GCE Advanced Level - StudyGuide.PK

Question 19Candidates tended to get the first point, concerning the numbers returning to the same spot year after year,but not the second.Question 20The families’ disposition was usually well described, but the youngsters were often described as sitting underthe stars or draped in or sitting under toiles.ConclusionThe paper was possibly slightly more demanding than in previous years, with some of the concepts in thePremière partie being more difficult than usual. The Deuxième partie provided opportunities for everycandidate to score a certain number of marks, and for the best amongst them to shine by providing thoseextra details which yielded the maximum marks.Paper 9112/02TranslationGeneral commentsThe passage was marked out of 50, being divided into a number of boxes worth one mark each, with fiveboxes being worth 2 marks. There was a wide range of performance with scores from single figures to a littleabove 40. Marks were slightly lower than last year, which may have been because there were fewer nominalconstructions in the text and rather more constructions involving verb tenses or moods.The passage for translation in this paper is always taken from a fictional narrative and involves speech, thereporting of events and the description of people and objects. Candidates therefore need to be able tomanipulate formal syntax and less formal registers of French.The vocabulary was generally of a level which candidates at this level might be expected to know.‘Football match’ was un match de football, but the journalistic rencontre (de football) was accepted.‘The rules’ was often rendered as les règlements instead of les règles.While ‘the game’ was generally correctly rendered as le jeu, some candidates used an incorrect plural form(le jeux), while others thought that it referred to the particular match.‘Something’ is quelque chose and candidates who treated this as one word were penalised.The expression ‘a big city’ was often correctly translated as une grande ville, but weaker candidates usedsimply une ville, or une cité, une capitale or une métropole.The English word ‘places’ was too frequently translated as places, where the correct translation would havebeen lieux or endroits.Curiously, candidates opted for roundabout translations of ‘secret club’, choosing more difficult translationssuch as une organisation clandestine instead of the more obvious un club secret.The use of -ç- proved difficult for many candidates, who used it indiscriminately in such words andexpressions as cela, excites, parce que, concernant, ce, c’est, ici, facile. There was confusion between thewritten forms of the final sounds in était and été. In some cases, accents were treated with scant regard, asif any mark above a letter was considered adequate. Minor spelling mistakes are taken into account onlywhen the total reaches three or more. If, however, the omission or addition of an accent causes a change oftense, mood or word class (e.g. a v. à) this is regarded as a serious error and is penalised accordingly.The narrative tense for the passage could be either the past historic (passé simple) or the perfect (passécomposé). Deviation from the first tense chosen was penalised. The range of tenses required included thepresent, the imperfect, the pluperfect and the conditional. The subjunctive was needed for the constructionbeginning ‘although they often watched…’ and in the subordinate clauses of the sentences ‘I really wantedus to be friends’ and ‘I was afraid that she wouldn’t understand’. Because the subjunctive is such a difficultconstruction, any tense of this mood was deemed to be acceptable. The sentence ‘I’ve lived there for tenyears’ required the present tense of the verb following depuis. This construction proved very difficult formany candidates, although it is very common in French.22