Whose is it? — Possessives and Demonstratives
🏠 Whose is it? — Possessives and Demonstratives
Possessive adjectives in French agree with the gender and number of the noun that is owned — not with the gender of the owner. This is the single most important rule for this topic.
Earn the mark scheme marks
💡 Exam Tips & Common Errors
- In AQA writing and speaking tasks, using possessive adjectives correctly throughout a paragraph (not just once) signals grammatical control and picks up AO3 marks.
- Watch out for leur (possessive adjective, invariable singular) vs leurs (plural) — English has no equivalent distinction.
- In reading tasks, a possessive pronoun (le sien, la leur) can be ambiguous about ownership — use context from the whole passage to determine who owns what.
- Higher students: demonstrative pronouns (celui-ci/celle-là etc.) appear frequently in longer reading texts and in the translation task — recognising them is crucial for AO4.
❌ Common error: Lucas aime sa sœur → intended to mean "Lucas loves HIS sister" but sa is correct here. The problem arises when students write son sœur (because Lucas is male).
✓ Correct: Lucas aime sa sœur. (because sœur is feminine, whatever the gender of the owner)
Why it costs marks: Choosing the wrong possessive adjective gender is a direct AO3 error. The rule is clear in the AQA specification: agreement is with the gender of the noun owned, not the person who owns it. This mistake is extremely common among English speakers because English has no equivalent rule (we choose his/her based on the owner's gender).