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L'école et le travail — School, subjects and your future
🏫 L'école et le travail — School, subjects and your future
School is the setting of your daily life as a GCSE student — and AQA knows it. You will be asked about subjects, teachers, opinions on school, and your future plans in writing, speaking and reading tasks. Master this vocabulary and you will never be stuck for something to say. Your future ambitions are also a natural way to show off past and future tenses in the same paragraph.
Les matières scolaires — School subjects
Learn both the French name and its gender (most are masculine, but there are important exceptions).
Earn the mark scheme marks
💡 Exam Tips & Common Errors
- In the speaking exam, if asked about school, go beyond one subject — give a favourite AND a least favourite with reasons. This is worth extra communication marks.
- Pair a present opinion with a future plan for instant tense variety: j'aime les sciences... donc je vais faire des études de médecine.
- In reading/listening, watch for negative opinion phrases: je trouve ça inutile, je suis nul en — these signal a negative evaluation.
- For the translation task (AO4), remember that le baccalauréat → "the baccalaureate" is a valid translation; you don't need to Anglicise it.
❌ Common error: Je suis bon en maths. (when the speaker is female)
✓ Correct: Je suis bonne en maths. (female speaker) / Je suis fort(e) en maths.
Why it costs marks: Adjectives agree with the grammatical subject. If you are a girl writing about yourself and use bon without the -e, examiners mark it as an AO3 agreement error. Note: both fort(e) en and bon(ne) en are correct French; fort(e) en sounds slightly more natural for school subjects and avoids this agreement pitfall being forgotten.