Notes · FrenchUK · A-Levels

Literary texts and films (Works)

The Works component is Paper 2: two hours, 80 marks, twenty per cent of the A-Level. Students study either one literary text and one film or two literary texts, drawn from the prescribed list published in the current AQA specification, and write one essay in French on each, with a choice of question on each work. Every question demands a critical and analytical response to the concepts and issues of the work and to its form and technique. These notes teach the method - how to study a text or a film critically in French, how to plan, and how to write the two essays - rather than any particular work, because the prescribed list is set by AQA, chosen from by centres, and revised between specification versions.

5 sections~24 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Standard 1 · Advanced 4

T·141414 / 15

Exam profile

AO3 · Manipulate the language accurately, using a range of lexis and structure - 20 marks per essayAO4 · Show knowledge and understanding of, and respond critically and analytically to, the work studied - 20 marks per essay

Operators:analysercommenterjustifierillustrernuancerconclure

basic level

AS French (7651) requires one work rather than two - either one text or one film - and its written assessment is correspondingly shorter.

higher level

The full A-Level requires two works and two essays of approximately 300 words each, both in French, both marked equally for language (AO3) and for critical and analytical response (AO4). Neither work may be used as the subject of the individual research project.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

Literary texts and films (Works)

What Paper 2 actually demands#

StandardAQA 7652 3.4 Works - literary texts and filmsAQA 7652 4.5 Paper 2 - Writing

Know the shape of the paper exactly, because several marks are lost simply through misunderstanding it. Two hours, 80 marks in total, twenty per cent of the A-Level. You answer one question in French on each of the two works you have studied - either one text and one film, or two texts. On each work there is a choice of two questions, so you choose twice. All questions are in French and all require a critical and analytical response. No dictionaries are allowed, and you may not have the books or the films with you. Students are advised to write approximately 300 words per essay; there is no word limit and everything you write is marked, but essays of about that length have access to the full range of marks.

The marks are split evenly and independently on each essay: 20 for AO3, which is the accurate manipulation of the language and the range of lexis and structure, and 20 for AO4, which is knowledge, understanding and critical, analytical response. That fifty-fifty split has a strategic consequence that candidates routinely miss. A brilliant analysis in poor French can lose half the marks, and immaculate French with no analysis loses the other half. The essay you should aim to write is therefore a piece of controlled, structured French that happens to be about a work - not a piece of literary criticism translated into whatever French you can manage.

What the questions ask for is defined in the specification. They require a critical appreciation of the concepts and issues covered in the work, and a critical and analytical response to features such as the form and the technique of presentation, as appropriate to the work studied - the specification's own examples are the effect of narrative voice in a prose text and camera work in a film. That last clause is the whole difference between a mid-band and a top-band essay: the work is not only a story with themes, it is a made object, and how it is made is examinable.

Two rules of scope. First, the individual research project may not be based on the same literary text or film that you write about in Paper 2 - so plan the two components together at the start of the course. Second, this paper is about the works and nothing else: general knowledge of French cinema, French society or the themes of the specification earns nothing here unless it is used to illuminate the work in front of you. Contextual knowledge is valuable only as a lens - le contexte n'est utile que s'il éclaire le texte.

Worked example

Reading a Paper 2 question properly

A question reads: « Dans quelle mesure le personnage principal est-il responsable de son propre destin ? » Show how to unpack it before writing.

Identify the command
Dans quelle mesure means to what extent, and it is an invitation to nuance, not to a yes or no. An essay that argues only one side has misread the question and will be capped under AO4. Other frequent commands: Comment...?, Pourquoi...?, Peut-on dire que...?, Analysez le rôle de....
Identify the key terms and define one
Two terms carry the question: responsable and destin. Defining responsable at the start - assume-t-il ses choix, ou subit-il des forces qui le dépassent ? - immediately produces the structure of the essay.
Turn the question into a problématique
Le personnage semble d'abord agir librement ; pourtant, ses choix sont largement déterminés par son milieu. Faut-il alors parler de responsabilité ou de fatalité ? A problématique is the question restated as a tension, and it is what an introduction must contain.
Sketch a three-part answer
I. Il fait des choix et en assume certains. II. Ces choix sont conditionnés par son milieu et par le récit lui-même. III. La forme du récit - le point de vue adopté - oriente notre jugement. Part three brings in technique, which is where AO4 marks are concentrated.
Check the balance
Roughly 300 words means about 50 for the introduction, 200 for the development in three short paragraphs, and 50 for the conclusion. Anything that does not serve the problématique is cut before you start writing, not after.

