Planning for Aspects of the New GCSE: Unexpected Questions

 The part of the current GCSE exam where my pupils do worst is the unexpected question on the Role Play. If any of them ever score marks there, it is generally through lucky chance. Processing the question, thinking of what to say, saying it in Spanish, all while still worrying they have barely understood the question... pleased to have said anything at all.

Fortunately it only requires a short answer and is only worth a couple of marks.

But the new GCSE will have 4 such questions, requiring developed answers. And worth considerably more marks.

For AQA these 4 questions follow the Reading Aloud task. And for Edexcel they are split between the Reading Aloud and the Photo tasks.

I have already written this post identifying these unexpected questions as something I need to work on. I remember Rachel Hawkes at the introduction of the current GCSE (or maybe even the one before that?) talking about the importance of questions, and I am aware I never got to grips with it in the way I wanted. I've also always thought Adam Lamb's idea of Tú - Yo practice is a great idea. Adam regularly does quickfire practice of changing the second person verb form you hear in a question into the first person form you need for an answer: vas - voy, quieres - quiero, te gusta - me gusta, tus amigos - mis amigos. There will definitely be a need to build this in to our plans for the new GCSE.

In this previous post in mentioned that I wanted to use texts as a scaffold for pupils getting better at quickfire unexpected questions requiring a full answer. I think I need to explain this more. And it then leads into another similar idea based on the exam board sample questions.

Rather than use examples from one or other of the new textbooks and risk upsetting the publisher, I'll use an example text from the 2009 OUP GCSE Spanish book I co-authored.

From the 2009 OUP GCSE textbook

I know there are no longer Target Language questions in the Listening and Reading exams. But I am going to use them in class with texts as practice for the Speaking exam unexpected questions. The pupils can use the text (reading aloud!) to give their answers.

So with this text, if I ask ¿Tienes un jardín? the pupil can use the text to reply Donde vivo no hay jardín porque vivo en un apartamento.

Other questions (in Spanish) could be Where would you prefer to live? What would you change about where you live? What problems are there where you live? Where do you like to go with your friends?

I would return to this activity several times to build speed and confidence. I would start with the questions in the order they correspond to the text. Then I would change the order of the questions in a quickfire activity where the pupils have to listen to the question and identify what they are being asked, but still able to use the text to support their answer. I would vary the wording of questions or the question form (especially in French). Later on I would ask the pupils to give a different answer to the one in the text, adapting the sentence to talk about themselves. And eventually I would expect pupils to be able to give an answer without a supporting text.

It's about getting them used to Target Language questions and giving a full answer in a sentence with some development.

Another idea is to start from the unexpected questions from the Sample Assessment Materials and for me to write reading texts from those. Then we can do the same activity, with pupils answering quickfire questions using the information in the texts. That way I can be sure I am covering the kind of questions the exam board are likely to be putting in the real exam.

Here's an example of the sort of questions pupils will be asked:

Example unexpected questions following the Read Aloud task in the AQA SAMs

And here is a text I have written to go with these questions.

Où est ton collège ?     Mon collège est en ville à trois kilomètres de ma maison.

Remember, the pupils do not see the questions; they are being asked to respond immediately in full answers to a question they hear. So they will have the text in front of them and can read it through. Then I use it for quickfire questions (in order or out of order). The pupils register the question and can find the correct bit of the text to read aloud in order to give a full answer. Then we move on to letting them modify the answer in the text. And eventually to giving their own full answers to unexpected questions.

A couple of issues that came up when writing that model text. Firstly, I had the time to think about my answers! Especially to find a way to develop them. Secondly, I hope I the text is modelling the sort of language pupils will be learning and which will tick the success criteria. Thirdly, I was careful to avoid using the pronoun "it" in the answers about school or uniform. I deliberately repeated the noun. Knowing whether to use ce / il / elle for subject pronouns (plus knowing what to do with object pronouns) is too much of a trap at this stage and I will sidestep it by telling pupils to give full sentences I like my school... My school is... rather than bounce off the question and try to say I like it because it is... 

And finally, I don't want to give you or my pupils the impression that in the exam, the answers to the questions are to be found in the reading aloud text. That is not the case! This is a technique for getting lots of practice of responding to quickfire questions by using model answer texts. By the time we get to the exam, I am hoping my pupils will be able to cope with questions without any such support!

I don't know what focus on unexpected questions the textbooks from the various publishers will have. And how sustained any focus on developing quickfire response to unexpected questions will be in their books. But hopefully the ideas in this post mean you can try to build it in, whatever course you adopt.

Let me know what you think!

Text Book? Course Book? Part Three: Planning the Order of the Course

 In Part One and Part Two of this series of posts, I have looked at what I want a published textbook/coursebook to provide in terms of cultural reading texts and texts which model the types of answers pupils are learning to give. I have concluded in both of these posts, that I am treating the published resources as Text Books (with resources and texts I can exploit) rather than as Course Books (a course I will be following). Of course that's personal to me and you may disagree.

In this post and subsequent posts, I will continue to try to analyse what it is that I want my GCSE course and Scheme of Work to look like. So I can compare it to what the published books are offering. Which ever book we decide to buy, I will have to supplement it with other materials, and it is entirely possible that we will tackle the course in a different order to the textbook.

Firstly I definitely want pupils to start the course by developing a rock solid core repertoire that they can use across all topics. Here's some reasons why:

• I don't want the early topics in the course to be below GCSE standard.
• I want pupils to have the full 2 years to get good at using their repertoire.
• In French (but not Spanish), our pupils have had at least 3 years already working on this.
• Pupils should be able to transfer their core repertoire across any topic.
• When pupils have a strong core of language, more and more language sticks to it.

