AQA A Level French Speaking Cards: What Is On Them and How They Are Marked

The stimulus card is the most predictable part of A Level French speaking, and the part students prepare least well. You cannot know which card you will get, but you can know exactly what will be on it, exactly what the examiner will do with it, and exactly where the marks sit. All of that is published.

This page covers the AQA card in detail, then sets out how Edexcel's and Eduqas's card tasks differ, because they differ in ways that catch out anyone revising from the wrong board's material. For the whole qualification, see the A Level French guide.

What is actually on an AQA card

AQA's specification describes the cards as containing images, text and three questions. The published card sets show a consistent layout, top to bottom:

  1. The theme, named in English, for example Aspects of French-speaking society: current trends.
  2. The sub-theme, named in French, for example La famille en voie de changement.
  3. A headline in French, set like a press headline.
  4. An image, usually: a photograph illustrating the headline.
  5. A short block of French text, news-style, a few sentences long. This almost always carries hard data: percentages, ages, numbers, a dated comparison, or a quoted expert.
  6. Three numbered questions in French.

Two things to note about that list. First, not every card has an image. In the published June 2022 set, the cards on youth politics and on protests and strikes carried no photograph at all: the stimulus was a headline plus bullet points. Do not build a technique that depends on there being a picture.

Second, the three printed questions are for the examiner to ask you. They are not yours to answer in advance and they are not the questions you have to ask. They follow the same progression on every card:

  • Question 1: comprehension. What does the material say? This tests whether you have read it.
  • Question 2: reaction. What do you make of the information?
  • Question 3: widening. How does this play out in France or elsewhere in the French-speaking world, drawing on what you know.

Because the progression is fixed, you can rehearse the shape of the answer before you have ever seen a card: read it, react to it, widen it.

The single most costly misunderstanding

Describing the photograph earns you nothing.

AQA's 2023 examiner report states this directly: describing what can be seen in the photograph is not appropriate, because the material the student is being assessed on is what is printed on the card.

This matters because describing the picture is exactly what a nervous student does. It fills time, it feels like French, and it scores nothing on the assessment objective it is meant to be serving. The marks for understanding are marks for understanding the text: the headline, the sentences, the numbers.

The same report adds a detail worth knowing: teacher-examiners are told not to read the headline aloud, because the headline is part of the material whose understanding is being tested. It is assessed content. Read it properly in your five minutes and refer to it.

How you get your card

The teacher-examiner gives you two cards, drawn from two different themes, following a sequencing table supplied with the confidential materials. They also avoid the sub-theme of your individual research project. You choose one. The card you do not choose is taken back immediately before the test starts.

So the choice is a real one, and it is made on sight of both cards. A practical consequence: choose on the strength of the text, not the topic. A sub-theme you like with four statistics you cannot interpret is a worse card than a sub-theme you find dull with two clear numbers in it.

The five minutes

Preparation is five minutes, at the start of the whole test, in the exam room, supervised by the teacher-examiner. The rules:

  • You may make notes, but only on the Additional Answer Sheet provided. The candidate instructions on the card booklet state in capitals that you must not write on the card.
  • There is no word limit on your notes. AQA's guidance advises bullet points rather than a script, because reading aloud costs you fluency marks.
  • You may refer to your notes during the card discussion. You hand the card and the notes to the examiner before the research-project section begins.
  • No dictionary, at any point, including during preparation.

A five-minute plan that fits the marks:

  1. Read the headline and the text properly: around ninety seconds. Underline every number and every comparison on your note sheet. This is where marks are won and lost.
  2. Note two or three things to say about the wider sub-theme: an example, a contrast, something from a country other than France.
  3. Write out your two questions. See below. AQA's 2022 examiner report records that students who wrote their questions down during preparation found this a very effective strategy.
  4. Leave the rest. Do not draft sentences you intend to read.

The two questions you must ask

This is the part with an explicit, published penalty attached, and the part most students improvise badly.

You must ask the teacher-examiner two questions arising from the material on the card. You invent them; they are not printed anywhere. AQA sets four rules for what counts:

  1. The question must seek information or an opinion.
  2. Asking for repetition or clarification does not count.
  3. The question must contain a conjugated verb.
  4. Rephrasing or repeating one of the printed questions does not count.