Result: Problématique: le personnage semble agir librement, mais ses choix sont conditionnés par son milieu et par la manière même dont le récit est construit ; parler de responsabilité suppose donc de préciser ce que l'on entend par ce mot. Plan: I. les choix assumés - II. les déterminations - III. le point de vue narratif qui oriente notre jugement.

Typical mistakes

Writing far more than 300 words in the belief that length scores; everything is marked, but time spent on essay one is taken from essay two.
Choosing an IRP subject based on a work you are writing about in Paper 2, which the specification does not permit.

Active revision

Rédigez, pour chacune de vos deux oeuvres, une fiche d'une page : trois thèmes, trois procédés formels, cinq citations ou scènes précises, et deux jugements critiques que vous pourriez défendre.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level French (7652) specification - Works (AQA) · AQA A-level French (7652) specification - scheme of assessment (AQA)

Studying a literary text critically in French#

AdvancedAQA 7652 3.4.1 Works - literary textsAQA 7652 4.5 Paper 2 - Writing

Study a text along five axes and you will be ready for any question. Les thèmes: what the work is about, stated as tensions rather than topics - not la famille but le poids de la famille sur la liberté individuelle. Les personnages: not summaries but functions - qui fait avancer l'action, qui l'entrave, qui incarne une idée, qui évolue et qui reste figé. La structure: how the work is organised - la chronologie, les ellipses, les retours en arrière, l'ouverture et le dénouement, les parallélismes. Le point de vue: who tells the story and with how much knowledge. Le style: the sentence itself - le registre, les images, le rythme, les répétitions, l'ironie.

Narrative voice is the technique the specification names first for prose, so master its French vocabulary. Le narrateur is the voice that tells; do not confuse it with l'auteur, who wrote the book - la voix qui raconte n'est pas celle qui écrit is a distinction examiners look for. Un récit à la première personne uses je and gives access to one consciousness while limiting knowledge and reliability. Un récit à la troisième personne may be omniscient - le narrateur omniscient sait tout - or restricted to one character's perspective, la focalisation interne, or purely external, la focalisation externe, showing only what a camera would see. Add le monologue intérieur and le discours indirect libre, where a character's thoughts are reported in the narrator's voice without quotation marks.

Analysing the text means quoting it, and you write Paper 2 without the book. So build a memory bank during the course: five to eight short quotations per work, each no more than a line, each attached to a theme and a technique. A short, exactly remembered quotation is worth far more than a long, half-remembered one. Where memory fails, refer precisely instead: la scène où le personnage refuse de répondre, au moment où le récit bascule. Précision in reference is what the mark scheme calls appropriate evidence; a vague gesture at the plot is not evidence.

The vocabulary of literary analysis in French: une oeuvre, un roman, une nouvelle, une pièce de théâtre, un récit, l'intrigue, un chapitre, un extrait, un passage, une scène, une réplique, une didascalie (a stage direction), un personnage, un protagoniste, l'antagoniste, le héros, l'antihéros. Les procédés: une métaphore, une comparaison, une antithèse, une hyperbole, une litote, l'ironie, une répétition, un champ lexical, une gradation, une ellipse, un symbole. Les verbes d'analyse: souligner, mettre en évidence, traduire, révéler, suggérer, annoncer, faire écho à, renvoyer à, s'opposer à.

Worked example

Turning a theme into an analytical paragraph in French

You want to write about isolation in a novel. Build a 90-word paragraph that analyses rather than describes, using the standard three-move structure.