For Spanish, where our pupils are beginners, I want the course to start with a topic where they can really work on their repertoire of opinions, reasons, and tenses, to work on their ability to give extended answers and develop them into little stories. Then that would be transferred to subsequent topics as in our current curriculum.

For French, I am toying with the idea of having a cross-topic start to the course, maybe continuing our booklet approach from KS3 rather than starting straight in with the textbook. We will work on developing extended writing and spontaneous speaking using their core of language, showing them how it can be used across the GCSE topics.

Either way, the topics I want to see near the beginning of the course, are the ones best suited to this repertoire of opinions, reasons and tenses. Once pupils get very good at this, other grammar can be dovetailed in. So the best topics for me for the start of the course are: 

• Holidays
• Free Time
• My School
• Where I live

They lend themselves to saying what you like and why. What you can do, have to do, want to do. If sentences. Other people's opinions. Where you went. What was happening. What people said. What happened. What you would have preferred to do. Like this example in a previous post. Pupils need to have it as a deliberate game plan they can deploy on any of these topics.

The new GCSE won't reward fancy phrases thrown in for the sake of it. But I would have preferred isn't just in the repertoire to show off to the examiner. It's there as the culmination of a conflict of opinions, decisions taken, hope and disappointment as in these examples. In the new GCSE, the criteria for "good development" are I like to play football, it is exciting. But pupils will still have to speak for five minutes. So even if the criteria don't reward extended answers, they will still need to be able to deliver them.

Anyway, it works, so I am keeping it. Here's an example of where this approach has taken my Year 10. They started in Year 9 with one lesson a week after school. By April of Year 10 they have a solid repertoire they can deploy on any topic, and all the other grammar they are learning is easily added on to that core.

Next I would like to tackle the topics which are a little more remote from the pupils' own lives, where they will need a slightly different set of language:

• Media and Technology
• Work
• The Environment

Media and Technology works as an extension of the Free Time topic, but with a little more Describing Of Things, which is going to be a major feature of this new exam. I will tackle this in a future post.

The topic of Work will pick up on the core of opinions, can, can't, have to, want to, but add in a mini-repertoire for dealing with the future.

The Environment is slightly more remote from pupils' experience but will develop can, can't, have to with woulds and shoulds.

Then I want to tackle the topics which are less first-person:

• Celebrity Culture
• Customs and Celebrations

By this stage, the pupils have a strong repertoire and are ready to add the French needed to move away from talking about themselves. We've been working on this since Year 7 and Year 8, but having the grammatical knowledge and being able to deploy it fluently aren't the same thing.

This leaves the nasty topic that I want to leave until later. 

• Self, Family and Relationships

It doesn't lend itself as well to the coherent repertoire. The Family and Friends topic is full of little things that have to be learned but which don't gel well together. If it comes later in the course, the random little bits of grammar and vocabulary can stick to the pupils' coherent repertoire of language. If it came earlier in the course, it wouldn't provide a strong cross topic core. It is too bitty.

This would be my rationale for ordering the topics of the course. With a strong core repertoire of language running through all of the topics. And I would use every opportunity to work across topics, developing the core of language and pupils' ability to use it. It is NOT the order of topics I see in the textbooks I am looking at. This isn't a disaster, as I am not intending to use them as a coursebook to be followed.

It is also only one strand of what I think is going to be important. And some of the other strands may push me into a different way of ordering the learning. I am thinking already of Describing and of Unexpected Questions as major elements of the course. Watch out for future posts on these strands!

Textbook? Course Book? Part Two: Texts as modelling.

 In Part One, I looked at "cultural" texts and their role in the GCSE language-learning classroom. This is an area the different publishers are pushing hard in their pitch for the new GCSE textbooks we are currently evaluating. As I look at them, I am increasingly thinking that I won't be just following them as a "course book", but instead I am looking for texts I can exploit in the creating of my own "course", tailored to my pupils' language-learning and exam focus.

In this post, I will be looking at something you hope the textbooks do well: Using texts to model pupils' developing use of language in Speaking and Writing.

The constant modelling and development of pupils' ability to deploy their repertoire of language, with increasing fluency, coherence, accuracy and sophistication is central. This post on "If you give a mouse a cookie" shows how pupils deploy a core of language to develop and extend answers on any of the GCSE topics. But do textbooks/coursebooks do this? If the answer is no then that's one major reason to think of them as a book of useful texts, rather than as a useful course.

There are reasons why they might not. One reason is not their fault: recent incarnations of the GCSE have had a growing split between Speaking/Writing and Listening/Reading in the exams. It seems as if there's one body of language for the productive skills. And a whole other body of language to learn for the receptive skills. So for Speaking and Writing, teachers develop opinions, reasons, and examples in past and future. The favourite topics for this are Free Time, Holidays, School, Region and Family. Meanwhile in the Listening and Reading exam, the texts don't look like this at all. They seem to target the more obscure topics, and are based on testing either obscure topic words (hake, anyone?) or non-topic words (until not long ago/nearly everyone). The new GCSE promises to heal this split, with its mandatory vocabulary list. Unfortunately, rather than making the Listening/Reading texts more similar to the Speaking/Writing, it threatened to do it the other way round. (More on this idea here.)

Other reasons why the texts in textbooks don't model the answers pupils are learning to give might include: The need to cover content rather than well designed accumulation of a core repertoire. An unwillingness to make the book too exam focused, especially if in early units the structures needed to do well aren't yet in place. A text-based approach rather than an interactive lesson.

It is bizarre when you think about it, that textbooks aren't full of texts explicitly designed to model the answers pupils are expected to give. It's certainly something that I will be looking out for in the new GCSE textbooks. Rather than pick them apart here and risk upsetting one publisher or another, I'll carry on from Part One of this post, using examples from the 2009 OUP GCSE book I co-authored.

Here's a text that could serve as an example for pupils' own speaking and written answers.

