Skip to main content

Worried about the new GCSEs?

Twitter and MFL Facebook groups are replete with posts expressing concerns about the new GCSEs and, in particular, the difficulty of the exam, grades and tiers. I can only comment from a distance since I am no longer in the classroom, but I have been through a number of sea changes in assessment over the years so may have something useful to say.

Firstly, as far as general difficulty of papers is concerned, I think it’s fair to say that the new assessment is harder (not necessarily in terms of grades though). This is particularly evident in the writing tasks and speaking test. Although it will still be possible to work in some memorised material in these parts of the exam, there is no doubt that weaker candidates will have more problems coping with the greater requirement for unrehearsed language. Past experience working with average to very able students tells me some, even those with reasonable attainment, will flounder on the written questions in the heat of the moment. Others will struggle interpreting questions in the target language. Lots of question practice will mitigate the problems, but expect many candidates to come a cropper in speaking and writing. Listening and reading marks may save the day for some.

With respect to grade predictions, because Ofqual will be implementing their “comparable outcomes” policy we can expect the spread of grades to be similar to before (notwithstanding the move to 9-1 grading). In case you didn’t know it, GCSE grade spreads are largely derived from KS2 performance scores. This won’t be much help when trying to relate raw marks on specimen questions used in mocks, but if you add up all your raw marks and make a percentage, you could then concoct some artificial grade boundaries which may be necessary to be in line with your school’s policies. We know from maths and English results in 2017 that low raw marks can still result in acceptable grades. Overall maths and English saw no significant change in the spread of grades. Could Ofqual even take this opportunity to address the MFL severe grading issue under cover, as it were, of 9-1?

With regard to tiering decisions I would be tempted to play safe where there are borderline decisions to be made, keeping strongly your school’s previous performance over the years. With candidates who would have previously been at the C or C/D borderline, then Foundation Tier might make sense. Don’t expect great changes between the mocks and the actual exam. These can happen, but they are exceptional. MFL is a hard subject to cram late in the day. You are the expert so treat student and parental input with great caution.

Overall, what advice could I offer in terms of effective preparation? Well, I may be speaking to the converted here, but here are some bullet points based on my own experience:

- Do plenty of practice tests. Research is clear that learners do better when they are familiar with the test type. Find specimens papers from all the exam boards ( I have made a few for frenchteacher.net).
- Keep modelling high frequency language for the oral and writing tests. Ram home the message “Use what you know, not what you may want to say.” This applies less to very able candidates.
- Share mark schemes and show model answers. Get students to play examiner and examinee.
- For writing keep stressing to weaker students that simplicity and clarity are vital. Poor work can come from either a lack of writing or just producing semi-comprehensible sentences.
- Insist with weaker students that they stick to the point when writing answers.
- For speaking stress the importance of saying a lot. Quantity is more important than quality (accuracy).
- Supply practice oral questions and rehearse them repeatedly (e.g. speed dating, board games, teacher modelling, recording answers). Don’t worry if your students all produce similar answers. Some schools are much better at preparing pupils for orals than others. ( I know this as a former examiner.)
-Emphasise that pupils can reuse the same high frequency language in the speaking and writing tests.
- Remind pupils that the phrase “for example” is one of the best to keep using in speech and writing. It ensures answers are developed.
- In role plays teach students how to score marks by saying as little as possible, e.g. misusing a verb tense when the verb is not needed to get across the message will lose marks.
- For listening do as much intensive work on short extracts as possible. Focus on tasks such as gap-fill and transcription, less on general comprehension than you might normally. Train students to be careful listeners.
- Keep recycling high-frequency vocabulary and chunks, preferably with words used in context, not in isolated lists. Make sure all pupils have in their repertoire chunks such as “I play, I played, I’ll play, I watch, I watched, I go, I went etc etc.
- For the reading paper, as with listening, focus on working short texts intensively, e.g. using gap-fill, “find the French” and linking starts and ends of sentences. Use reading texts for follow-up listening practice or vice versa. Repetition = memory.
- Do a fair amount of instant translation tasks (both ways). Mini-whiteboards and board games are good for this. But lots of call and response teacher-led work can keep modelling high frequency language. Stick to high frequency language in varying contexts (recycling).
- Play fluency games like “Just a minute” to encourage more able pupils to speak at length without fearing error.
- Make sure all pupils know the intricacies of the mark scheme so that they don’t throw away marks by omitting to include certain elements, e.g. opinions or complex sentences with more than one clause.
- Teach a repertoire of “fab phrases” which pupils should try to include in any essay they write. Keep recycling these until they are used automatically.


I’m sure you can think of more.

In the end it’s the pupils who should be worrying, not you.

Good luck!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Comments

  1. This is really helpful for me especially I just signed up to be a tutor on Classes A to Z Thanks a lot!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the natural order hypothesis?

The natural order hypothesis states that all learners acquire the grammatical structures of a language in roughly the same order. This applies to both first and second language acquisition. This order is not dependent on the ease with which a particular language feature can be taught; in English, some features, such as third-person "-s" ("he runs") are easy to teach in a classroom setting, but are not typically fully acquired until the later stages of language acquisition. The hypothesis was based on morpheme studies by Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt, which found that certain morphemes were predictably learned before others during the course of second language acquisition. The hypothesis was picked up by Stephen Krashen who incorporated it in his very well known input model of second language learning. Furthermore, according to the natural order hypothesis, the order of acquisition remains the same regardless of the teacher's explicit instruction; in other words,

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).

La retraite à 60 ans

Suite à mon post récent sur les acquis sociaux..... L'âge légal de la retraite est une chose. Je voudrais bien savoir à quel âge les gens prennent leur retraite en pratique - l'âge réel de la retraite, si vous voulez. J'ai entendu prétendre qu'il y a peu de différence à cet égard entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Manifestation à Marseille en 2008 pour le maintien de la retraite à 60 ans © AFP/Michel Gangne Six Français sur dix sont d’accord avec le PS qui défend la retraite à 60 ans (BVA) Cécile Quéguiner Plus de la moitié des Français jugent que le gouvernement a " tort de vouloir aller vite dans la réforme " et estiment que le PS a " raison de défendre l’âge légal de départ en retraite à 60 ans ". Résultat d’un sondage BVA/Absoluce pour Les Échos et France Info , paru ce matin. Une majorité de Français (58%) estiment que la position du Parti socialiste , qui défend le maintien de l’âge légal de départ à la retraite à 60 ans,