NZ Scholarship French study guide
NZ Scholarship French · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
NZ Scholarship French is a top-tier secondary-school award in New Zealand, sat by Year 12–13 students who already handle French with confidence and want to be recognised beyond Level 3. It is not a course-completion qualification; it rewards candidates who can read authentic French texts, follow recorded speech at natural speed, write extended French that is coherent and idiomatic, and discuss ideas in speech and in writing. The NZ Scholarship French study guide has 7 sections and about 2,997 words.
01Listening comprehension (recorded or spoken French material)
Recordings are authentic-sounding French: radio interviews, vox pops, phone-ins, classroom exchanges and news bulletins, played at natural speed. Accents range across metropolitan France, Québec, Belgium, Switzerland, North and West Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
415 words, about 2 min02Reading comprehension (authentic written French texts)
Texts are authentic: newspaper editorials, literary extracts, blog posts, petitions, letters to the editor and informational pieces from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Québec, Africa and the Pacific. Questions probe explicit detail, inference, the writer's stance, tone and the function of a paragraph - not vocabulary matching.
404 words, about 2 min03Written production in French (structured and extended writing)
The paper sets two contrasting pieces - typically one persuasive text (article, open letter, speech, contribution to a debate) and one reflective, descriptive or narrative piece, sometimes a formal or semi-formal letter. Each is judged on how well it fulfils the brief, its organisation, the range of language, and accuracy and register.
402 words, about 2 min04Spoken production and interaction in French
The interaction with an examiner rewards sustained, spontaneous French: defending a position, negotiating meaning, moving between tenses and adapting register. It typically opens with a short talk or a stimulus - an image, a statement, a statistic - and develops into discussion, so the examiner can see how you cope once the prepared script runs out.
423 words, about 2 min05Translation and mediation between French and English
You translate in both directions and may be asked to relay or summarise a short text for a different audience - the mediation element. The test is meaning, register and naturalness, not word-for-word equivalence.
454 words, about 2 min06Knowledge of francophone cultures and societies
Texts and recordings draw on contemporary francophone societies: metropolitan France, Belgium, Switzerland, Québec, the Maghreb, West and Central Africa, Haiti and the Caribbean, and the Pacific - New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, and Vanuatu, where French is an official language. You need enough context to read allusion and irony, not a list of dates.
417 words, about 2 min07Language accuracy and range (grammar, vocabulary, register)
Scholarship rewards control of complex structures and a wide, precise lexicon used without distracting error. Errors are judged by whether they distort meaning and by how frequent they are; ambitious writing with occasional slips scores above safe, flat correctness.
482 words, about 2 min