Move 1 - assert an interpretation, not a fact
L'isolement du personnage n'est pas seulement une situation : c'est le principe même de construction du récit. An interpretation can be argued; a fact cannot. Note the emphatic ne... pas seulement... c'est.
Move 2 - give the textual evidence
Le narrateur ne rapporte presque jamais les paroles des autres personnages, qui n'apparaissent qu'au discours indirect. Evidence must be technical here, not anecdotal - a fact about how the text is written.
Move 3 - explain the effect on the reader
Le lecteur se trouve ainsi enfermé dans une seule conscience, et partage l'isolement qu'il observe. The effect on the reader is what converts observation into analysis, and it is where AO4 marks are earned.
Add a nuance to reach the top band
Encore faut-il remarquer que ce dispositif s'assouplit dans les dernières pages, comme si l'ouverture au monde passait aussi par une ouverture de la voix narrative. Nuance shows judgement rather than a formula.
Audit the French
Half the marks are AO3. Check for one subjunctive or a compound tense, one relative pronoun, one connector of consequence, and no repetition of the same verb. Here: ne... que, ainsi, comme si, encore faut-il.

Result: L'isolement du personnage n'est pas seulement une situation : c'est le principe même de construction du récit. Le narrateur ne rapporte presque jamais les paroles des autres personnages, qui n'apparaissent qu'au discours indirect. Le lecteur se trouve ainsi enfermé dans une seule conscience et partage l'isolement qu'il observe. Encore faut-il remarquer que ce dispositif s'assouplit dans les dernières pages, comme si l'ouverture au monde passait aussi par une ouverture de la voix narrative.

Typical mistakes

Writing l'auteur nous dit when the voice is a first-person narrator distinct from the author.
Retelling the plot in place of analysis; a summary of events is not a critical response and is capped low under AO4.

Active revision

Pour votre texte, remplissez une grille à cinq colonnes - thème, personnage, structure, point de vue, style - avec deux exemples précis dans chaque colonne, dont une citation courte.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level French (7652) specification - Works (AQA)

Studying a film critically in French#

AdvancedAQA 7652 3.4.1 Works - filmsAQA 7652 4.5 Paper 2 - Writing

A film essay fails when it is written as though the film were a novel. The specification names camera work as its example of the technique a film essay must address, so an essay that discusses only story and characters cannot reach the top AO4 band however elegant its French. The five axes for a film are: le scénario et la structure, les personnages, l'image (cadrage, échelles de plan, mouvements, lumière, couleur), le son (dialogue, musique, bruits, silence), and le montage (rythme, ellipses, raccords). Prepare two or three scenes in detail rather than the whole film in outline: a closed-book exam rewards depth on a few scenes.

The essential technical French, which you will also have met in the cinema sub-theme: le plan d'ensemble, le plan moyen, le gros plan, le très gros plan; la plongée and la contre-plongée, which respectively diminish and magnify a character; le travelling, le panoramique, la caméra à l'épaule; le champ and le hors-champ, le champ / contrechamp; la profondeur de champ. For sound: la bande originale, la musique extra-diégétique (heard only by the audience) and intra-diégétique (heard by the characters), la voix off, les bruitages, le silence. For editing: le montage alterné, le plan-séquence, une ellipse, un raccord, un faux raccord, le rythme du montage.

The analytical move is always the same three steps, and it is the single most valuable habit for this paper: nommer le procédé, décrire son effet, en tirer le sens. Le réalisateur filme la scène en contre-plongée - the technique. Le personnage domine ainsi le cadre et paraît écrasant - the effect. Cette mise en scène traduit le rapport de force sans qu'aucun dialogue ne l'explicite - the meaning. Notice that the third step is what makes it analysis; the first two alone are description with technical vocabulary, which is a common and disappointing way to lose AO4 marks.