From the 2009 OUP GCSE textbook

This is a series of texts where imaginary people (amusingly named after people I know or worked with at the time) talk about their shopping habits. The texts are packed full of expressions I want pupils to use in every answer they give: I love, I like, I prefer, I can, I have to, I want, I went. Along with verbs in present and past tenses, speech, exclamations, time words.

Interestingly, it's not explicitly modelling an exam answer. In fact it's part of a lesson based on recreating a Trinny and Susannah style TV programme where we are identifying who is a shopaholic and who is a shopaphobe to give them advice on how to sort their life out. Now you'll have to go back and re-read the texts above from that perspective rather than just looking at the language!

Because in the olden days we wanted to make language-learning engaging. We taught the language, and a good exam would test how well pupils were doing. Rather than the exam grade being more important than any actual learning or enjoyment of the learning experience. 

But in our current climate, with textbooks being specifically written for a specific exam, I will be looking out for this. Where there are exam tasks at the end of the unit (a photocard, a role play...) does the chapter actually equip the pupils to do those tasks? If not, it will ring alarm bells. But it won't actually mean I won't buy that textbook. It just means I have to plan a course where those things happen despite the book.

So what would we do with this kind of text? You could just ask pupils to harvest the sentences and structures that apply to them personally in the 4 texts and cut and paste them together to make an answer. Or you could get them to take one of the texts and manipulate it so it's true about them. This is the sort of thing that textbooks often suggest. The problem is it is so dependent on copying or adapting, that pupils aren't developing spontaneity or fluency. So maybe we read the texts as a model, but when we ask pupils to create their own version, they do it without the texts in front of them. So they serve as inspiration but not as a source. Maybe we do it in reverse. We ask pupils to use their core of language to build answers about this topic first, so that when we come to do the reading, it makes it so easy.

One thing I want to do with this new GCSE, is to work on pupils hearing questions in the target language, and having texts to support their answers. So the focus is on the questions, not on creating an answer. I've written about this here, and I think it's a very important aspect of this new GCSE. So for the first text (Hector), questions in Spanish asking things like: What do you like to spend money on? Do you prefer to buy things in shops or online? What's your opinion of going shopping? I will try to make this quickfire Q and A in the target language. Pupils focus on understanding different unexpected questions, knowing they can find the answer in the text. Then we can move on to letting them come up with their own answers, giving a variation on the text. Including coming back to it in a subsequent lesson, without the text in front of them.

Another limitation of the textbook I want to break free of, is the topic approach. With a model text, I want to be able to exploit it to develop pupils' ability to develop answers across topics using a core repertoire of language. So I might ask them to use the Hector text and ask them to rewrite it on the topic of Holidays instead of shopping. Or do it spontaneously as a speaking.

Or to do this the other way round: I am going to be re-writing versions of the texts in the book adapting them to other topics. So pupils are seeing the same structures and high frequency words deliberately recycled across topics. This scaffolds the reading for them, and models how the same structures fit the tasks and tick the markscheme regardless of the topics.

This means I can use a topic based textbook to construct a course which breaks down topic barriers.

It also means that I may be imposing my own order on the course around the things I think are central. This means I may well not plan my Scheme of Work in the same order as the published textbooks. More on this in future posts as my ideas start to come together. But definitely looking at them as "text-books" to exploit rather than as a "coursebook" to follow.

Part Three looks at the different demands of the topics and what seems like the logical way for me to order them in a Scheme of Work, regardless of what the publishers have done.

Text Book or Course Book? Part One: Authentic style texts

We're all busy looking at inspection copies and sample units of textbooks. I prefer "textbook" over "coursebook" probably because I don't follow them as a "course", but rather as a source of texts. So what sort of things might I do with some texts?

The examples in this series of posts are from the 2009 OUP GCSE textbook which I still use and will continue to use selectively.

The OUP textbook I co-authored for the 2009 GCSE.

Maybe you want a text to be used for interest, information and learning about the Spanish-speaking world.

From the 2009 OUP Textbook

Here's an example telling pupils all about a typical wedding in Mexico. I had a class 2 years ago who didn't believe a word of it, but luckily we found a video of someone's wedding on YouTube that confirmed all the goings-on. Even the money in the shoe and the death-march-clothes business.

There is a school of thought that it is through this sort of text where you are genuinely reading to find out new things, that language-learning actually happens. I find this something of a romantic notion. I don't think it is true either that it is a recipe for automatic learning, or that learning cannot happen through texts more focused on practising language than on the content.

In fact there is an opposing theory, that such texts are not useful for language-learning. Because pupils are distracted by the interesting content. Because pupils are overloaded so we concentrate on the exciting cultural content and skip reading carefully. Because pupils are guessing most of the meaning from a few cognates and what makes sense. Because it is not written to carefully model language. So there is an impression of learning but it's all an illusion.

Of course, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It is important for pupils to be able to read interesting content in the language they are learning. But it has no magical powers. At the same time, it is important that they have a constant feedback loop between the meaning of the overall text and the meaning of each part of each sentence. Sometimes knowing words and grammar leads to understanding of meaning. Sometimes grasping what is being explained means you can focus on detail of grammar or vocabulary.

So what would I do with this text?

First of all, vocabulary: The topic vocabulary will be in the word list we work on in class and for homework. And it will feature in other texts and speaking/writing activities on this topic so pupils are meeting it repeatedly. Things like wedding/bride/presents. Of course for the new GCSE we will want to trust that the new textbooks have somehow constructed their texts from the words on the vocabulary list.

Then there's vocabulary from other topics being revisited: shoe/lake/food/tables. Again, we want to be sure that the new GCSE text books do this deliberately in order to make sure all the words are constantly recycled and met in new contexts.

And high frequency non topic vocabulary: all/after/then/while/the most. Which it turns out we have always had in texts. Because it is by definition high frequency language!

