Prepositions, negatives, questions and connectives

Candidates hear or read a negative but don't register it, so they answer with the OPPOSITE of what is true: mes parents ne pouvaient pas m'accompagner and ils n'ont pas de diplômes were both missed, as was a double negative elsewhere. ne shortens to n' before a vowel and is easy to miss — scan every clause for ne/n' first.

Writing an "against" opinion, candidates lose clarity two ways: dropping ne and relying on pas alone (je aime pas for je n'aime pas), or wrapping ne...pas around the WRONG element (an adjective, not the verb). ne goes immediately before the conjugated verb, pas immediately after — never around a noun or adjective.

Contraction with le/les is compulsory, not optional style — yet candidates who know the rule for isolated exercises forget it in free writing: à le zoo instead of au zoo, or de le instead of du. Before you write à le or de le, stop — one of those two words is always wrong. (à la and à l' never contract, so they are correct as they stand.)

en + transport is idiomatic and takes no article — en bus, en train, en voiture (by bus/train/car). dans le bus means physically INSIDE the bus (location) and needs the article. Writing dans en bus jams the two together and is wrong. Choose en for the mode of travel, dans le for being inside the vehicle.

parce que is the single most misspelt connective in the exam, garbled as parc que, pas que, par que or just parce (missing que). Some of these are real French fragments, so the error costs marks and can obscure meaning. Write it as TWO separate words every time, and remember que elides to qu' before a vowel: parce qu'il pleut.

After a negative, un/une and the partitive du/de la/des drop to a bare de — but candidates keep the full article: je ne mange plus de la viande instead of je ne mange plus de viande. Only the DEFINITE article (le/la/les) survives a negative, because it names a specific thing rather than a quantity: je n'aime pas le café is correct.

Candidates trust a surface resemblance to English and mishear an interrogative — most often confusing où (where) with another word, or answering the wrong category (a time when asked a place). où = where, not quand (when) or que/quoi (what); quel(le)(s) = which/what, agreeing with its noun (quel jour, quelles matières). Confirm the category before answering.