Two further points specific to film essays. First, the opening and closing sequences are almost always the richest material and are frequently the target of questions, so know both in detail - la scène d'ouverture, le générique, le plan final, le dénouement. Second, remember that a film is a collective work: use le réalisateur or la réalisatrice for the director's choices, but you may also refer to le scénariste, la direction d'acteurs, le montage and la photographie. Writing le réalisateur nous montre for every observation becomes monotonous; vary with le film met en scène, la caméra s'attarde sur, le montage rapproche, la bande-son souligne.

Worked example

Analysing an opening sequence in French

An opening sequence shows a long take following a character through a crowded street, with ambient noise and no music, ending on a close-up as they stop. Write 90 words of analysis.

Start with the structural choice
Le film s'ouvre sur un plan-séquence qui suit le personnage dans une rue bondée. Naming the plan-séquence first is right because it is the choice that governs everything else in the sequence.
Give the effect of that choice
Le refus de couper impose au spectateur la durée réelle du trajet et l'installe dans le rythme du personnage. Effect stated in terms of what happens to the viewer, not in terms of what the director wanted.
Analyse the sound
L'absence de musique extra-diégétique renforce cette impression : seuls les bruits de la rue nous parviennent, comme si le film refusait de commenter ce qu'il montre. Note comme si plus the imperfect - a strong interpretive construction.
Analyse the final shot as a change of scale
Le passage soudain au gros plan, lorsque le personnage s'arrête, isole enfin un visage dans cette foule anonyme, et c'est à cet instant seulement que le récit commence véritablement.
Close on the meaning of the whole
Toute la séquence dit ainsi le rapport du personnage au monde : d'abord noyé dans la masse, puis brusquement singularisé. This synthesis is the analytical pay-off and the top-band move.

Result: Le film s'ouvre sur un plan-séquence qui suit le personnage dans une rue bondée. Le refus de couper impose au spectateur la durée réelle du trajet et l'installe dans son rythme. L'absence de musique extra-diégétique renforce cette impression : seuls les bruits de la rue nous parviennent, comme si le film refusait de commenter ce qu'il montre. Le passage soudain au gros plan, lorsque le personnage s'arrête, isole enfin un visage dans cette foule anonyme. Toute la séquence dit ainsi son rapport au monde : d'abord noyé dans la masse, puis brusquement singularisé.

Typical mistakes

Writing a film essay that could equally describe a novel, with no reference to image, sound or editing.
Listing technical terms without interpretation; vocabulary alone is not analysis.

Active revision

Choisissez trois scènes de votre film. Pour chacune, rédigez 80 mots suivant le mouvement procédé - effet - sens, en variant le sujet grammatical de vos phrases.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level French (7652) specification - Works (AQA)

Planning and writing the essay in French#

AdvancedAQA 7652 4.5 Paper 2 - WritingAQA 7652 3.3 Grammar

L'architecture de la dissertation

Fig. 1The essay architecture to reproduce under exam conditions. The third development paragraph should be the formal one - how the work is made - which is where the specification's requirement on form and technique is met.

The French essay has a recognised architecture, and using it is worth marks under both objectives because it produces both structure and the connectors that display range. L'introduction does four things in about fifty words: une amorce that situates the work in a sentence, the presentation of the work and its subject, la problématique - the question restated as a tension - and l'annonce du plan. Le développement runs two or three short paragraphs, each with one idea, evidence and analysis, linked by connectors. La conclusion gives a bilan that answers the problématique explicitly, and may close with une ouverture, a single sentence widening the view.

Build a bank of essay formulas and rehearse them until they are automatic, because they cost no thinking time in the exam and they carry AO3 marks. To open: Dans cette oeuvre, X met en scène...; L'oeuvre s'ouvre sur... To pose the question: On peut dès lors se demander si...; La question se pose de savoir dans quelle mesure... To announce: Nous verrons d'abord..., puis..., avant d'envisager... To move on: En premier lieu; Par ailleurs; De surcroît; À l'inverse; Or. To introduce evidence: Ainsi, lorsque...; C'est notamment le cas dans la scène où...; On le voit lorsque... To conclude: Il ressort de ce qui précède que...; En définitive...; Force est de constater que...