So I can ask pupils to locate this vocabulary. Either by asking them to find words in each of these categories (celebrations topic words, other topic words, non topic words). Or by listing words in English for them to locate in the Spanish text.

I also use this same technique for words which they don't already know. So if I give them in English: standing / took off / carried / dead person, then they can find them in the text. These words are not easy cognates that will jump out at them. They will have to read the sentences carefully, and identify unknown words. Then they have to interrogate the meaning of all the words in the sentence and any clues contained in the grammatical form of the word, to decide if they have found the word they are looking for. And if memory is the residue of thought, then having to think about a word will also assist in learning it.

Grammar. I will want pupils to find and categorise the verbs, according to person (I, he/she, we and they), and tense (what happened and what was happening).

These tasks are a preliminary to reading the text closely. But so far, rather than reading the text word-by-word and getting stuck, we have asked pupils to read through the text multiple times paying attention to specific words and grammar. In fact, while they do this, most pupils are doing more than jabbing at individual words like a heron, and are putting together meaning around the words. But we will want to go beyond this, to a close understanding of exactly what it says.

Will I do comprehension questions? Maybe not. Comprehension questions may turn out to allow answers based on a gist reading rather than the detail of the words. If you want, you can use the questions themselves to spoon-feed much of the text to the pupils as in this post. In a course book, this is a useful way of making the text accessible. But in a class with a teacher, you can get the pupils to work much harder in engaging with the language of the text.

But I might do AQA style comprehension questions. I've written about this in previous posts to show how what you think is a correct answer does not score marks in the exam board markscheme. So I give pupils the question and an answer that doesn't quite get the mark. For example: What did she go to? And the "wrong" answer: A wedding in Mexico. Pupils have to read carefully and give the complete answer: A friend's cousin's wedding in a town in Mexico.

This kind of answer that AQA seem to want, is closer to a word-by-word translation than a comprehension question. And I may well ask the class to translate the text. Often this would be another lesson. So they have remembered much of the meaning, and vocabulary, but need to look closely at the text for exact grammatical detail.

I like to come back to texts in future lessons. So again, they might meet the same text a couple of weeks later, but this time as a listening with me reading the text aloud. I would be careful to set questions that require careful listening to the language, not based on general memory of the gist of the content. Or in another lesson we could try to reconstruct the text in Spanish, not aiming for a translation, but to write in our own Spanish an account of what happens in a Mexican wedding.

This use of texts as framework for speaking and writing will be picked up on in a future post in this series, looking at a different aspect of texts: Modelling the language we want pupils to be producing.

The new textbooks are treading an interesting line. Their texts claim to be full of interesting cultural learning, at the same time as recycling vocabulary in different contexts, carefully sequencing grammar, and developing the skills of using language that pupils will need in the exam. How much of this is built into the books as a course? And how much of it is down to how the teacher uses the texts?

Part Two - Text Book? Course Book? Texts as model answers is now available for you to read.

Questions - fundamental to the new GCSE

 Starting to have time to think about planning for the new GCSE. Details of publishers' resources are being released, and we're looking to see what the 2 years of study, progress and exam preparation would look like.

One thing that I think I could improve on and which is going to be central to the new GCSE is pupils coping with a range of unprepared and unexpected questions in the Speaking exam.

In the current GCSE speaking exam, there is one unexpected question in the role play. Most pupils pick up on a couple of words and say something, hoping there's a chance it fits whatever question was being asked. So it's very hit and miss, but it's only worth a couple of marks. For the current photo card, there are 2 unknown questions, but these are generally framed to be a platform for the pupils to show what they can say. Not to catch them out. And that principle applies in the current GCSE conversation too. My questions are not trying to catch the pupils out. I want them to show they can give opinions, reasons, examples in past and future and tell stories.

So in the current Conversation, I will often start with a very open question asking for an opinion. "Qu'est-ce que tu aimes faire pendant ton temps libre ?" Then my follow up questions will depend on the answer the pupil gives. Often in fact, they won't be questions but prompts. Pourquoi ? Et alors... ? Par exemple... ?

So the conversation can evolve spontaneously with natural interaction, tick the examiner's boxes, and work for pupils of all levels:

Qu'est-ce que tu aimes faire pendant ton temps libre ?

    J'aime jouer au foot.

Pourquoi ?

    Parce que je peux jouer avec mes amis.

Par exemple ?

    Par exemple samedi je suis allé(e) au parc avec mes amis.

Et alors le week-end prochain ?

    Alors je vais jouer au tennis si je peux.

Or at a higher level:

Qu'est-ce que tu aimes faire pendant ton temps libre ?

    Alors, si j'ai le temps, j'aime bien aller en ville avec mes amis surtout s'il fait beau.

Pourquoi?

    Parce que j'adore faire les magasins, même si je n'achète pas grand chose parce que je n'ai pas beaucoup d'argent et je dois payer pour prendre l'autobus pour y aller.

Par exemple ?

    Le week-end il faisait beau alors j'ai dit à mon ami que je voulais aller en ville et il a dit que je pourrais aller avec lui et ses parents dans la voiture. 

Et alors ?

Alors on est allés à Norwich mais j'aurais préféré y aller juste avec lui parce que ses parents parlent trop.

The new GCSE will still give a platform for this kind of conversation in the questions that follow the Photocard. (I am looking at AQA, but the specifications are broadly similar, although with some important differences.) The Role Play does away with the unexpected question. But there are 4 unprepared questions which follow the Reading Aloud task.

The questions that follow the Reading Aloud task are not seen by the pupils in the preparation time. They are scripted in the teacher booklet and must be read to the pupils exactly as they are printed. So these are marked for the answer the pupil gives (requiring full answers with some development), but also testing comprehension of the question being fired at them.