The penalty is applied inside the AO2 grid: ask only one question and AO2 is capped at 4 marks out of 5; ask none and it is capped at 3. So the cost of forgetting entirely is two marks, not catastrophic, but an avoidable loss on a component worth 30% of the A Level.

AQA's 2022 examiner report gives one worked example of what does not count: a statement in the first person followed by Et vous ? (for instance "Moi, je pense que c'est une bonne chose. Et vous ?"). That is a comment with a tag on the end, not a question, and it has no conjugated verb doing the asking.

Questions that satisfy the rules

These are illustrative (written for this page, not AQA's) for a card on changing family structures:

  • Est-ce que vous pensez que le mariage a encore de l'importance pour les jeunes aujourd'hui ? Seeks an opinion, conjugated verb, not a rephrasing of anything printed.
  • Comment est-ce que la situation a changé dans votre pays depuis vingt ans ? Seeks information, and invites a comparison you can then respond to.
  • Selon vous, pourquoi ces chiffres augmentent-ils ? Anchored to the data on the card, which is exactly where the examiner wants you.
  • Avez-vous constaté la même tendance ailleurs ? Short, correct, and it opens the francophone comparison for you.

Qu'est-ce que vous en pensez ? technically satisfies all four rules. It is also the weakest thing you can say: it shows no range and it is not tied to the material. Use it as a fallback, not a plan.

Questions that do not

  • Et vous ? No conjugated verb.
  • Moi, je trouve ça inquiétant. Et vous ? A statement with a tag; AQA's examiner report names this pattern specifically.
  • Pourriez-vous répéter, s'il vous plaît ? Clarification, explicitly excluded.
  • Any near-copy of printed question 2 or 3.

One more thing worth knowing: if you have not asked your two questions, the examiner is required to prompt you before the discussion ends. AQA's 2023 report records the cap being applied where a student asked one question and was not prompted, so the safe assumption is that the responsibility is yours. Ask them early. The same report advises teacher-examiners to prompt earlier rather than later in the discussion.

How the 25 marks are split

Assessment objective What it credits Max
AO1 Responding in speech, including face-to-face interaction: fluency, developing ideas without being prompted, handling unpredictable questions 5
AO2 Understanding and responding to the written material on the card, and where the two-question penalty is applied 5
AO3 Accuracy and range of language: vocabulary, complex structures, idiom, grammar, pronunciation and intonation 10
AO4 Knowledge and understanding of the sub-theme, and critical and analytical response to it 5

AO3 is the largest single element, and it is banded in pairs (9 to 10, 7 to 8, and so on) rather than mark by mark. AO1, AO2 and AO4 are single-mark bands.

Two things follow from this table that are not obvious:

AO2 exists here and it is about the text. Five marks (a fifth of the task) for showing you understood what was printed. Referring explicitly to the headline and quoting the figures accurately is not padding; it is the whole of that objective. AQA's 2023 report complains that some teacher-examiners let students under-achieve on this objective by accepting a brief answer to the first printed question and moving on, and that students were very selective about which information from the card they referred to. Be unselective. Use the numbers.

AO4 is not rewarded for name-dropping. The same report notes that naming things without developing them did not get students into the high bands. One example developed for three sentences beats four dropped in passing.

What the examiner will actually do

  • The discussion runs 5 to 6 minutes. Credit stops at six minutes: anything after that is not marked, so there is no advantage in a slow start.
  • The examiner asks the three printed questions in order, staggered across roughly the first two minutes, with supplementary questions in between prompted by what you say.
  • After the printed questions, the discussion deliberately widens from the card to the wider sub-theme, and the examiner is required to introduce unpredictable elements. AO1's top band credits responding appropriately to nearly all of them, so being thrown a question you did not expect is the design, not a mishap.
  • It stays within the sub-theme. It will not roam into other themes.
  • Everything is in French.

How the other boards differ

If you revise from AQA material and sit another board, or the reverse, these are the differences that will actually trip you up.

