French Lessons & News

In this blog post, THE FRENCH MASTER GH will take you through the steps to mark subjective French questions popularly known as ESSAY QUESTIONS or PAPER 2. Kindly subscribe to my YouTube channel here to enjoy series of my video lessons. INDICATION OF MARKS: Each grammar mistake is underlined and a stroke put in the left-hand margin. Each stroke represents ½ marks: therefore, a candidate who makes 20 mistakes will lose all the 20 marks allocated to grammar. A consequential repeated error is ringed. Positive markings for content are shown in the right-hand margin while negative markings (grammar mistakes) are shown in the left-hand margin. All fractions are retained until the grand total mark, when the ½ is approximately to one full mark. The total is written in the bottom right-hand corner of the paper and ringed after all the fractions; deductions have been taken care of. This is then transferred to the front page of the answer sheet. DEVIATION: A candidate who deviates completely from the subject matter should be awarded a maximum mark of 2. Where there is a partial deviation in the essay, please circle the deviated portion. This should not be counted as part of the essay. MEANINGLESS ESSAY: is an essay that does not make sense. Eg. Compilation of words either French or English words or both. Such an essay attracts zero. CONTENT This refers to a correct or appropriate response to an item or question. The candidate scores the full mark, if he or she responds correctly in a full or complete sentence. However, a correct answer in an incomplete sentence attracts ½ of the full mark for the item. GRAMMAR: Grammar mistakes include: wrong tense, omitted words, wrong article, preposition, gender, number, person, adverb, pronoun, expression and any other wrong form of grammar. Omission of accents should not be penalized except in the past participle form. Misapplication of capital letters is not penalized. Deduct 1 mark for consistent use of wrong tense (if this occurs 7 or more times.) NOTE: Consequential errors are not penalized e.g. c’est un montre blanc. Blanc is a consequential error because the candidate used blanc to agree with ‘un’. that’s why , we should not penalized him/her for the use of blanc, instead of blanche. We should penalize him for the use of ‘un’ before ‘montre’. Any answer written in English does not attract a mark for content. It must be circled and not counted among written words of the essay. Eg . Esther boit water, un goat est près de Esther. SUPERFLUITY: A superfluous word is a grammatical mistake where it touches on a point of grammar and it is penalized. E.g. Sami se lève très tôt en le matin. The ‘en’ is a superfluous word and it is penalized. N.B. A candidate loses ½ mark for every grammatical mistake made. OVERALL EXPRESSIVENESS (OE) This is the examiner’s assessment of the whole composition taking into account presentation, range of vocabulary choice of words, grammatical idiomatic expressions etc. CLARITY Has the examiner clearly understood what the candidate has written? If yes then it is clear. Candidate who writes in English score zero. https://youtu.be/R8jO30oM2Ak

French Lessons & News

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