Here is an example:

From AQA Sample Assessment Materials

You can see that the first one is an open platform for the pupils to give an opinion and some detail. "Tell me about...." The others are much more specific in what aspect they are asking about. Question 2 is open in form ("What do you think about...") but asking them to instantly come up with an answer on a very specific question. In fact, all of these questions leave me wide-eyed and scratching my head. To instantly think up something to say in French to give a full answer to these questions. I have no idea what I would say for Question 2 or Question 4 here. And most pupils I know don't watch films. And would give an answer to Question 3 that was just the name of a celebrity.

This section of the exam is going to need a lot of working on in class. And it can't be done at the end of the course as exam technique. Responding to random unexpected questions with a full answer, is going to have to be a central part of the course.

Here's one thing I intend to try.

I am going to work a lot on using target language questions with texts. I know that in the Reading and Listening exams, there are no longer questions and answers in the target language. But this is practice for the Speaking exam. And it is so that we can use texts as a scaffold for speaking in class.

Here's an example text from the OUP French textbook which is out already for no obligation sample copies to be sent to you. Contact your area rep! Pearson are also bringing out a book for AQA as well as for Edexcel and I quite like the look of that one too, but I haven't got a copy of it yet. I think I am signed up for an electronic sample.

OUP AQA GCSE French Higher textbook

So in class, I am going to use a text like this one as a scaffold for responding to questions. I fire questions at the pupils and they locate the appropriate answer in the text and read it to me.

As-tu une passion ? Nager est ma passion.

Qu'est-ce que tu ferais pour réussir ?     

Que ferais-tu si tu étais célèbre ?

Que ferais-tu si tu étais riche ?

The focus is on understanding the question. The answer is given in the text.

It could be with the text in front of them (as a reading aloud!) or from memory once we have read the text.

I could do this with questions in the order of the text, or out of order, or re-phrased (Quelle est ta passion ? / Est-ce que c'est important de gagner beaucoup d'argent ? / Quels sont les avantages d'être riche ?) or repeated questioning as a high paced catch you out game. 

And then I would allow pupils to vary their answer, adapting or replacing the answer given by the text or developing an answer given by another pupil. So they are responding to the same questions but giving a personal answer. 

Quelle est ta passion ? J'adore la musique surtout écouter du jazz.

Quelle est ta passion ? J'adore la musique mais je n'aime pas le jazz. Je préfère écouter Taylor Swift.

This would be spread over several lessons, giving opportunity to revisit the grammar and vocabulary content of the reading. This would recycle recycle, recycle: moving from an initial reading of the text, examination of the grammar, response to target language questioning with increasing speed and fluency, to independent answers.

Or perhaps we could do it backwards, with pupils answering questions first, to construct a version of the text before reading it. So first answer these questions imagining you are a swimmer:

As-tu une passion ?    J'adore nager.

Qu'est-ce que tu fais pour réussir ?   Je m'entraîne tous les jours.

Que ferais-tu si tu étais célèbre ?     Je gagnerais beaucoup de concours et je voyagerais à l'étranger.

Que ferais-tu si tu étais riche ?    Je donnerais beaucoup d'argent à ma famille.

Then when they come to the text, they will be able to read it easily and focus on the high frequency words and structures like encore plus or même which will be important in getting the marks for the Reading and Listening questions.

And as I mention in this post, I will be creating parallel versions of texts from the textbook so that we can go over them again and again, seeing the grammar and vocabulary in different contexts. Again, using these as a vehicle for increasingly confident response to quick fire target language questions.

Looking at the textbooks, this is the sort of thing we are going to have to come up with in order to exploit the texts, create a lesson that works in the classroom, recycle content, develop fluency, and tackle the requirements of the exam. Lots of work to do!

Planning for the new GCSE - a backwards approach

 This term we are all going to have to make huge strides in planning and resourcing the new GCSE that starts in September. I could start by making a spreadsheet of the topic content and grammar, or with the contents page of whichever textbook I am hoping to adopt. But in this post I am going to take the opposite approach. I am going to start with a single text and think through some of the things I could plan to do with it. And why I am doing them. That way I can think clearly about what I want my overall KS4 curriculum to achieve.

Here is a text from the draft materials of the OUP French textbook for the new GCSE.

OUP draft advance materials

What might I want to do with a text like this in the classroom?

Firstly, I might want to use elements of the text as a model answer for what pupils might say or write themselves. You can see the scope in this text for a "sentence builder" based on I live in... with... at... we go to... it is... And at KS3 I might take that approach, as we work on pupils being able to see that putting French together isn't magic, it's just a step by step process. I'm not sure it's appropriate at KS4, and reliance on sentence builders may actually be a recipe for not learning. If that statement surprises you, have a look at this post on why it's important to go beyond sentence builders. At KS4 I would hope pupils can confidently say, I live in... with... at... we go... it is... without support. What I would work on is being able to do this at speed, thinking quickly to repeat and change an element as the sentence is bounced around the class. And then to add opinions, speech, conflict of opinions, examples in past and saying what might happen next time. Here's a post on how I would expect pupils at the drop of a hat to be able to riff on this topic saying things like, I live in Dereham with my family but I prefer to go to Norwich with my friends if I can, but if I go with my family I can go in the car, I suppose. At the weekend I wanted to go to Norwich with my friends but my mum said, "We are going to Norwich" so...

So by the time pupils see this text, the bare bones of what they are saying about where they live, who with and where they like to go, are easy pickings. I would probably do speaking first and then use this text as a listening, with me reading the text aloud at varying speeds.