Time and length are the practical constraints. Two hours for two essays means one hour each: about ten minutes to choose the question and plan, forty to write, ten to check. Approximately 300 words per essay is the guidance, which at roughly twenty words a line means around fifteen lines - much shorter than most candidates expect, and a reason to plan ruthlessly. The final ten minutes are not optional: dedicate one pass to verb endings and tenses, one to agreements (adjectives, past participles), and one to accents. Those three passes recover more marks than any extra sentence you could have written.

One structural warning. A three-part plan of the form thesis, antithesis, synthesis is standard in French schooling and works well, but only if the third part genuinely advances rather than repeating. The most productive third part in a Paper 2 essay is almost always the formal one: having argued about what the work says, ask how it says it, and show that the technique complicates or reinforces the argument. That move is exactly what the specification's reference to form and technique of presentation is asking for, and it is the reliable route from a competent essay to a distinguished one.

Worked example

Writing a complete introduction in French

For the question « Dans quelle mesure le dénouement de l'oeuvre est-il pessimiste ? », write a full introduction of about fifty words containing all four elements.

L'amorce - one sentence of situation
Toute fin d'oeuvre engage une interprétation de ce qui précède. A general opening sentence that is relevant to the question, not a biography of the author. Avoid the dictionary-definition opening, which wastes words.
La présentation - the work and the question's object
Dans cette oeuvre, le dénouement laisse le lecteur devant une situation apparemment sans issue. Situate the question in the work without summarising the plot.
La problématique - the tension
Faut-il pour autant y voir un pessimisme, ou bien une lucidité qui refuse la consolation ? A problématique offers two readings; it does not ask a question whose answer is obvious.
L'annonce du plan - three steps
Nous examinerons d'abord les éléments qui justifient une lecture pessimiste, puis ceux qui la nuancent, avant de montrer que la forme même du dénouement interdit toute conclusion tranchée. Note the future tense and avant de plus infinitive.
Count and check
About fifty words. Then check: one future, one subjunctive-free but complex subordination, one connector of sequence, no plot summary. If any element is missing, the introduction has not done its job.

Result: Toute fin d'oeuvre engage une interprétation de ce qui précède. Dans cette oeuvre, le dénouement laisse le lecteur devant une situation apparemment sans issue. Faut-il pour autant y voir un pessimisme, ou bien une lucidité qui refuse la consolation ? Nous examinerons d'abord les éléments qui justifient une lecture pessimiste, puis ceux qui la nuancent, avant de montrer que la forme même du dénouement interdit toute conclusion tranchée.

Typical mistakes

Writing an introduction that summarises the plot instead of posing a question.
Making the third paragraph a restatement of the first two rather than a genuine advance - typically the formal analysis.

Active revision

Rédigez trois introductions complètes de 50 mots (amorce, présentation, problématique, annonce du plan) pour trois questions différentes sur la même oeuvre, en une demi-heure au total.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level French (7652) specification - scheme of assessment (AQA)

From narration to argument: fixing the standard failings#

AdvancedAQA 7652 4.5 Paper 2 - WritingAQA 7652 4.7 Assessment criteria - AO3 and AO4

The commonest failure by a wide margin is le résumé - retelling the story instead of arguing about it. Its symptoms are recognisable: paragraphs that begin with a moment in the plot rather than with an idea, a chronological order that follows the work rather than the argument, and verbs of narration where verbs of analysis should be. The cure is structural: every paragraph must open with a claim, not an event. Compare Le personnage quitte alors sa famille - narration - with Le départ du personnage marque moins une libération qu'un déplacement du même conflit - argument. The second sentence contains the first and adds a reading.

The second failing is unsupported assertion - a claim with no evidence, which the mark scheme addresses directly when it requires students to select relevant information to support their arguments and to use appropriate evidence to justify their conclusions. Every claim needs one precise piece of evidence: a short quotation, a named scene, a structural fact. Three claims each with one piece of evidence beat six claims with none. If you cannot find evidence for a claim, that is information: the claim is probably wrong or too vague to defend.

