GCSE French: Role-Plays

The role-play is one of the three parts of the GCSE French speaking test. The DfE subject content describes it as a role-play, including asking and answering questions, that simulates a context such as a social conversation, with unambiguous instructions about what to say. The student prepares a card written in English and then speaks French with the teacher-examiner, who plays a part. For example, AQA's role-play has five tasks, each worth up to 2 marks, and lasts about a minute to a minute and a half; one task, marked with a question mark, requires the student to ask a question. This material rehearses that task.

In the oral exam the examiner shows you a card in English and then speaks only French, in character, one line at a time. The first role-play is at Foundation level (talking to a French friend about free time); the second is at Higher level (healthy living, with an opinion, a past and a future task). Two more are available for extra practice: ordering in a café, where you use vous, and talking about holidays. The examiner does not correct you during the role-play; at the end you get brief feedback in English on each of the five tasks (was the information given, was the tense right, was the question a real question), with your errors corrected.

The quiz has twelve questions on what makes a role-play task count as done: forming a correct question for the '?' task (a favourite singer, the price, the way to the station, the time of a film), ordering politely with je voudrais and s'il vous plaît, choosing tu or vous, answering in the tense the task asks for, giving the number of details the card requires, and understanding the examiner's lines.

The fourteen flashcards collect the phrases role-plays depend on: je voudrais, the two forms of 'please', asking prices, places and times, favourite things, the '?' task, tu and vous, and ready-made frames for past, future and opinion tasks.

The written work has eight tasks: full French answers for four role-play cards with model answers, writing questions for '?' tasks, turning tu sentences into vous, correcting typical role-play mistakes, and explaining how the task works.

The role-plays are original and cover several GCSE topics; they are not taken from any exam paper.

• Complete the five tasks of a role-play card in French
• Ask correct questions in French for the '?' task
• Choose tu or vous according to the situation
• Use the tense a task requires (past, present or future)
• Give exactly the number of details a task asks for

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the DfE GCSE subject content for French, German and Spanish (September 2025 version: role play including asking and answering questions) and, for the task format, the AQA GCSE French (8652) specification (Paper 2, Role-play: five tasks).