Second Foreign Language (French): Grammar, Reading and Writing
The second-foreign-language paper tests reading comprehension, grammar, vocabulary and short writing in French or German; this guide uses French examples. Marks depend on gender, number and tense agreement, not on guessing from cognates.
Core rules
- Articles contract: à + le = au, à + les = aux, de + le = du, de + les = des.
- Object pronouns: le/la/les replace direct objects; lui/leur replace indirect objects; y replaces a place or à + thing; en replaces de + noun.
- Passé composé: avoir or être + past participle. Most verbs use avoir; movement and reflexive verbs use être, and the participle agrees with the subject.
- Imparfait describes background, habit or ongoing state; passé composé presents a completed event.
- Negation: ne + verb + pas; ne + verb + jamais/rien/plus.
- Questions: inversion, est-ce que, or rising intonation.
Worked example
'Hier, elles sont allées au marché.' The auxiliary is être, so the past participle agrees with the feminine plural subject 'elles': allées. With avoir, 'J'ai mangé' has no agreement with the subject. Agreement with avoir occurs only when a direct object precedes the verb, as in 'Les fleurs que j'ai cueillies'.
Traps
- Forgetting participle agreement with être verbs.
- Confusing 'depuis' with the present tense (action still continuing) and the passé composé.
- False friends: 'actuellement' means currently, not actually; 'éventuellement' means possibly.
- Wrong pronoun order: me/te/nous/vous before le/la/les before lui/leur before y before en.
- Translating word for word instead of using the required structure.