This exam tips covers Exam Tips & Common Errors within The passive, superlatives and en + present participle for GCSE French. Revise The passive, superlatives and en + present participle in Core Grammar Toolkit for GCSE French with 15 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. This topic appears regularly enough that it should still be part of a steady revision cycle. It is section 6 of 6 in this topic. Treat this as a marking guide for what examiners are looking for, not just a fact list.
💡 Exam Tips & Common Errors
- AQA Higher writing mark schemes reward "a variety of tenses and grammatical structures." Using both a passive and a superlative in your essay will directly contribute to AO3 marks for grammatical complexity.
- The passive is particularly useful in AQA writing tasks about society, environment, or school — e.g., Des progrès ont été faits (Progress has been made), La décision sera prise (The decision will be made).
- For superlatives in speaking tasks, meilleur and pire are high-frequency and mark-worthy — practise C'est le meilleur / la pire chose que…
- In the AQA translation into French, passive sentences are a common test of grammatical knowledge — know the structure cold.
- Watch for past participle agreement in passive sentences — examiners specifically look for this at Higher.
❌ Common error: C'est le film le plus intéressant que tous.
✓ Correct: C'est le film le plus intéressant de tous.
Why it costs marks: After a superlative, French uses de (not que, not dans, not parmi) to mean "in/of" the group. que is used for comparatives ("more … than"), not superlatives. Writing le plus intéressant que tous confuses the two structures and is an AO3 grammatical accuracy error. Examiners note this as one of the most frequent Higher-tier mistakes in the AQA French writing component.
❌ Common error (passive): Le gâteau est mangé — past participle left as mangé even when the subject is feminine: La tarte est mangé.
✓ Correct: La tarte est mangée. (feminine subject → mangée)
Why it costs marks: The past participle in a passive construction is an adjective — it must agree with the subject in gender and number. Forgetting agreement is a direct AO3 mark penalty, and it is especially easy to forget when the structure looks like a perfect tense.
Practice questions for The passive, superlatives and en + present participle
Which sentence correctly uses the passive voice in French?
Which past participle form correctly completes this passive sentence? 'Les lettres ont été _____ par la secrétaire.'