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Trap Words and Flips
🎧 Trap Words and Flips
AQA Paper 1 (Listening) is designed to catch students who stop listening too early. A speaker will say one thing, then immediately contradict, qualify or reverse it — and the mark goes to students who heard the whole sentence. Knowing the exact patterns examiners use to build these traps can turn a C into an A.
The Main Trap Patterns
Au début je n'aimais pas du tout le sport, mais maintenant j'adore ça.
Earn the mark scheme marks
💡 Exam Tips & Common Errors
- In the AQA listening paper, questions are in the order of the recording — read the options before the audio starts.
- Circle or underline negative particles in the question stem so you remember to listen for them.
- If a speaker hesitates or says enfin / c'est-à-dire, a correction or clarification is coming — do not choose yet.
- Vocabulary confusion pairs are most dangerous in photo-description questions: elle regarde ≠ elle voit.
- For time-frame traps: identify the tense of the verb before choosing — present, past or future?
❌ Common error: Hearing "je ne veux plus aller au club" and ticking option A: "She wants to go to the club."
✓ Correct: Ne…plus = no longer. The correct answer is "She no longer wants to go to the club."
Why it costs marks: This is an AO2 (understanding) mark. Selecting the positive interpretation when the negative is explicit shows the examiner that the student did not decode the listening text accurately. It is one of the most common single-mark losses on AQA Paper 1.