Edexcel IGCSE French Tutors Online

Edexcel IGCSE French is code 4FR1, written for first teaching from September 2017 with the first examination in June 2019. This page works from Issue 3, dated January 2026, and first certification was in 2019. The qualification is linear, and all papers must be taken at the end of the course of study.

There are three externally examined papers, and they are not equally weighted. Paper 2 carries 50% of the qualification, which is half the grade in a single paper. Paper 1 and Paper 3 carry 25% each. So the reading and writing paper is worth as much as the listening and speaking papers combined.

Paper 1 is Listening, code 4FR1/01. It is externally assessed, worth 25% of the qualification, and it is a written examination of 30 minutes plus 5 minutes of reading time, carrying 40 marks. It is available in June. It has seven questions, which are a combination of multiple-choice, multiple-matching, note-taking and gap-fill questions, and all five topic areas are assessed. The listening audio files are available on Pearson's website.

The five minutes of reading time matters more than it sounds. In a paper that is only 30 minutes long, an extra five minutes is a sixth again of the time, and it is spent before the recording starts.

Paper 2 is Reading and Writing, code 4FR1/02. It is externally assessed, worth 50% of the qualification, and it is a written examination of 1 hour 45 minutes carrying 80 marks. Those 80 marks split exactly in half, with 40 marks for reading and 40 marks for writing. It is available in June.

Paper 2 has two sections. Section A is Reading, with five questions that are a combination of multiple-choice, note-taking, gap-fill and short-answer questions. Section B is Writing, and it contains two open-response writing tasks and a task that requires writing verbs in their correct forms. Each task in Section B is linked to a specific topic area, so the writing is never on a free choice of subject.

That verb task is easy to overlook and easy to lose marks on. It is not an essay and it cannot be prepared by learning phrases. It rewards knowing how verbs change form, which means the grammar list in the specification is not optional reading.

Paper 3 is Speaking, code 4FR1/03. It is the most unusual paper of the three, because it is internally conducted and externally assessed. It is worth 25% of the qualification and it is a spoken examination of between 8 and 10 minutes carrying 40 marks. Its availability is as timetabled for the June examination series.

The speaking test is made up of three tasks, A, B and C. Task A is a picture-based discussion: students present and answer questions on a picture that relates to one of the topic areas, and they select that picture before the exam. Tasks B and C are conversations on topics, and their purpose is to test spontaneity of response, so the two topics are not specifically prepared. The teacher or examiner uses a randomisation grid provided by Pearson to determine which topic is examined in Tasks B and C.

Two rules around those tasks are worth stating plainly, because getting either wrong costs real marks. First, three distinct topics must be examined across Tasks A, B and C. The topic chosen for Task A must be different from the topic selected at random for Task B, and the topic for Task C must be different from both. If any topics are the same, the task or tasks are discounted and the candidate receives zero marks for that task.

Second, five sub-topics are excluded from the speaking paper altogether. They are A3 services such as the bank and post office, C3 role models, C5 childhood, D2 weather and climate, and E4 accidents, injuries, common ailments and health issues. These are not assessed in Task A and are not assessed in Tasks B and C.

The picture for Task A has requirements of its own. It must contain people, at least two of them, objects in the background, and interactions showing what the people are doing. A student who turns up with a photograph of an empty landscape has chosen a picture that cannot satisfy the guidelines.

The assessments are conducted by teachers in one session within a prescribed assessment window, and complete, unedited recordings of all assessments must be submitted to Pearson through its online Learner Work Transfer portal. Issue 3 is the change that matters here, because it removed the instruction that the tasks must be conducted in consecutive order.

The content runs across five topic areas: home and abroad, education and employment, personal life and relationships, the world around us, and social activities, fitness and health. Each has five sub-topics, so there are twenty five in the specification, and five of them are the speaking exclusions already described.

The assessment objectives are four, and each is worth exactly 25%. AO1 is understand and respond, in writing, to spoken language. AO2 is communicate in writing, using a register appropriate to the situation, showing knowledge of a range of vocabulary in common usage and of the grammar and structures prescribed in the specification, and using them accurately. AO3 is understand and respond, in writing, to written language. AO4 is communicate in speech, showing knowledge of a range of vocabulary in common usage and of the grammar and structures prescribed in the specification, and using them accurately.

The mapping of objectives to papers is the cleanest at this level and worth knowing precisely. Paper 1 assesses AO1 and nothing else, at 25%. Paper 2 assesses AO2 at 25% and AO3 at 25%, and nothing else. Paper 3 assesses AO4 and nothing else, at 25%. Every other cell in the relationship table is zero.

So no paper helps a student recover from a weakness in another. A student who cannot write accurately to a listening passage has no route to those 25% elsewhere, and a student who cannot speak has no route to that 25% either. The only overlap is inside Paper 2, where reading and writing each own half of the 80 marks.

The qualification is graded and certificated on a nine-grade scale from 9 to 1 using the total subject mark, where 9 is the highest grade. Individual components are not graded. Students whose level of achievement is below the minimum judged by Pearson to be of sufficient standard to receive a certificate get an unclassified U result.