GCSE French: Sounds and Spelling for Dictation

Since the reformed GCSE French was first taught in September 2024, every listening paper includes a dictation: you hear short French sentences and write down exactly what you hear, and you are credited for accurate spelling. The DfE subject content also lists the sound-symbol correspondences that students must know, because the same knowledge is needed to read French aloud in the speaking test. This material trains the link between the sounds of French and the way they are written.

The quiz has twelve questions. Some ask which word contains a given sound: the nasal vowel of bon, the closed eu of deux, the 'y' sound of -ille in fille, the 'z' sound of a single s between two vowels. Others tackle the endings that sound identical but are spelt differently: joué, jouer and jouez all sound the same, so the grammar of the sentence (a perfect tense, an infinitive after aller, a vous form) decides the spelling. Two questions deal with the classic homophones a/à and ou/où, one with liaison, one with silent final consonants and the CaReFuL rule, and one asks you to spell a word you hear in a dictation. Sounds are described with English sound-alikes, so every question can be answered on screen without audio.

The flashcards give eighteen spelling patterns from the DfE list, each with an English sound-alike and example words with their meanings: silent final consonants, é/-er/-ez, è/ê/ai, ou and u, eu/œu, au/eau/ô, oi/oy, the four nasal vowels, ç and soft c, qu, ch and j, gn, -tion and -ien, h and th, s between vowels, and liaison with s, x, t and n.

The written work gives eight tasks to complete on paper: choosing between spellings that sound alike and explaining why, correcting five mistakes in a student's dictation, marking the liaisons in a sentence, deciding which -ent endings are silent, spelling nasal vowels, using the common homophones in sentences of your own, and describing the dictation task with strategies for it. Each task comes with a model answer and marking points.

For the exam format itself, boards set the details: for example, AQA's dictation is at least 20 words at Foundation tier and 30 at Higher tier, each sentence is heard three times, and two words come from outside the vocabulary list, which is exactly where sound-spelling rules help most.

• Spell French words heard in a dictation using the GCSE sound-symbol correspondences
• Choose between -é, -er and -ez, and between a/à, ou/où, et/est and son/sont, from the grammar of the sentence
• Recognise silent final consonants, silent -ent verb endings and the CaReFuL exceptions
• Identify the nasal vowels and their spellings (an/en, on, in/ain, un)
• Make and recognise liaison with s, x, t and n
• Check a dictation for agreement and accent errors

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the DfE GCSE subject content for French, German and Spanish (September 2025 version: dictation requirement and Annex A French sound-symbol correspondences) and, for the task format, the AQA GCSE French (8652) specification.