Will anything be changing for the new GCSE in this approach? One thing is that rather than working on pupils being able to spontaneously improvise extended answers, I will have to develop their ability to respond to the scripted questions that follow the reading aloud task  in the Speaking exam. So although in the Reading exam they won't have questions/answers in the target language, I will be using more questions in the target language in class. So with these texts, I would practise asking questions in French, with the pupils answering in the first person. Where do you live? I live in Bruges. There are many possibilities for this, whether it be with the text in front of them as a reading; or from memory after reading or listening to the text; or as a model where they can give their own answers in response to the question. The text becomes secondary to the process of hearing a question in the 2nd person and fluently responding, switching to the first person for the answer.

Secondly, I could exploit the text for reading comprehension.  Except that's the wrong word. We know from the current GCSE that the Reading and Listening exam questions are NOT comprehension questions at all. If that statement sounds extraordinary then please read this post, because it will change your way of thinking about the exam. And we know the new GCSE is designed to be even more focused on testing items of grammar and vocabulary, rather than comprehension. So what should we be focusing on in this text?

One technique I like to use, is to show pupils how they can give a perfectly correct comprehension answer, but score zero marks. In this post I give a examples of questions that answer the question correctly, but which would not satisfy the AQA markscheme. The pupils have to read more carefully and do what AQA want: show they understand exactly what each word means. So for this text I would give the pupils these questions and answers:

What do they do in the holidays? Go to Ivory Coast.   Zero

What happens when they play video games? They win.   Zero

These are examples of how we are not looking for comprehension of the text. What is needed at GCSE (and I expect this to be carried over to the new exam), is an answer that directly translates all the words of the sentence. So I would want pupils to spot that they need to add to the answers to give the details:   They often go to Ivory Coast. They always manage to win.

This exercise does several things. It gives them a way into the text by providing a basic answer to the question. It trains them to look at the question and find the exact sentence that provides the answer, and to then give a full answer with all the linguistic details. And it focuses them on the non topic words such as always, often which appear in all topics.

This has moved me onto the third aspect of the text I would want to exploit: Learning Vocabulary. With its focus on the defined word list, the new GCSE does feel a bit like one big vocabulary test. And we are being invited to think of teaching languages as being a deliberately planned exercise in tracking where pupils repeatedly meet words in different contexts. This is where I hope the new textbooks are carefully constructed, cleverly bringing in all the words on the list multiple times, rather than being over-reliant on the 15% of lower frequency words the exam boards were allowed in order to make a topic-based approach viable.

You can see from the approach outlined in points 1 and 2 above, that I am already looking to move away from topic comprehension and topic vocabulary. You can see that the texts from OUP have been constructed to squeeze in words you might not expect. The words to succeed and to fill aren't the basic words you expect for the topic of going on holiday or for a day out. And it would be easy to gloss over them and concentrate on words pupils need in order to talk about this topic, or to give an answer to a comprehension question. But it's important to keep an eye on these non topic words.

Some, like often, always can easily be applied to any topic and should become a fundamental part of pupils' repertoire, as familiar as I like, because, I can... Others seem harder to fit in, so we need to be deliberate in making sure we see them repeatedly. One thing I am thinking of doing is creating multiple versions of the texts in the textbooks. For example, this text I have written picks up on the language that has been used in the OUP sample texts:

It deliberately looks familiar to a pupil who has worked on the original OUP text. And it deliberately contains réussir and remplir to make sure that pupils aren't just focusing on the words that easily fit into the topic.

I might use these mirror texts in the same lesson or sequence of lessons as the original text, or I might use it later in the course, timed to bring back the words before they are totally forgotten.

I would also centre pre-learning of vocabulary around these words that have been shoe-horned in to the text. Sometimes I like pupils to meet words for the first time in a text, because thinking about a word and deducing its meaning is one of the ways to end up learning it. Including if you initially get it wrong. Getting something wrong is very memorable. But the words that have been squeezed into this text risk being ignored. They are not central to the topic or to the meaning. But they may end up being the ones important for the exam, so anything we can do to constantly highlight them will help.

Point four: The text has been designed to bring in grammar points. The text is using some fancy comparatives such as worse and as much as. And verbs ending in -ir. The first thing I would want to do is decide if my pupils are ready to have these added to their repertoire that they themselves can deploy, or whether it's something that they just need to recognise and understand. If we are going to spend time on learning how to use worse than, then I will want pupils to have it as something they can use in almost anything they say or write. It does seem like a useful tool for developing answers on topics such as family, sport, school, where competition and friendly conflict can help set up a story of hope and disappointment. And bearing in mind the importance of responding to quick-fire questions, What is the worst thing about...? might be an important question to be able to deal with.

The verb endings for -ir verbs is another question. There are so few regular -ir verbs that pupils tend to want to deploy. How often will they be using them for real rather than for the sake of practising them? The exam boards can put them in the Listening and Reading, but how can they manoeuvre pupils into actually having to show they can use them? In the Role Play asking about what time you finish school might do it. But this may have been learned as a wholesale expression, and anyway, the ending finis, fini, finit is silent. In the translation, there might be a he finishes / I finish question. Or the dictation might have a je finis where depending on the exam board the spelling may or may not be tested. Otherwise, a pupil wanting to use finir might go for the safe option of using it in an infinitive construction: je peux finir quand je veux / je n'aime pas finir tard / je vais finir mes examens.

So I will be looking at the textbooks very carefully to see how they are handling -ir verbs. It takes some pupils a very long time to pay attention to details like finis / finit. I will want to see how often the textbooks recycle verb endings to keep pace with how pupils learn them.

Possibility Five: Reading aloud and dictation. You may have thought that working on reading aloud would be one of the first things to do do with the text. I am wary of this. The brain always wants to reach for meaning. So to avoid cognitive overload, I would want to work on the meaning of the text first before asking pupils to read it aloud.

