Guide

How to succeed in your Junior Cycle French CBA 2

By Ms. E. Hallissey - 6 minute read

Expert French teacher, Ms. E. Hallissey, shares her advice on how to succeed in your Junior Cycle French CBA 2.

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Introduction

Classroom-Based Assessments (CBAs) in Junior Cycle French are important learning opportunities that will set you up with essential skills for the Senior Cycle and beyond so it's important to give it your best shot.

In 3rd year, CBA 2 asks you to expand your language learning by reviewing your language portfolio (made up of examples of work from 2nd and 3rd years) and writing a reflection on your work. Following on from this, you will complete your Assessment Task. This guide will give you a better understanding of what to expect with CBA 2 and the Assessment Task and includes suggestions and recommendations on how to achieve your best result. 

Remember

CBA 2 is linked to your Assessment Task which is worth 10% of your overall grade.

Descriptors

Throughout your Junior Cycle French course, you will need to complete two CBAs. These results will appear on your Junior Cycle Profile of Achievement (JCPA) and for each CBA, you will be awarded one of the following descriptors:

  • Exceptional

  • Above expectations

  • In line with expectations

  • Yet to meet expectations

CBA 2: student portfolio and reflection note

Throughout 2nd and 3rd year, you will have collected several examples of your work/learning. These examples may be in various formats including written pieces and recordings of you speaking French on a variety of themes that you’ve studied in class.

You must be patient with your work and always put your best effort into it. Your teacher may ask you to re-draft some of your documents to improve them which is another learning opportunity. 

Top tip

Whether your portfolio is in a plastic pocket or a digital file, it is essential that you keep these documents safe. 

Your portfolio

For your final portfolio, choose three texts from your collected work from 2nd and 3rd year (no 1st-year work should be chosen). Your portfolio must contain the following:

  • One oral text/recording (this can’t be from CBA 1).

  • One text about French culture or language.

  • A document of your choosing.

For these three documents, you must include all drafts as well as a reflection on each one (what you learned and what you would change).

Reflecting on your documents

What did you learn?

The first step in reflecting on your documents is writing about what you learned from them. Here are some questions to consider:

  • Did I learn how to conjugate the present tense?

  • Did I learn to correct any mistakes?

  • Did I learn how the ends of adjectives change depending on whether the noun is masculine, feminine or plural?

  • Did I learn new vocabulary (rooms of the house for example)? What helped me remember these new words?

  • If I did two drafts of this document, what did I change in the second draft to improve it? What did this teach me?

  • If this was a speaking document, how was my pronunciation? Do I need to revise my French phonics sounds?

What would you change?

It is also very important to write about what you might change to improve the document if you were to do it again. Here are some questions to consider:

  • Would I use more vocabulary? For example, if you were to describe your house, maybe you would include more colours.

  • Would I include more tenses? For example, if you were writing a letter about a holiday, you might speak about what you did yesterday, what you do every day and what you will do tomorrow.

  • For an oral document, would I pronounce 'maison' correctly (may-zon, rather than ma–son) because I now know about nasal vowels?

  • For the document on culture, did I do enough research? Did I check if my sources were reliable?

Remember

Don’t be hard on yourself. It's important to review work in order to improve our learning. It is not about how much we got right or wrong.

The Assessment Task

Your Assessment Task is worth 10% of your final Junior Cycle grade and it is a formal assessment which is based on your CBA 2 work. This is done in class for two 40-minute lessons and you will be writing it out under your teacher’s supervision. It will then be sent away with your Junior Cycle paper to be corrected by the State Examinations Commission. There are two stages to this task (explained below).

Discussion and reflection

Here is what you can expect for stage one:

  • Preparation

    Your teacher will show you something to read/watch/listen to. In class, you will discuss whether this material is similar to your learning experience or not. The discussion might take place in pairs, small groups or as a whole class. The purpose of the material is to help you think about your learning but you don’t need to refer to the video/poster/recording (whatever it is) in your answer.

  • Read and consider the questions

    You will read Sections A and B of your answer booklet and think about how you might respond to these questions (do not write anything in the answer booklet yet). This is a time for you to reflect, brainstorm and make notes on what you learned from the three documents from CBA 2 so reread and reconsider your original reflections on them (is there anything more that you can add?) You will answer the questions in your booklet based on these documents.

Remember

While you can’t bring the booklet home, you can take down the questions and work on them. Remember to keep referring to what you learned and how you might improve your work in the future.

Completing the task

This is where you write your responses in your booklet (which your school will give you) and you have 35 minutes to fill in the booklet on your own without help. The remaining five minutes of class are for submitting these booklets.

Remember

You can have your CBA 2 documents and reflections with you and any other notes that you took down during stage one or at home.

Dos and don'ts for CBA 2 and the Assessment Task

Dos

  • Do write and re-write.

  • When reflecting on what you learnt, be specific on tenses, adjectives, vocabulary, etc. 

  • When reflecting on how you would improve your work, be specific on whether you would use more adjectives or use other verbs than 'être'.

Dont's

  • Don’t ignore your mistakes. When you see a mistake, correct it.

  • Don’t be too vague about what you have learned, e.g. I learned lots of verbs (what ones?).

  • Don’t say that you would do everything the same again. Otherwise, you’ve learned nothing.

  • Don’t write down the first thing that comes to your mind in the booklet. Stop, think and consider your answer. 

  • For reflections, don’t repeat that you learned the same thing from each document, e.g. don’t talk about improving the past tense in two or more reflections.   

Best of luck in the Junior Cycle! You will be great.

By Ms. E. Hallissey

Ms Hallissey is an experienced French teacher.

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