Candidates treat listening as dictation; the recording is played a limited number of times, and writing full sentences makes them fall behind the audio.
What to do instead
Train note-taking with symbols and abbreviations only (arrows, +/-, initials), and answer in the pauses rather than during speech. Before each listening, read the questions and predict the type of information needed (number, place, opinion). Practise with authentic French audio at exam speed, answering only after the second hearing.
Confusing numbers, dates, times and proper names in the listening (e.g. 'soixante-dix' vs 'soixante-dix-sept', 'quinze' vs 'cinquante', 'le 12' vs 'le 20'), and mixing up who said what in a dialogue.
French number forms (70/80/90) and liaison/elision make digits hard to catch, and dialogues with two speakers are followed as a single voice.
What to do instead
Drill numbers, dates and times aloud in French daily for two weeks, including the 70-80-90 series and prices. When listening to a dialogue, assign a column to each speaker and note their position or role, so that any 'who thinks what' question is answered from the column, not from memory.
In the oral interaction, reading a memorised monologue or giving one-word answers to the examiner's questions, with no follow-up question or reaction to the interlocutor.
Candidates prepare written answers and recite them, and the stress of the live exchange makes them treat it as a test of memory rather than a conversation; interaction marks are then lost even when grammar is correct.
What to do instead
Rehearse the monologue from keywords only, never from a full script, and practise a three-move response pattern: answer, add one reason or example, then ask the examiner a question or react ('et vous?', 'je vois ce que vous voulez dire, cependant...'). Record yourself, then re-record using only the keyword card to prove you can speak without the script.