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Travel and Tourism
✈️ Travel and Tourism
Travel and tourism vocabulary appears across all four AQA 8652 skills papers — you must be able to describe transport, accommodation, holiday activities, and give extended opinions. In the writing and speaking exams, planning a future trip or recounting a past holiday is one of the most reliable ways to demonstrate tense control and complex language.
Transport
Knowing how to talk about travel means controlling a range of transport vocabulary and the verbs that go with each mode.
Earn the mark scheme marks
💡 Exam Tips & Common Errors
- In the writing exam, show off tense range: perfect (past trip), present (what you generally do), future or conditional (dream holiday). This directly targets AO2 marks.
- Don't just list activities — add parce que, car, or ce qui / ce que to explain opinions. A bare list scores low on AO2.
- For accommodation, use the full noun phrase: une chambre double avec douche — this shows lexical range.
- In speaking, pause fillers like alors, eh bien, en fait are fine — they give you thinking time without dropping into English.
- Remember: l'auberge de jeunesse is feminine — une auberge not un auberge.
❌ Common error: Je suis allé(e) à Espagne.
✓ Correct: Je suis allé(e) en Espagne.
Why it costs marks: Feminine countries and regions use en, not à. This is tested directly in AQA 8652 grammar questions and penalised in writing (AO2 accuracy). The rule: feminine country → en; masculine country → au; plural country → aux; city → à.
❌ Common error: J'ai voyagé par avion.
✓ Correct: J'ai voyagé en avion. (or: en voiture / en train)
Why it costs marks: English speakers often use "by" → par, but French uses en for most modes of transport. Par avion exists in formal/postal contexts only.