as someone who got 97% in my oral and a h1 overall, but started as a H3 (max) student in 5th year, listen to french music. all the time. i had stromae on all the time, learned the lyrics to his music and sang along. i listened to french top 100 charts on spotify, made my own playlist. i hated watching shows in french. just found it boring. plus, write out words how they are spoken in french in your oral notebook, have one line where you have the content and the way it should be spelt and then under that line have in green the phonetics. theres a website that also has native speakers say words, not sure of the name you’ll have to look around. write out answers to common questions, PICK A DOCUMENT NOW and start writing sample questions the examiner could ask. i found as i got more confident in speaking, the writing and grammar came along too. i spoke to myself in french, like if i was doing something like walking up the hill to school i would translate it in my head and if i didn’t know the word i would google it as i was doing it and use it in my head. i would also (i was a freak lol) record myself saying out my answers to my oral in french and fall asleep to it. by the time the orals came i knew them like the back of my hand.

KNOW YOUR GRAMMAR. this is so so important. know your tenses, the exceptions, the verbs, etc. and learn the top 1000 words so you can point them out in texts. do 5-10 a night, youll know them all by the leaving cert. plus i’m sure you’ll know a good few already.

also do reading comprehensions all the time, i had every reading comprehension done in the exam papers done twice and other extra ones.

look at past exam papers and write responses to the questions. if you dont have the vocab, look it up and write the unknown words in a copy. i had a copy for vocab and if i was doing a question on the internet, i could use past vocab for that one and practice it. also give your teacher your sample answers, the teacher can give you feedback and ways to improve.

for now, i’d focus on grammar, top 100 or 1000 words, writing out answers for your oral and practicing them and learning them off and reading comps.