The third failing is technical, and it is a failure of French rather than of thought: the essay is written in the wrong tense. French literary and film analysis uses le présent de narration for what happens in the work - Le personnage refuse, le film s'ouvre sur, la caméra s'attarde - reserving past tenses for the context of composition or for events prior to the narrated present. Writing an essay in the passé composé throughout reads as a report of something you watched rather than an analysis of a work. Choose the present and hold it.

The fourth failing is a mismatch between register and content: colloquialisms, the first person overused, and the reader addressed directly. Prefer nous or on to je for analytical statements - on peut y voir, nous verrons; use je sparingly and only for an explicit judgement - à mes yeux, je dirais que. Avoid c'est génial, ça montre que, il y a beaucoup de. And use the vocabulary of critical judgement instead: cette lecture paraît discutable, cette interprétation se heurte à, le film évite l'écueil de, le texte assume sa part d'ambiguïté. That register is learnable, and half the marks depend on it.

Worked example

Converting narration into argument

Rewrite this weak paragraph so that it argues: Le personnage part de chez lui. Il rencontre des difficultés. Il revient à la fin. C'est très triste et ça montre que la vie est dure.

Diagnose
Four sentences, four narrated events plus one vague judgement. No claim, no evidence, no technique, and a colloquial register (ça montre que). This paragraph would sit in the lowest bands for AO4 and would drag AO3 down with it.
Replace the first event with a claim
Le départ du personnage n'ouvre pas le récit d'une émancipation, mais celui d'une répétition. The claim is arguable and specific, and it announces what the paragraph will demonstrate.
Supply evidence, including a structural fact
Les épreuves qu'il traverse reproduisent en effet, une à une, les conflits qu'il croyait fuir, et la construction circulaire du récit - il revient au point de départ - le confirme. Structure is evidence, and it is evidence of the kind AO4 specifically rewards.
Replace the vague judgement with an interpretation
Ce retour ne signale donc pas un échec personnel, mais l'idée que le milieu façonne les trajectoires plus sûrement que la volonté. The interpretation is now a proposition someone could dispute, which is what makes it analysis.
Fix the register and check the French
ça montre que has gone; the tense is the present of narration throughout; the paragraph contains one negative restrictive construction (ne... pas... mais), one relative with a preceding object (qu'il croyait fuir), and one appositional dash. That is AO3 range as well as AO4 substance.

Result: Le départ du personnage n'ouvre pas le récit d'une émancipation, mais celui d'une répétition. Les épreuves qu'il traverse reproduisent en effet, une à une, les conflits qu'il croyait fuir, et la construction circulaire du récit - il revient au point de départ - le confirme. Ce retour ne signale donc pas un échec personnel, mais l'idée que le milieu façonne les trajectoires plus sûrement que la volonté.

Typical mistakes

Retelling the plot chronologically, which caps AO4 no matter how good the French is.
Making claims with no textual evidence; the mark scheme requires evidence to justify conclusions.

Active revision

Prenez un paragraphe que vous avez déjà écrit sur votre oeuvre. Réécrivez-le en commençant chaque phrase par une idée et non par un événement, au présent de narration, avec une preuve précise par affirmation.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level French (7652) specification - scheme of assessment (AQA) · AQA A-level French (7652) assessment resources (AQA)

References & sources

Sources

AQA

Literary texts and films (Works)

5 sections~24 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Standard 1 · Advanced 4

Literary texts and films (Works)

Key points

Reading a Paper 2 question properly

Key points

Turning a theme into an analytical paragraph in French

Key points

Analysing an opening sequence in French

Key points

Writing a complete introduction in French

Key points

Converting narration into argument

Sources

Literary texts and films (Works)

Key points

Reading a Paper 2 question properly

Key points

Turning a theme into an analytical paragraph in French

Key points

Analysing an opening sequence in French

Key points

Writing a complete introduction in French

Key points

Converting narration into argument

Sources