4Friends, hope you all are doing great and your exam preparation is going on smoothly. Let's talk about a few tips to clear DELF A2 exam easily.
All DELF exams have four parts, speaking, listening, reading and writing, each carrying 25 marks. To clear the exam, the student must get a total of 50 marks and he cannot have less than 5 marks in any part. In Delhi, these exams are conducted at Alliance Francaise, Delhi, four times in a year.
Just like DELF A1, DELF A2 exam also starts, with the speaking part of 6 to 8 minutes, for which you get ten minutes’ preparation time, separately. In the first part, you can expect simple questions, about your family, yourself, your likes or dislikes, your friends etc. The second part, is a monologue, that you will present, on a common topic, like your favorite book, your school, your favorite teacher etc. You should be able, to answer the questions, of the examiner, based on what you say. The last part, is a dialogue, in which you will have to negotiate, or argue with the examiner, about a day to day situation, like fixing a meeting, reserving a hotel, choosing a course etc. The best tip, to prepare this part, is to find yourself a French speaking buddy and practice a lot with him or her. He should be able to correct your errors, along with pushing you to speak in French or just record yourself and get the audio checked by us. Another thing that you should keep in mind, is that if the situation is formal, or informal, and talk accordingly.
The next part, is the listening part of 25 minutes. In this part, you will listen to three documents twice, with a gap of 30 seconds in between. DELF A2, is a bit lengthier than DELF A1. Moreover, though the questions are simple, but the audio is a bit faster, compared to what you get in DELF A1. As for the questions, be ready, to do fill ups with one word answers, or to write a small piece of information like a name, a number, a date, a day or direction to a place etc. You may also have to match the information, with a photo, or tick the correct answer.
To evaluate your listening comprehension skills at this level, you may also be given, one exercise based on true false, where you will listen to the document, and tell if the statement written is true or not, as per the audio. This part, seems to be the most difficult, to most of the students, so to practice for this part, you must listen to the cd given with the text book every day, along with some short video series in French. I have put a few links, in the description box, to help you. I have also added, links for you to buy a few DELF practice books, with which you can practice this part easily.
The next part, is the reading section, which is of 30 minutes. In this part you will get 3 to 4 short texts to read, and answer the questions based on them. Texts are based, on day to day life situations, like a postcard, a mail etc. and expected questions are, true false with justification with the help of a phrase from the text, find the correct order etc. To prepare for this part, the best tip, is to read French texts, given in the book or sample papers. Students usually make mistakes, in true false questions, where they are not able, to justify their answers, with correct sentence from the text. So practice such questions a lot, and instead of assuming something to be true or false, just stick to what is written in the text.
The last part of the exam, is the writing section, which goes on for 45 minutes. It has two questions, which are generally informal. The first one usually demands you to describe a past event or personal experience and it carries 13 marks. The second question is usually a letter, a mail or a postcard to invite a friend, to inform about something etc., and it carries 12 marks. So the basic difference, between A1 and A2 exam, lies in the fact, that the written answers should be longer, which means, you should write around 60 to 80 words. Moreover, the grammatical mistakes, which are ignored in A1 to a large extent, are penalized in DELF A2 exam.
So good luck for your exam!
