I can only tell you about my experience with French extension! I did French ext for first semester, with it I was only doing 11 units and in the end, I dropped it. The work load is HUGE. When I went into it, I was very aware that it was "extension" for a reason, but for a one unit subject, I didn't think it was worth continuing. I did extension 2 maths and I was sort of failing that, I had a job, I live an hour away from school and I had F ext classes outside of normal school hours before I got my drivers licence. So I weighed it all up, and chose Maths over French extension.
Pros of F. ext:
- It definitely helps you in all areas of continuers. Speaking, vocab, grammar, comprehension, listening, everything.
- If you are really, really passionate about French, it's a really rewarding subject. To explore three different areas in a different languages not only forces you to create responses in French, but in English as well.
- Because French ext classes are usually so small, then if you have a good relationship with your teacher, you will definitely benefit. It's almost like being taught by a friend, and it doesn't have that impersonal feeling that I got in Maths and English.
Cons:
- Huge workload. Hugeeeee. There is an endless amount of resources out there to be studied and two hours face-to-face is useless. You will need to work extremely hard outside of school to keep up with it.
- 18 extracts and three areas are TOUGH. The power of attachment, man's relationship with nature and something about outsiders (I'm sorry, I can't remember!)
- Jean de Florette is really, really hard to get through. It involves a lot of vocab found in the setting of the text that isn't standard French. When I first got it, I thought it would be a piece of cake, it was such a thin novel but don't be fooled! Pagnol is very descriptive, and while this makes his work very colourful, it would take me an hour to read and really understand a chapter.
More on JdF: I never finished the novel. I really wanted to, but in the end it was too hard to me to keep going backwards and forwards, dictionary to novel, and then re-reading to make sure I understand. While it is important to know the extracts really, really well, my teacher always told us to try and read it as a whole: to know where the extracts fit in in the context of the novel, and to feel for it, not as 18 separate little bits. Also, in the written exam, for R+R part B, you will need to respond to a question as a character from the novel, my teacher thought that reading the entire novel would give us a deeper insight into the characters. For that R+R part B, it is definitely beneficial to know certain quotes, to give your response as the character a more "authentic feel".
I don't know if you'll find this relevant, but I came second in continuers and extension during that first semester, but
to different people. I was beaten in extension by someone who had lived in Belgium and immersed in French for a year, yet I beat her in continuers. I think that says something about the difference between continuers and extension. I think that to be reallllllllllly good at ext requires a decent amount of fluency in OTHER topics. You know how continuers is all about you and your world? Well in ext, the things you have to write and speak about expand dramatically and it requires practice and dedication or a year in France/Belgium/Quebec
After I dropped F ext, I started coming first in continuers, so yeah, Ext really does help!
I don't regret doing F extension. Even after I dropped it, I never thought of it as a waste of time and I had learnt so much from it. There is nothing to lose from doing some F. ext, unless you decide to drop continuers as well lol. I think you should stick with F. ext for a while, PUT IN THE HARD WORK and see how you go from there!
If you decide it's not for you, then that's okay too. I just don't advise you to put yourself in the situation where you only have 10 units and F. ext is one of them, if you don't have the dedication.
I can't believe I remembered all that stuff about extension. Erasing it from my mind right now! BTW the F. ext written exam isn't on until nov 13 so everyone's probably studying for that now!
But French continuers was a really good exam - There were some tricky bits in the listening, but it wasn't terribly hard. The questions were all very straight forward, but I have a tendency to stuff up in R+R part A, so maybe I am giving the impression that it's really easy, because I answered the questions in a simplistic way lol.
For speaking exams, I think you only get to hold your exam through a phonecall if you live really far away from the nearest exam center for that language. I have to disagree with you and say that face-to-face convos are tons better than phone calls. The examiners are there to bring out the BEST of your spoken skills, they don't mark your exams, and I think body language/facial expressions are critical in a student bringing their best out.
For example in my japanese beginners conversation, we moved onto something about temples, and straight away I started visibly freaking out. My examiner saw that straight away and we moved right on to something else. In my f. continuers exam, my examiner asked me about driving people around and I sort of gave a shoddy answer with a "HELP!!!!!!" look on my face and the same thing happened: we moved on! I also think that with a phone call, it's hard to interpret silence. I mean, you could be stuck talking about something you have no idea about, and your examiner may think that your silence is just you coming up with a really good way to phrase your answer (which it may be!) but it will give no other indication to the examiner that you are not prepared to discuss this topic any more! And then it would suck if your examiner kept pushing you to elaborate, because you had come up with some sort of miraculous response
Sorry for the really long reply! Please note that that's just how I feel/felt about F. ext and I'm sure there are some people here that thought ext was an easy-peasy subject (I'm jealous!). But I guess my main advice to you about ext, is to just have a go. You'll learn a lot, even if you decide not to continue.
