Assessment System

The assessment system at Aix-Marseille can sometimes be a mystery, other times not – depending on how organised the class is and how much the teacher communicates with you. This here is an overview of how I was assessed for the modules I took for the first semester.

Français langue étrangère C1

Unlike the B1 and B2 classes, the C1 class for FLE didn’t have any oral assessment whatsoever, which is bizarre considering it’s supposed to test your level of French. We were assessed 100% on an end-of-term exam during the first week of the exam period. This consisted of writing either a resumé or synthese de documents in a two hour exam, to which you can bring a bilingual dictionary. There was a mock exam after the October holiday, and lots of optional homework opportunities to practice these two forms of writing.

Thème Erasmus

There were two exams for this – one in class about 2/3 of the way through the term, which counted for 25% of the module mark. This was considerably harder than the other exam, as the text to translate was literary rather than journalistic. The second was the last lesson of term before the revision week, counting for 75% of the mark – this was a journalistic text.

Littérature pour étudiants internationaux

There are three sets of marks which make up the overall grade for this module, and I guess I’ll only find out what each one is worth when the grades are released later in February. One is an oral mark, made from a presentation you give on one of the short stories studied in the course. The second is the average mark of the two best in-class written pieces you do. At the end of each lesson was a controle continu, in which you use the essay plan made in class to write a section of an essay – whether introduction, conclusion, or one paragraph of content. Finally, the last mark was taken from an essay on a book studied for three weeks. This was done under exam conditions in the last class of term. There was also a short reading comprehension on the studied book – essentially to check whether we’d read it – and I’m still not sure if this made part of that module grade or not.

Questions de genre

This module had two exams and one oral mark. The exams were fairly straightforward: one mid-semester after the October holiday, and one in the main exam period before Christmas. For each of these we were given a quote which we had to then respond to as an essay, using the texts we’d studied in the seminar. The second exam also had a similar, 5 mark question, but on topics taught in the main lecture. However, the oral mark was an interesting thing to battle with. Each week we would be set a composed commentary on a section of one of the texts and have to prepare it – either during time set aside in the seminar, or at home. Each week our tutor would randomly select two or three people to present/read aloud their commentary. I used the excuse of being an Erasmus student to get out of presenting when we had to write it in an hour during class, and eventually proposed my own commentary which I gave in week 6. There are some French students who, I believe, never did present theirs and have probably failed the module.

Etude comparée des sociétés éuropéennes contemporaines

The most simple grading system of all the modules: one final oral exam during the revision week, and an optional presentation to boost the final grade if the mark is better than the oral exam. However, the exam was anything but simple. We were told a week in advance three questions for each of the five themes, for which we had to prepare a problematique: a complex, controversial question and then a 15 minute response, following the 3×3 French method and comparing the two countries in question, of course. While this was how my friend’s exam went – he was given a slip of paper with the question – my examiner (for a different theme) just told me the theme in two words: politiques migratoires. Yet in spite of it not being the structure we were told, I found it gave me more freedom to define what I was going to talk about myself.

Allemand intermédiaire

This was probably the most organised module on campus I took. Why? Because it wasn’t the French who were organising it. We were marked by continuous assessment and a final exam in the January exam period. The average of the three continuous assessments (which occurred every 3 weeks) was worth one third of the overall mark; the exam was worth two thirds. Both only covered topics, vocab, and grammar that we’d seen in class, so there wasn’t any expectation or presupposition of what you may have studied before. This was just as well, as I hadn’t done German since GCSE many years ago.

Between all of this, I had at least two assessments per week from the second week of term, which put me at a high stress level in an already stressful situation. Until I decided that making the most of France doesn’t necessarily mean getting the highest mark possible at university here. The whole year is worth 6.25%, and it’s not worth damaging my mental health to change my mark from 14/20 to 16/20. So with this attitude freshly in place for the term ahead, I’ve given myself a timetable where I have Mondays off. Tuesdays and Thursdays are long, 7hr days with no break, but it’s worth it to allow myself to have space away from the academic world.

A plus,

Zoe x