Edexcel (9FR0), Paper 3 Task 1

The examiner asks the compulsory questions, not you. This is the sharpest contrast with AQA and the easiest to get backwards. Edexcel's teacher-examiner booklet instructs the examiner to ask two compulsory questions relating to whichever statement you chose; they are printed in the examiner's booklet, not on your card. Your card carries no printed questions at all.

Other differences:

  • You choose the sub-theme before you see anything. The invigilator offers you a choice of two sub-themes in English. You pick one, and only then receive the card.
  • The card carries two opposing statements, A and B, each followed by two bullet points under Vous devez considérer telling you what to address. You choose A or B during preparation and open the discussion by saying which.
  • Notes are capped at one side of A4, and you may not write on the stimulus.
  • Preparation is outside the exam room.
  • You are expected to ask questions, but there is no fixed number and no mark cap. It is credited within AO1 Interaction rather than penalised numerically.
  • Task 1 is 30 marks: 12 for knowledge and understanding of society and culture, 12 for accuracy and range of language, 6 for interaction. There is no AO2: no separate mark for understanding the written stimulus. Six to seven minutes.

Eduqas, Component 1 Task 2

  • The card comes second, not first. Task 1 is the research project; the card is Task 2, and its five minutes of preparation happen after the project discussion has finished, in the room with the visiting examiner.
  • The card carries one discussion point, not three questions. A theme label, a French headline, a short text with footnoted glosses where needed, and then a single debatable statement under À DISCUTER. Note that the specification describes the cards as containing an image, but the cards in the published sample materials have none, so do not rely on there being one.
  • The examiner asks one unseen supplementary question after you have dealt with the discussion point. Unpredictability is its entire purpose.
  • You must ask at least two questions: a floor, where AQA specifies exactly two. Their quality is graded inside the AO1 band descriptors rather than capped numerically.
  • Notes may be in French or English, on separate paper, as a memory aid only, not whole sentences.
  • Five to six minutes. The sample assessment materials show four criteria banded 1 to 5, which gives 20 marks; the specification itself does not state a total for the task, so treat that figure as coming from the sample materials.
  • You must refer to the stimulus text at the start of the discussion to show you have understood it. Eduqas states this explicitly.

A summary table

AQA 7652 Edexcel 9FR0 Eduqas
On the card Headline, usually an image, data-rich text, three printed questions Two opposing statements with bullets; no printed questions Headline, short text with glosses, one discussion point
What you choose One of two cards, different themes Sub-theme first, unseen, in English; then statement A or B One of two cards
Who asks the set questions Examiner asks three printed; you must ask two of your own Examiner asks two compulsory Examiner asks one unseen; you ask at least two
Penalty for not asking AO2 capped at 4 (one question) or 3 (none) No cap; credited in AO1 Quality graded within AO1
Notes Answer sheet only, no word limit One side of A4 French or English, separate paper
Preparation 5 min, in the room, at the start 5 min, outside the room, at the start 5 min, in the room, after Task 1
Length and marks 5 to 6 min, 25 of 60 6 to 7 min, 30 of 72 5 to 6 min, 20 of 60 per sample materials

What to practise

  1. Reading data aloud. Percentages, comparatives, dates and ages, accurately, in French. AQA's 2022 report records a student turning "7,000 more marriages" into "7,000 marriages", a comprehension mark lost to a skimmed comparative.
  2. Writing two questions in ninety seconds from any French text. Do this until it is automatic, using the four rules as a checklist.
  3. The read-react-widen sequence, against any news headline. You do not need a real card to rehearse the shape.
  4. Developing one example properly rather than listing four. Claim, reason, example, qualification.
  5. Being interrupted. The unpredictable question is deliberate and it is worth marks. Practise with someone who will cut across you.

Related

Speaking is the component where practice with another person makes the most difference, because the unpredictable questions cannot be rehearsed alone. You can read more on the French tutoring page, or start with a free 15-minute call.

Card formats, rules and mark allocations on this page are drawn from the awarding bodies' published specifications, candidate materials, mark schemes and administration guidance, and are paraphrased rather than quoted. Observations attributed to examiner reports are from AQA's published Paper 3 reports for 2022 and 2023. Example questions are original and illustrative. Specifications and card sets change, so always confirm the current requirements with your board and your centre.