GCSE MFL: is it time to really put listening and speaking first?

Irrespective of the recent oracy push in the English education system, I have long thought that not enough emphasis is placed on listening and speaking in GCSE modern language exams. Think about it - the current weightings are 25% for each of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Apart from being suspiciously tidy, the system appears to show that reading and writing in the target language are just as important as speaking and listening.

Because of the well-known backwash (washback) effect (the test affecting the teaching), the current weightings encourage teachers to spend a lot of time on written texts and written accuracy. Lessons at KS4 are often devoted to short essay writing, accuracy-focused grammatical exercises, past paper practice and reading comprehension. This is entirely understandable as teachers do their best to help pupils get the best grade. A spin-off is that reading and writing-focused tasks also play a major role at KS3, as the diminishing waves of the backwash take effect.

Is this what learners need and want from their language courses? I doubt that very much. Like most adult learners, school pupils are more likely to want to achieve some ability to communicate (i.e. listen and speak) in the new language.

Research into pupils' attitudes lends some support to this view. It suggests that oral communication is especially important to many young learners. A British Council survey (2021) found that communication with people from other countries was the most frequently selected reason for learning a language among Year 9 pupils in England. Song (2013) found that pupils in English schools attached considerable importance to speaking and listening, sometimes rating them above reading and writing. More recently, research from the Progression in Primary Languages project found that some children explicitly request more opportunities to speak and use language in conversations and that they value transactional language (Savory, 2025). Research with French school pupils studying English also found that learners considered listening and speaking the most useful ways to spend classroom time (Salamoura et al., 2012). Learners' biews will vary, and pupil voice surveys have their issues, but taken together, these findings might suggest that pupils place a high value on developing practical communicative competence. What do you think?

So, if we were to assume that practical communication (principally listening and speaking) should be the priority in school language learning, what changes could be made to GCSE to encourage the positive backwash required to generate communicative lessons?

First a caveat. I would not argue for abandoning reading and writing. Reading especially promotes acquisition through comprehensible input, improves long-term memory of vocabulary, provides cultural input and helps develop grammatical skill. When done in conjunction with listening and speaking, it is a powerful lever. Writing should not be dismissed either: writing things down builds phonics skill, reinforces memory of vocabulary, helps develop grammar and is another means of self-expression. In the social media world, people write a lot.

All that said, I think the dial should be moved, and as a rough guide, I could imagine a reformed GCSE being weighted something like:

• Listening and speaking: 70%
• Reading and writing: 30%

That could involve discrete skill tests as we have now (four separate assessments), or something more radical - a Listening/Speaking test, and a Reading/Writing test, with the main emphasis on Reading. Because a combined Listening/Speaking test could be hard to administer and reliably assess, Listening and Speaking could still be tested separately. As well as weighting, the precise content of each skill would form part of any backwash effect. But for the moment let’s just assume the weightings were to change, how might this affect lessons?

It’s likely that the following would ensue:

• More target-language use in lessons. Teachers might make greater use of French, Spanish or German for classroom communication, questioning, explanations and routine interactions.
• More time devoted to listening. Listening might become a more prominent feature of lessons from Year 7 onwards, rather than something practised mainly through textbook recordings and comprehension exercises.
• More systematic development of listening skills. Teachers might devote greater attention to decoding, sound discrimination, word segmentation, connected speech and strategies for understanding authentic spoken language.
• More opportunities for meaningful oral interaction. Pair work, information gaps, role plays, interviews, discussions and collaborative tasks might feature more prominently.
• Greater emphasis on spontaneous speaking. Teachers might put less emphasis on prepared or memorised responses and more on helping pupils formulate their own utterances, respond to unpredictable questions and sustain conversations.
• More attention to pronunciation and phonology. Greater emphasis might be placed on sound–spelling relationships, intonation, rhythm and intelligibility, especially in Years 7 and 8.
• Greater focus on fluency and automaticity. Teachers might devote more time to activities that help pupils retrieve and use familiar language quickly, rather than concentrating predominantly on grammatical accuracy.
• A more balanced model of classroom assessment. KS3 assessments might increasingly incorporate listening and interactive speaking, rather than relying heavily on written tests of vocabulary and grammar.
• Potentially greater pupil motivation. Pupils who see communicating orally as a principal purpose of learning a language might find lessons more relevant and rewarding.

Are there potential downsides? I don’t see many, but less confident learners may be more challenged (a bad thing?), literacy may be undervalued and, importantly, some teachers may lack the necessary skills and fluency to produce enjoyable, productive lessons.

The bigger picture here would be the opportunity to put oracy at the forefront, while providing potentially a more relevant and enjoyable learning experience for students.

In conclusion, giving significantly greater weighting to listening and speaking at GCSE could have a powerful and positive backwash effect on language teaching, extending all the way back to Year 7. It could encourage teachers to devote more time to developing pupils’ ability to understand and use the spoken language, with greater emphasis on meaningful interaction, fluency and spontaneous communication. These benefits would not be guaranteed though. Poorly designed assessments could simply encourage more rehearsed responses, memorised scripts and narrow exam preparation. The key, therefore, would be to design assessments that reward genuine listening comprehension, spontaneous language use and the ability to sustain meaningful interaction. Positive backwash would depend not just on giving listening and speaking more marks, but on assessing them in ways that encourage the kind of teaching and learning we actually want to see in classrooms.

References

British Council (2021). Speaking other languages ‘important’ for understanding different cultures and places, say over 70 per cent of Year 9 pupils in England. 22 November 2021. Available at: https://www.britishcouncil.org/about/press/speaking-other-languages-‘important’-understanding-different-cultures-and-places-say

Savory, C. (2025). A Deeper Look at Children’s Attitudes Towards Language Learning: Preliminary Findings from the PiPL Focus Groups. University of Reading, Progression in Primary Languages project. 11 May 2025. Available at: https://research.reading.ac.uk/progression-primary-languages/childrens-attitudes-towards-language-learning-preliminary-findings-from-the-pipl-focus-groups

Song, M. (2013). Participant perceptions about speaking and listening in modern foreign language classes in China and England, and their relationship to classroom practices. PhD thesis, University of Warwick. Available at: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/57259/1/WRAP_THESIS_Song_2013.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com