The tour St Jacques in Paris (Wikimedia Commons)
This is my fourth post referencing the consultation document for the subject content of a new GCSE for first examination in 2025. Firstly, a reminder of where to find the key document:
https://consult.education.gov.uk/ebacc-and-arts-and-humanities-team/gcse-mfl-subject-content-review/supporting_documents/GCSE%20MFL%20subject%20content%20document.pdf
Another new element of the proposed syllabus is the specific requirement below:
It is important that students should be taught the language in the context of the countries and communities where the language is spoken. As they learn the language, students should become familiar with aspects of the contexts of the countries and communities in which the language is spoken. This is because an appreciation of the culture, history, geography and working environments of these countries and communities is an integral part of a well-designed language course and is likely to be motivating and interesting for students. Such contexts will be referenced in assessment tasks as appropriate (p. 1, my highlighting).
If you unpick that paragraph carefully (it is a bit clunky and repetitive, actually), all it is saying is that cultural knowledge is likely to be interesting and motivating. The remainder is just a claim that culture should feature in a good MFL course.
On the whole I find that quite uncontroversial and some text books include interesting cultural input already of course. A glance through the KS3 book Tricolore (5th edition) for Year 8 reveals material on the geography of France, French shops and food items, European geography, Brussels, the Tour de France, the poetry of Robert Denos, aspects of history (e.g. Louis XIV, the Château de Versailles, William the Conqueror), cafés, railways, the song Alouette and its origins and the city of Nîmes. Most teachers instinctively reference culture in lessons, usually culture in the 'customs' sense, rather than other aspects or so-called high culture.
Whether cultural input is intrinsically more interesting and motivating is open to some debate, I suppose, but like you no doubt, I like to see references to the TL culture in some form or another. Research suggests that for some learners culture is a motivating aspect of language learning. It should be part of a course.
The implication here is that currently culture does not feature strongly enough in language classrooms and that the emphasis is basically on linguistic input and practice. That may also be true, since ultimately that is what pupils are assessed on and in general terms we tend to think 'learning a language' is primarily about learning to understand and speak it (not so much write it, by the way, and it's clear that writing continues to be highly valued at GCSE.
Now, if cultural content of text books and curriculums is to be beefed up, this does present an age-old challenge. How do you provide interesting content based on a limited amount of vocabulary? the document notes;
GCSE specifications in MFL must require students to: a. understand written texts in the language. Texts will comprise defined vocabulary and grammar for each tier and will be of limited complexity at foundation tier (p.3).
It is proposed that for Higher Tier the defined list will have 1700 words drawn from frequency lists (including up to 20 phrases); for Foundation the number is 1200. Those figures are not very high and won't include many words which will be needed to provide interesting cultural content. It has been pointed out, for example by Professor Jim Milton, that you have to include quite a lot of less common words in a reading diet. To deal with this issue in the exam, it is proposed to allow some glossing of vocabulary:
At higher tier students are expected to read texts that may include a small number of words outside the vocabulary list defined by the awarding organisation. English meanings of such words must be supplied adjacent to the text for reference. No more than 2% of words in any given higher tier text may be glossed in this way. In addition, for both Foundation and Higher tiers, all proper nouns (such as cities or countries) that are not listed in the most frequent 2,000 words and are not deemed to be easily understood, can be glossed or explained in an adjacent note (p. 5).
So at Foundation Tier only words from the prescribed list will be included.
I welcome glossing and this whole approach does respond to frequent criticisms made of the current exam that texts are too hard and contain too many rarer words.
But can you square the circle of high-frequency vocab and interesting cultural content? In the end, I believe that will up to text book writers and teachers to use their common sense with the classes in front of them. Teachers should not go out of their way to avoid more difficult vocabulary and, in any case, many higher achieving students will end up having a vocabulary larger than 1700 words, as a result of interesting classroom input or their own research and experience, for example going on trips or exchanges abroad.
One risk is that if you turn the focus more to cultural content and away from linguistic content, you may compromise the latter. This risk is one you come across in approaches such as CLIL or Project-Based Learning where content is prioritised to a greater or lesser degree over language. But you make your choice - which is more important: cultural knowledge/cognitively challenging and interesting subject matter or proficiency? Can you achieve a sensible balance, especially with lower-achieving students?
So what will the cultural content look like? The DfE are reluctant to specify topics since they worry that a topic-based course results in too much specialised vocabulary, but this doesn't stop exam boards (I hope) producing their own coherent themes based on the TL culture. I hope Ofqual doesn't restrict them too much in this regard, or else you might end up with a bit of a free-for-all with teachers using material somewhat at random. I wonder if this issue has been fully thought through yet. Maybe it has, or maybe it will emerge during consultation. Text book writers may tweak existing books to give a higher priority to TL cultural references.
Finally, I am happy to see that, unlike at A-level, the Assessment Objectives do not include reference to cultural knowledge. There are no marks for culture. Theoretically, therefore, schools could use a whole variety of sources, some 'cultural', others not, and still prepare their students well.
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