This exam tips covers Exam Tips & Common Errors within Dictation spelling traps: homophones and silent endings for GCSE French. Revise Dictation spelling traps: homophones and silent endings in Dictation Technique for GCSE French with 15 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. This topic shows up very often in GCSE exams, so students should be able to explain it clearly, not just recognise the term. It is section 4 of 4 in this topic. Treat this as a marking guide for what examiners are looking for, not just a fact list.
💡 Exam Tips & Common Errors
- Use the replacement test for every homophone pair — it takes 1 second and is reliable.
- Don't guess accents — if you cannot remember whether a word has an accent, write the word clearly without one rather than adding a random accent in the wrong place (which is also an error).
- Make a personal list of the words you misspell in practice dictations. Your list will be more useful than any generic list.
- Practise writing s'appelle, appartement, intéressant, and malheureusement from memory weekly — these are the top recurring errors.
- Remember: peuvent-être doesn't exist. Peut-être is always one fixed phrase with a hyphen and refers to "maybe", not "they can be".
❌ Common error: il a manger une pomme.
✓ Correct: il a mangé une pomme.
Why it costs marks: After avoir in the perfect tense, the -er infinitive ending and the -é past participle ending sound completely identical: [mɑ̃ʒe]. In writing, the past participle must be spelled -é. Writing the infinitive -er after avoir is the single most common dictation error at GCSE. Check: is there an auxiliary verb (avoir/être) just before? → use the past participle ending (-é, -i, -u).
❌ Common error: les enfants joue dans le jardin.
✓ Correct: les enfants jouent dans le jardin.
Why it costs marks: The third-person plural present tense ending -ent is completely silent. Students who hear [ʒu] write joue (singular). But les enfants is plural, so the verb must agree: jouent. In dictation, always check: if the subject is plural (ils, elles, les + noun), the verb needs -ent.
Practice questions for Dictation spelling traps: homophones and silent endings
In French dictation, which sentence uses 'à' (with accent) correctly?
Which sentence uses 'où' (with accent) correctly?