NCEA Level 3 French cheat sheet

NCEA Level 3 listening passages are delivered at near-native speed; the assessment rewards gist plus specific detail, not word-for-word transcription.

Register markers to track: tu/vous address, contractions (t'as, y'a, chuis), and discourse fillers (ben, donc, en fait, quoi) signal informal spoken French.

Negation in speech often drops ne: "j'sais pas", "y'a pas d'problème" - interpret these as negative even without ne.

Listen for the connector that reveals argument structure: cependant, pourtant, en revanche (contrast); donc, du coup, par conséquent (consequence); d'abord, ensuite, enfin (sequence).

Numbers, dates and prices are common detail questions: distinguish quatre-vingt (80) from quatre-vingt-dix (90), and note that mille/million take no plural as numbers.

False friends that mislead in listening: actuellement = currently (not actually), éventuellement = possibly, attendre = to wait (not attend).

Task decision rule: if the question asks for the speaker's attitude, answer from intonation and modal phrases (à mon avis, franchement, j'avoue que) rather than content words alone.

Two-pass strategy is permitted by the format: first pass for gist and speaker purpose, second pass for the specific item requested.

Level 3 interaction requires initiating and sustaining exchange: ask a reciprocal question, react (Ça alors !, Ah bon ?, Tu plaisantes ?), then extend with a reason.

Use the subjunctive after expressions of doubt, necessity and emotion: il faut que je parte, bien que ce soit difficile, je ne pense pas qu'il vienne.

Justify opinions with a structure: opinion + parce que/car + evidence + concession (même si, certes... mais).

Pronunciation rules that carry marks: final consonants are usually silent (petit, grand), but liaison links them before a vowel (les_amis, un_grand_homme).

Silent-final vs pronounced-final: -er infinitives end in [e] (parler), while -ez and -er nouns often differ; -ent verb endings are silent (ils parlent).

Hesitation fillers in French (euh, bah, enfin) are acceptable in interaction but should not replace content; aim for circumlocution when a word is unknown.

Formal register for the teacher/examiner: vous forms, conditional politeness (pourriez-vous répéter ?, je voudrais ajouter que...).

Interactive repair phrases: Comment dit-on... en français ?, Vous voulez dire que... ?, Si je comprends bien, ...

Identify text type first: article de presse, lettre formelle, blog, fait divers, publicité - each has expected structure and register.

Formal letter markers: Madame, Monsieur / Je vous prie d'agréer, Madame, l'expression de mes salutations distinguées - signals distance and purpose.

Passé simple appears in literary and news narrative (il fut, elle prit, ils vinrent); recognise it as past tense equivalent to passé composé.

Plus-que-parquet (avait fait, était parti) marks an action completed before another past action - key for ordering events in a narrative.

Pronoun objects (le, la, les, lui, leur, en, y) carry meaning across sentences; trace what they refer to before answering detail questions.

Logical connectors for inference: or (now/yet), ainsi (thus), toutefois (however), en effet (indeed), par ailleurs (moreover).

Numbers and statistics in articles: pour cent, sur dix, la moitié de, un tiers de - check whether the figure is a proportion or an absolute count.

Decision rule for vocabulary items: use context and morphology (prefixes re-, dé-, in-; suffixes -ment, -tion, -able) before assuming a cognate meaning.

Level 3 writing is marked on communication, variety of language and accuracy; complex sentences with subordinate clauses (qui, que, dont, où) raise the language band.

Tenses to deploy deliberately: passé composé for completed events, imparfait for description/background, plus-que-parfait for prior action, conditional for hypothesis and politeness.

Subjunctive triggers to use accurately: il faut que, bien que, avant que, pour que, je doute que, il est important que.

Agreement rules that cost marks: past participle agrees with preceding direct object (les lettres que j'ai écrites), and with être verbs in gender/number.

Formal vs informal letter conventions differ in openings (Cher Paul vs Madame, Monsieur) and closings; match register to audience consistently.

Cohesion devices: en premier lieu, de plus, en outre, cependant, par conséquent, en conclusion - one per paragraph, not clustered.

Avoid anglicisms that examiners flag: réaliser (= to achieve, not to realise), supporter (= to bear), éventuellement (= possibly).

Word-count and task requirements: address every bullet of the prompt, and check that the required text type (lettre, article, discours) is signalled by its conventions.