Response to the question

The essay answers the question well with some strong and well-analysed points, although it repeats these too often, and is well-written but with some spelling and grammar errors. The writer stays focused on the title throughout, so the whole essay ...

Response to the question

The essay answers the question well with some strong and well-analysed points, although it repeats these too often, and is well-written but with some spelling and grammar errors. The writer stays focused on the title throughout, so the whole essay is a clear response to the question. They begin by talking about an increase in cinema-going and the growth of special effects to provide some context for their essay, then provide a number of reasons for why they like some films and don't like others. They emphasise that this is their personal view of films and that others might think differently, which shows that they understand an essay like this is about the writer's personal opinions and experiences rather than cinema in general.

Level of analysis

The writer shows appropriate analytical skills - for example, they say that films should have lots of special effects in order to attract the viewers' attention. They support this point with examples of a film they enjoyed - Tropic Thunder - and a film they didn't - Step Brothers. These points are summarised succintly in the conclusion, so the examiner is left with a strong final impression of what the themes of the essay are. However, paragraph 3 is perhaps too much a reversal of paragraph 2 - they say they like films which have special effects and a good story, then that they don't like films which don't have special effects and a good story, and the repetition makes it seem like they've run out of ideas a bit. Maybe they could develop the point at the beginning of the paragraph about romantic films, saying why they hate films when everyone cries, and perhaps giving an example of a film like this, instead of repeating the point about special effects, which doesn't make much sense - would you expect a romantic film to have lots of special effects? Does the lack of them really make it a bad film?

Quality of writing

This is wonderfully written, with appropriate technical vocabulary like "des effets spéciaux", imaginative language like "une ambiance inimaginable" and complex sentences with multiple clauses, such as the use of "et pour cette raison" to join together the fact that they don't like romantic films and why they don't at the beginning of paragraph 3. All of this is positive because it indicates that the writer has a wide and varied French vocabulary and can communicate fluently in French. However, there are several spelling and grammar mistakes, which need another good edit to weed them out. As they are, they mean that the writer's ambitious constructions don't always work and suggest a poor understanding of French grammar, which will make a bad impression on examiners. For example, "une cont" is mispelled throughout and should be "un conte", and "des effets spéciaux... doit effraye" in paragraph 4, line 1 doesn't use the auxiliary verb correctly - it should be "des effets spéciaux... doivent effrayer", because the noun is a plural and because any form of 'devoir' is followed by an infinitive verb.

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Reviewed by bookworm699 29/02/2012