GCSE French: Reading and Vocabulary

Ten short French passages, two from each of five familiar topic areas: family and friends, where you live and where you went, school and its rules, a part-time job and what comes after, and the wider world. Each passage is printed in full and followed by four English readings of it.

Only one is right, and the wrong ones are wrong for reasons that exist in the French rather than being obviously absurd. A negative that is easy to skate over — "il n'y a rien à faire". A tense that puts something in the past when the option puts it in the future. A word that is described as clean when the option calls the room dirty. An opinion held by the friend rather than by the writer, which is the trap in the question about the mobile phone rule. Each explanation quotes the two or three French words the answer turns on and translates them.

Seven flashcards give the words the passages turn on: têtu, s'entendre avec, se disputer, tomber en panne, se plaindre, le bruit and interdit. The other five are false friends that cost marks in a reading paper: collège is a secondary school and not a college, décevant is disappointing and not deceiving, attendre is to wait for and not to attend, blessé is injured and not blessed, and ennuyeux is above all boring. The written tasks are short translations built from the passages, six into English and two into French.

Every person, place and situation here was invented for this set. Exam board specifications, past papers and mark schemes are copyright material and nothing is taken from them.

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• Read a short French passage and choose the English statement that matches it
• Notice a negative, and read it as changing the meaning rather than skipping over it
• Tell a past narrative apart from a future plan by its tense and its time expressions
• Separate the writer's opinion from an opinion they are reporting from someone else
• Recognise the key vocabulary of the passages (têtu, s'entendre avec, tomber en panne, se plaindre, interdit) and false friends such as collège, décevant, attendre and blessé

Nous avons passé une semaine dans un petit hôtel près de la plage. La chambre était propre et le petit déjeuner était excellent, mais il y avait beaucoup de bruit la nuit à cause de la route. J'ai écrit un e-mail au directeur pour me plaindre, et il ne m'a toujours pas répondu. — one of ten passages written for this set.