But, yes, I would want to use it to focus on key sound-spelling clusters. The nasty one in here both for reading aloud and for dictation is the ent ending. Reading and dictation is not just a question of phonics. To know how to pronounce parent and habitent you need grammatical knowledge. Another reason to save this, perhaps, until after working on the meaning of the text. It's another way to bring back a text another day to keep recycling and revisiting.

So how does this inform my curriculum planning?

You can see that it is turning into an immense jigsaw puzzle.

I need to plan the organic development of pupils' own repertoire and their ability to deploy it. Our existing curriculum in KS3 and KS4 is based around developing pupils' growing repertoire of language, so I am confident we can adapt this, in fact I will want to change it as little as possible. They will still need to give opinions and reasons, describe, and give examples in past and future. I need to strengthen their ability to bounce from a question form (you) to an answer in the first person. And we need to add grammar items that the exam board may want to contrive to test in the dictation or translation.

Alongside this, I need to make sure that topic and non-topic vocabulary is being met over and over again. Making sure topic words aren't left stranded in just one topic. Making sure key non topic words become part of the growing repertoire that is deployed in all topics. And making sure any obscure words that don't fit easily into any topic don't get skipped over. One way to tackle this will be to deliberately create similar versions of texts to be repeated, making sure that words that are squeezed into a topic text, are seen again as often as the topic words.

It's going to feel like a horrible combination of jigsaw and juggling. You can see where that metaphor leads. Trying to be meticulous while also accepting mess and scatter. I'm comfortable with that.

Evolution or Intelligent Design?

 Evolution and "Intelligent Design" are two opposing arguments about life on Earth. "Intelligent Design" argues that such complexity could not have arisen spontaneously without a Creator. While Evolution suggests that a process of constant mutation and adaptation is what makes life survive. Within the theory of Evolution there have been various competing ideas around whether change is by gradual adaptation or by sudden mutating jumps.

So our new GCSE. Is it an example of "Intelligent Design"? Or is it a natural Evolution of what we have now? 

This post is based on a talk I gave to the HMC Modern Languages Conference in the East of England at Langley School. Thank you very much for inviting me! Many of the more practical (and positive) ideas are already on this blog in other posts, so please do click on the links that follow to see further detail for balance and hopefully useful ideas for planning and teaching.

I do like the fact that committees have been around long enough to have a proverb about them. A camel is a horse designed by a committee. In particular, as the result of a design process which was "conflicted or overly idealistic". And where too many "conflicting and inexperienced opinions were incorporated into a single project".

We can see this in the creation of this new GCSE. A politically selected panel putting forward reforming ideas to fit an agenda, flying in the face of established values and practices. Followed by a consultation which deformed some of the principal features. Followed by the creation of the exam by the Boards, with a totally different perspective from the original intention. This post details how a GCSE initially constructed around a limited high frequency vocabulary list has been sold as a syllabus built around diversity, individuality and culture. And whether that hybrid beast can survive in the wild.

Of course, while camels may look ugly and ungainly, they are in fact robust and resilient. So we need to look carefully at the new GCSE and see if it turns out to have surprising strengths and versatility.

What sort of creature have we got? 

I am going to look at four headline features of this new beast.

Firstly dictation.

Dictation. Not what it says it is.
Image created by Bing AI

 

Dictation. Not what it says it is.

The reason the panel tell us Dictation is in the new GCSE, is in order to test knowledge of the Sound-Spelling link, or Phonics. This is NOT what dictation does. When French school kids do dictation, it is NOT to see if they can write down how it sounds. They can do that:

Je c'est pas se qui t'arrive

Tu es la meilleure maitresse

The point of Dictation is to STOP them writing it down as it sounds. Dictation is a test of knowledge of correct spellings and correct grammar. Not a test of phonics. This post on dictation shows how understanding this can lead to the development of effective ideas for using dictation in class. I would encourage you to read it and see if there are useful ideas you can try. One of the main ideas is not to start doing dictation and realise it's all about grammar. Instead, build in dictation to your grammar teaching. For example from the very start, alerting pupils to the change in a sentence that a key sound can make:

__ petit_  chien_ noir_ cour_

This sentence will look totally different depending on whether the first word is le or les. Dictation means we have to highlight this kind of grammatical awareness in our teaching from early on. Don't wait until you decide to do some dictation (imagining it is just a phonics test) and discover you have opened a can of worms! Please do look at the post on dictation mentioned above to see more ideas on how to make this work.

Next. Role Play.

Role Play.
What Role is it Playing?

Role Play. What Role is it Playing?

Again, I have a post on Role Play in the AQA and Edexcel specifications which looks in detail at how they work. To summarise here how I see the AQA Role Play, I would say that it has questions very similar to the ones you would expect to ask in the Conversation. But they are marked for short correct answers, in the same way the current Role Play is in the current GCSE. So no reward for extended answers, and the word "ambiguity" used to introduce marks for accuracy into something intended to be marked for communication.

Please do click on the link above for detail on Edexcel Role Play as well. But I will spell out the main ideas here. Edexcel have gone down the road of Role Plays in transactional situations. It doesn't seem a good fit for what the GCSE was intended to be about. It smacks of phrasebook learning in a GCSE that was all about building sentences from knowledge of the grammar, not whole phrases. Even worse, it could run into the buffers of the lack of transactional vocabulary.

Already in the sample assessment material, we can see that the transactional nature of the Role Play is starting to break down.

You arrive alone in the café in a foreign town. You ask for your drink. You ask the price of something on the imaginary menu (from a very narrow choice - chocolate, cheese, French stick, ice cream, pasta, rice, fish, fruit, egg, cake, sugar or rabbit). At this point the waiter engages you in conversation about your favourite food. Things escalate quickly as he asks you if you are doing anything tomorrow. And you reciprocate by asking him what time his work finishes! We have come a long way from transactional Role Plays in a very short time.

