James Dempsey

Don't worry about it at all.

One thing to be mindful of is the verb être there.

It can be a little bit confusing.

It can look, well, it looks like the word F-U-T.

You might look at it and think F-U.

But basically, just be mindful that F-U-T is was in that tense.

Other than that, you'll be absolutely fine.

Then when it comes to reading comprehension, you want to build context, right?

Context is everything.

So I would actually start reading the questions before I start reading the text and I would work backwards through the questions.

So start with the last one because that's the only one in English.

And it usually is asking you to give some sort of details about the characters, the people you're about to encounter in the text.

So you can build a bit more context on who exactly it is you're going to encounter.

then work my way back through the questions, back to question one, and then start reading the text.

The text is broken up into sections, so go section by section and take your time.

Well, some of them have multiple parts, but you're looking at about 12, I think.

Yeah.

The oral is probably the bête noire of the French exam.

And I always tell my students right from first year to approach every oral with kind of five basic rules of listening.

And rule number one for me is just prepare to panic because the language is coming at you.