Secondary French - End of year speaking examinations and Roland Garros
7th June 2025
Roland Garros, the French Open, is a tennis tournament that most French people associate with examinations. Indeed, the end of May-beginning of June is the Baccalaureat examination period and most of us reminisce about our college years at that time, remembering having to try to revise while captivating tennis matches were being played. This year is no different, the level of play is incredible and high ranked tennis players face tough competition from determined players carried by the Parisian crowd. Roland Garros is a fantastic tournament well worth watching and attending if possible. It is also rich in French culture and if you want to dive into it, you can even visit the virtual museums: https://www.rolandgarros.com/en-us/3d-art-museum-infosys
Roland Garros also rhymes with examinations 9000km away from France, in a different hemisphere. It is indeed this week that students of French sat their end of year speaking examination. Students in Year 8 prepared two role plays and six questions for a general conversation on topics studied during the year. Year 9 students were expected to prepare answers to a substantial number of questions on a wide range of topics. On the day of the examination, not all questions were asked in order to assess the students’ understanding of the questions and avoid rote learning and prepare them for the IGCSE examination. Students were expected to use 3 tenses, vary the sentence structures and use a wide range of vocabulary to avoid repetitions. All the students can be proud of their effort and should now focus on the next three papers, listening, reading and writing.
Mme Mwangi
