MATSEC AM French common mistakes
MATSEC AM French · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In the reading paper, candidates answer comprehension questions by lifting whole sentences verbatim from the passage instead of reformulating the answer in their own words, or by copying a sentence that contains the keyword but answers a different question.
Under time pressure, copying feels safer than composing French, and candidates fear grammatical errors in their own sentences. They also search for a keyword rather than reading the question's exact demand (who, why, how, according to the author).
What to do instead
Practise a two-step routine: underline the question's interrogative word and the passage span it points to, then write the answer using the passage's ideas but a different sentence structure (change subject, verb form, or connector). Train with a rule that no more than three consecutive words may be copied, and check each answer against the question word before moving on.
Candidates ignore discourse markers and connectors (cependant, en revanche, or, donc, bien que) when interpreting an argument, so they record the opposite of the author's position, especially where a concession is followed by a rebuttal.
Markers are often skimmed as filler, and candidates who have not internalised their logical value default to the first clause they understand, missing that 'bien que X, Y' makes Y the main claim.
What to do instead
Build a short reference list of contrast, cause, consequence, and concession markers and drill them on short authentic paragraphs, asking 'what is the author's final position?' after each. In the exam, circle every connector in the passage before answering opinion or inference questions.
In the writing paper, candidates produce a script that answers the task only partly: they omit one of the required content points (for example, they give an opinion but no justification, or describe advantages but never the disadvantages the prompt asked for), or they misjudge register and write a formal letter to a friend.
Candidates draft immediately from inspiration rather than planning, and they do not decode the prompt's instruction verbs and audience. Register errors come from translating Maltese or English conventions directly.
What to do instead
Spend three to four minutes planning: list every required content point from the prompt as a checklist, note the audience and the register it implies (tu/vous, formulaic openings and closings), and allocate a paragraph to each point. After writing, tick each checklist item and verify that every paragraph has a clear function.
Candidates write long, ambitious sentences with English or Maltese syntax transferred wholesale (for example, placing object pronouns wrongly, overusing possessive adjectives with body parts, or calquing idioms), producing frequent basic errors that drag down the accuracy mark.
The candidate composes in the first language and translates clause by clause, so the French surface is correct word by word but the structure is not French. Ambition is rewarded in content but punished in accuracy.
What to do instead
Keep sentence structures within controlled patterns you can verify, and use a short self-edit pass targeting the highest-frequency transfer errors: pronoun order, agreement of past participles, prepositions after verbs, and idiomatic expressions. Learn ten genuinely French connectors and expressions to replace calques.
In the listening paper, candidates try to transcribe or understand every word as it is spoken, lose the thread after an unknown word, and then miss the answer to the next question, which often arrives immediately after the distractor.
School listening rarely trains gist-first processing, and candidates treat listening as dictation. Recordings also contain distractors where a speaker mentions an option before rejecting it, which rewards waiting for the full utterance.
What to do instead
Practise predicting the answer type from the question before the recording starts, listening for gist on the first playing, and using the pause to note keywords rather than full sentences. Train on recordings with deliberate distractors, and rehearse the rule: hear the whole utterance before committing to an option.
In oral work, candidates memorise a prepared monologue and deliver it regardless of the question, or freeze into silence when the examiner asks an unscripted follow-up, producing long pauses and no interaction.
Preparation is done as a written script rather than as flexible content knowledge, and candidates have never practised being interrupted or asked 'pourquoi?' about their own statements.
What to do instead
Prepare topic content as bullet points and key vocabulary, never as full sentences, and rehearse with a partner who asks unpredictable follow-ups. Learn repair phrases (Comment dire..., Vous voulez dire que...?, Je peux reformuler) so that hesitation is managed in French rather than in silence.
Candidates answer oral questions in single short sentences with no development, so the examiner has little evidence of range and the interaction stalls.
Candidates interpret the question as a request for information only, not as an invitation to elaborate, and fear making errors if they extend.
What to do instead
Adopt an answer-plus-two pattern: give the direct answer, add a reason, and add an example or personal detail. Practise with a timer, aiming for three connected sentences per answer, and build a bank of justification phrases (d'autant plus que, par exemple, ce qui me semble important, c'est...).
In grammar and language-use tasks, candidates leave gaps blank or guess randomly rather than applying elimination, and they fail to re-read the completed sentence to check that it is grammatical and meaningful.
Blank items trigger anxiety and time pressure, and candidates treat each gap in isolation, ignoring the cues in the surrounding sentence (tense markers, agreement controllers, prepositions).
What to do instead
For each gap, identify what the sentence requires before choosing: tense signalled by a time expression, number and gender of the subject, or the preposition governed by the verb. Always substitute the chosen form back into the full sentence and read it silently to test acceptability.
Candidates mishandle verb forms systematically: mixing passé composé and imparfait in narration, misforming the subjunctive after expressions of necessity or doubt, and forgetting agreement of the past participle with a preceding direct object or with être verbs.
These are the structures with the least direct equivalent in Maltese and English usage, and rules are memorised as labels without contrastive practice, so the candidate cannot decide between two plausible forms.
What to do instead
Study the contrasts, not the labels: build paired examples showing why one tense is chosen over the other in the same narrative, and drill participle agreement with sentences where the object precedes the verb. Keep a personal error log of every verb-form mistake and re-test those items after a week.
Candidates run out of time because they spend too long on early reading or writing tasks, leaving the final section or the essay's conclusion unfinished, and they submit without a proofreading pass.
No timed practice has been done, so candidates do not know their own pace, and perfectionism on the first task consumes the budget.
What to do instead
Rehearse full papers under exam timing at least twice before the exam, decide a fixed minute allocation per section in advance, and keep the last five to eight minutes of the writing paper for proofreading against a short checklist (agreements, accents, verb endings, required content points).