Preparing for MFL GCSE Writing Exams

Do your French, German and Spanish GCSE students struggle with knowing what to write in their writing exams? They’re not alone!

It’s very common for students’ minds to go completely blank when faced with a longer writing task in the GCSE exams, but with the right preparation, they can totally ace this paper!

Read on to find out how to use a model answer to help your students feel fully prepared for their writing exams. For examples of how to do this with your Key Stage 4 students, download these free 150-word writing lessons now.

1. Work through a model answer using my “exploiting one text method”. Start with a listening task (read it yourself or use an AI text to speech tool such as luvvoice.com), do some comprehension questions and translate into English.
2. Display/hand out mark schemes and give the model answer a mark together as a class. Discuss your reasons for the mark - the model answers in the free lessons would pretty much get full marks but can definitely be improved.
3. Work as a class to improve the model answer. Show students how to add connectives, more complex sentences, more opinions with a range of adjectives, etc. This is particularly true of the overlap writing tasks and the longer writing tasks for the higher paper. For the shorter writing tasks in the foundation paper, they don’t need complex language, but they MUST cover all bullet points.
4. Give students a time limit (eg 15-20 minutes) to write their own version of the text in “exam conditions”. This will depend on the length of writing and the length of the exam but should closely resemble the amount of time they should allow themselves for this task in the exam.
5. Mark their answers according to GCSE mark schemes and work together to improve their answers. Don't miss this vital step! Show them how they can improve and allow time for them to redraft their answers.