MFL GCSE revision top tips 

Lara (yr13) gives some advice on revising for languages at GCSE. 

After receiving several requests, I thought it would be helpful to share Sixth Form’s top tips for acing GCSE modern foreign languages.  

To start with, the most important thing is to master all the vocab in the textbook. The key to mastering vocab is repetition; try to go through and test yourself on all the vocab as many times as you can to make sure it is cemented into your memory – don’t forget to translate from the target language back into English as well (this helps for reading exams)! 

The exam boards love to test obscure vocab that is only mentioned once or twice in the textbook so when going through exercises in class, past papers or lessons with the language assistants, note any vocab that you find tricky and accumulate a list to focus on when it comes to revising.  

The listening part of the exam gets easier the more you get used to it, so to prepare for this, expose yourself to as much spoken language as you can. The most helpful and beneficial way to revise listening exams is doing past paper style questions and the listening exercises in your textbook, so do as many of these as you can. 

You could also find time to listen to music or podcasts (I recommend Duolingo (linked below)). Get accustomed to the pronunciation for different letter combinations so that if you hear a word you don’t know in a test you can try to spell it out and decipher it that way.  

Another great way to expose yourself to the language is watching children’s TV with subtitles on, below I have linked Peppa Pig in French, German and Spanish. Reading what you’re listening to can help with your own pronunciation and fluency as well as improve your comprehension of the spoken word. Again, this should be something that you do in addition to listening exercises and exam questions. 

Another top tip that I wish I had known before my GCSEs is to practice listening past papers in imperfect conditions. Of course, in the actual exam, people won’t be speaking over the recording, but I found that the rustling of papers, echoing in the auditorium and general background noise just as distracting, so try to prepare yourself for this!  

Peppa Pig:

French: https://youtube.com/@peppapigfrancaisofficielle?si=FGZMA5z-iDycOLYQ

German: https://youtube.com/@peppapigdeutschoffizieller?si=zen1gOTcDzCHQk50

Spanish: https://youtube.com/@peppapigespanollatinooficial?si=r3qEePtwvqrXyPJZ ]

The writing exam is great as you have lots of control over this paper. I always found it easiest to immediately jot down in the target language the key phrases and tricky vocab that relates to the theme before collating ideas for each paragraph. 

If you are to take away only one thing from this article, let it be this; make a list of all the grammatical structures and tenses that get the top marks and memorise the list. At the beginning of the writing exam write out this list and then as you write your answer, you can check off the techniques as you go along. This way, you can be sure you have a wide range of grammar, here is an example list that can be adapted and applied to multiple MFLs: 

Another thing the exam boards love to throw in are long words that have hidden words inside. Lots of words may seem completely foreign at first but if you look closely, you will see that there a word you already know embedded in it, and the chances are that these two words are related, and you can infer the meaning. 

Something you can do to get accustomed to reading another language is to set your phone into the language you are learning, I found this helped with getting used to approaching unseen vocabulary.  

To do the best you possible can in a foreign language GCSE, you need to feel secure in all the tenses you have been taught. I found that having a cheat sheet on each one that you can return to time and time again really helped. Make sure you can differentiate between and know how to form different tenses; from there you can then go on to build more complex sentences.  

TOP TIP: irregular verbs often feature in translations and readings, so make sure you know the conjugations and different tenses for these verbs! 

To prepare for an oral exam you need to practice speaking out loud and focus on pronunciation and thinking on your feet. Avoid memorising set answers for every possible conversation question that could come up, instead, I think getting confident at coming up with answers on the spot is the way to go. Try memorising some general short phrases that you can use in any context, make these feature a piece of fancy grammar so you can be certain to fit a wide range of techniques into your answers.  

My last tip for oral exams is to practice preparing the photo card in timed conditions, it’s a rush getting down all your ideas on the spot, so, in revision, try to get used to the timings.   

For general GCSE revision, I recommend making timetables based on quantity of work rather than time, i.e. If you have to learn vocab, put a space to revise each module in your timetable rather than ‘1 hour on vocab’, this way you know you will have accomplished all your revision by the exam.  

Finally, make sure you give yourself breaks! Not just small breaks within each day but days off and time to relax! 

Good luck with all your GCSEs!