AQA Course: Feedback on 2011 GCSE Examination in Modern Foreign Languages, 11th November 2011, York.

I attended this course in York hoping to find out ways to improve GCSE results through understanding better the pitfalls of this new exam. However, the frustration shown by the majority of the teachers present, particularly as regards the severe and /or erratic marking of the speaking and the writing Controlled Assessment, unfortunately hijacked parts of the training.

 

 

2011 Examinations compared with 2010 Examinations 

It was stressed that the grade boundaries had to change considerably to mirror the changes from a very small cohort to a full one in 2011. The concern was that very little support was provided to allow teachers to give a reasonably accurate predicted grade for the first co-horts going through the new GCSE examination.

Daring to be more creative

As could be expected, a lot of teachers “played safe” in their choice of topics and relied on topics that had been also part of the previous specification. Some tasks with a more imaginative setting/ content were suggested including:

Being in a celebrity relationship (Context: Relationship and Choices)

Pressures and problems at school  (Cross-context) for speaking

and, for writing:

Free time and the Media (Context: Free Time and The Media)

A job application (Context: Current and Future Jobs)

Differentiation

Some examples of speaking tasks linked to the same topic-holiday-were also given to show how bullet points could be differentiated for higher ability students e.g. Where do you normally go on holiday?/ Tell me about last year’s summer holiday.

For students to gain confidence in their Listening skills, it was suggested to give a reading activity based on the transcript as a homework task before the actual listening activity in class.

Organisation

At stage 1 anything is permitted but the task must not be given in its entirety or with just a bullet point changed. However, individual bullet points can be practised and marked individually.

In 2014 the GCSE examinations will all become linear-everything will happen in the summer with no early entries in January.

The majority of centres adapted AQA tasks or devised their own tasks. Some tasks were more creative: interview with an air crash survivor, being in a celebrity relationship, big brother interview…

Schools set either the same task for the entire class or differentiated task on same topic.

For retaking the writing, the same topic can be used but the title and all bullet points have now to be changed.

It is important to have the task ready at the start of stage 1 for the teaching to precisely cover all the points needed to cover the task.

Speaking/ writing: In speaking all bullet points have to be addressed whereas in writing, the title is the most important. In fact, bullet points are not compulsory for writing tasks and are often used to support weaker candidates.

A broad title for the writing ensures that everything produced by candidates is relevant but it also makes it very difficult to organise tasks for student to retake in that specific context.

There is also sometimes some confusion between title and scenario E.g. Write a blog your holidays and what went wrong. The titles and scenario need to be different and there is a need for consistency. For instance, if there is a mention of a competition in the scenario, it must be mentioned in the task written by students.

When there is an overlap between the writing and speaking tasks, it is not appropriate to use the same bullet points, both tasks need to be “sufficiently different” to ensure students produce a very different outcome.

For speaking, the recorded time begins as soon as the teacher asks the first question relating to the first bullet point.

Stretching the More Able

Teachers need to ensure that opportunities are provided for more able students to reach the top band.

Opinions are essential: to get 3-4 and above a minimum of 2 opinions are required. They can be basic but they must be there to justify the mark.

Developments are also very important. They are instances when candidates offer extra language not specifically requested e.g. adding extra pieces of information, opinions, facts, etc…

In the best speaking tests, students need to take over and present each one of their bullet points like a mini-presentation e.g. 5 bullets = 5 mini-presentations

More able students need to be able to narrate events to get in the higher band and they also have to justify their opinions twice, which is where a lot of centres lost marks. The 2 different opinions and 2 different reasons could be introduced by par exemple, parce que etc…

For the Range and Accuracy, to get into the top band, a minimum of 2 tenses (any 2) is required but it is not needed for the 5-6 band.

Demain je vais au marché does not count as a future tense.

Able students must have a variety of tenses e.g. 5 different tenses (higher candidate) as a greater range of tense will add to the complexity.

Variety of expression is very important and students must actively be taught to use synonyms and how to express same things in lots of different ways.

The use of moods does not count as a different tense so if a candidate uses present indicative and present subjunctive, it still counts as one tense: present.

5 out of 5 for pronunciation seems to be more common for Spanish & German as the pronunciation is more phonetically regular.

There were some issues with high ability students who did not meet the 4 minutes minimum required for the speaking test. This meant that they could not get 10 for communication but they still could get 9.

Teachers do not need to push weaker candidates to do all 4 minutes as they would not get a 10 for communication anyway.

A strong emphasis on memorisation can have an adverse effect on students’ pronunciation e.g. verb endings in French, so it is very important to practise and record models and students at stage 1.

To assess the Interaction and fluency, teachers need to consider how much students hesitate and do not know what to say next.

4 or 5 bullet points seem to work the best for most candidates but teachers must not ask questions out of the order. 

Unpredictable Questions

Unpredictable questions should also be very simple e.g. in the present tense, using cognate…  Students must answer the unpredictable questions in a full sentence with a verb in order to score for their answer. It is also essential for the teacher to print all unpredictable questions on the teacher’s sheets sent to the board.

You need between 4 and 6 different unpredictable questions for a class of 30 to ensure that it remains unpredictable.  You can link unpredictable questions with broad topic e.g. do you like ice-cream for the holiday and all unpredictable questions must be answered at the end of the test.

Teacher may want to get students to prepare 30 questions making it clear that the bullet points for the tasks will be drawn from there. At Stage 1, the teacher should not move on until students are comfortable with all the bullet points.

Planning Sheets and Dictionaries

If conjugated verbs are left on the planning sheet and students use them, students will be marked down.  le/ la are counted in the number of words.

It was stressed that students should not be actively encouraged to use a dictionary at stage 3 because of the time it can waste. However, using the verb tables in the dictionary can be a lot more useful to help student to proofread what they have written.