I would also add that the Edexcel Role Play, while purporting to be about real world communication, is marked for full grammatically complete sentences. They give this example in a tourist office:

Je peux vous aider ? 

    Un plan de la ville ?

This is deemed to be "only partially communicated".

Please do follow the link to the post on Role Play. It's one of the major differences between the boards.

A Conversation Killer?

The next area I spoke about was the Conversation in the Speaking Exam. The GCSE panel were keen to stamp out rote-learned answers. Have they also managed to stamp out  interaction and spontaneous extended answers?

In this post on the Conversation, I tried to answer exactly that question. There is still scope for conversation style questions. And there are some marks for developing answers in some sections of the exam. (Although no marks for interaction.) But in the explanation of the markscheme, AQA specify that an "extended" answer means 3 clauses. And I don't like social media because it is boring would be an example of "good development".

Nevertheless, I gave examples of how I teach extended spontaneous speaking, using a core repertoire that can be deployed across topics. This post explains in detail how my Year 10s learn to tell stories on any topic spontaneously. I will keep on teaching this way for three main reasons: pupils will still have to give extended answers in the writing; they will still have to be able to give some (short) improvised answers in the speaking; and it works as a way of teaching core language round which other language can coalesce. Please do look at the post, because the talk was designed to have many positive useful ideas rather than be dominated by a sense of impending extinction and judgement day.

The final creature from this new bestiary I looked at was the Vocabulary List.

The Vocabulary List 50 -50

The Vocabulary List: 50 -50

50% of the words we currently teach will not be in the new exam. 50% of the words in the new GCSE are words we have not taught before.

The new exam was originally designed to be built around the vocabulary list, not topics. Topics were seen as being responsible for introducing a plethora of words (often nouns) that were needed for different pupils to give an individual answer, but that were not central to the body of language being learned. In fact many words would be abandoned at the end of the topic. So in fact 50% of the words we currently teach, are not needed for the new GCSE. Will we be cutting them?

How will we teach pets in KS3 if only horse, dog and fish are on the list? I see one of the exam boards has added rabbit. How will we teach transactional role plays without chicken and with only chocolate, cheese, French stick, ice cream, pasta, rice, fish, fruit, egg, cake, sugar and the aforementioned rabbit available? Especially if we teach in a way dependent on substitution tables or functional phrases with elements to be substituted.

How do we write resources and texts if we don't have the words we need?

Marie Curie was a chemist. Can't say chemist. OK. Marie Curie was a cook. From Poland. Can't say Poland. Right. Marie Curie was a famous French cook.

Marie Curie in her kitchen

Of course, we can gloss words that aren't going to be in the exam. But that's not the point. Our texts and resources should be introducing and revisiting the words that we are teaching. Otherwise what is the point of a new GCSE with a defined vocabulary list. Especially published resources. They will need to be designed meticulously so that the pupils meet all the words regularly in different contexts.

Which is where a topic based approach could break down. For the exam boards and for teachers.

Rachel Hawkes speaking at the ALL in the East meeting pointed out that in their sample assessment materials, Edexcel used all the shops and a large chunk of the clothes words available in just one listening question. They won't be able to continue like that. They will have to rotate the vocabulary used in the exams so that all items are examined over the years. This is already a problem for the exam setters, who in the sample materials were perhaps over-reliant on the 15% extra vocabulary they were allowed to choose in order to make their topics viable.

This is one reason textbook publishers need to be wary of a topic based approach. If those topic words get used up early on in the first years of the specification, we are going to find ourselves with exams increasingly based on words that weren't prominent in our teaching. I have written about the way this specification could start to resemble a boa constrictor, starving us of the oxygen of vocabulary, in this post.

Of course, for the Speaking and Writing exam, the whole restricted vocabulary list has gone out of the window. Given the personal nature of the questions, "What do you like to do with your friends?", pupils are going to want to have a range of words in order to give a personal answer. Not be able to recall one of the limited number of items on the list which could give a theoretical answer to the question.

This is where my talk came to an end with the question: What are we going to do?

I know from the old Controlled Assessment GCSE, that you can get wiped out if you fail to adapt. Continuing to teach spontaneous speaking was a mistake in the climate of retakes, targets, rote learning, academisation.

Can I spontaneously evolve and steal a march on the dying dinosaurs?

Because the premise of my talk was mistaken. I was thinking of looking at the new GCSE as a hybrid chimera. But that's the wrong way round. We are the creatures in this scenario. Faced with a change of epoch. Can we evolve and thrive?

What I said to the conference was, stick together! Work in your departments with a plan and as a team. Use your social media networks. Join a subject association. This is a time to all support each other. I don't have the answers, but I'll keep looking. Meanwhile, if this is all a bit too apocalyptic, go back and click on the links which will take you to practical things to start trying as we get to grips with the beast.

If I had to say what animal it is, I would say it's a Schrödinger's cat of a GCSE. Simultaneously dead and alive. And it's us, by opening the box, who will determine its fate.

Bing AI's idea of a half dead, half alive hypothetical cat.

Will I need new textbooks for the new GCSE?

 Yesterday I gave a talk to the HMC MFL in the East conference, asking whether the new GCSE is an example of Evolution or of Intelligent Design. I might turn this into a blog post, once I've decided what the answer is. Meanwhile, on the theme of how we are going to adapt to the new environment, here's a quick post on what I am currently thinking, about creating new schemes of work and buying new textbooks.

Please take these as thinkings, not decisions. I do not know what to do. That's the problem.

The key aspect of the new GCSE is the defined vocabulary list. This vocabulary list is derived not from the topics and tasks pupils will be required to cover. It is derived from the 2000 most frequently used words in the language. The idea was that the vocabulary list should be central, and that these are the words that equip you to understand and communicate regardless of topic. It goes hand in hand with the idea that learning happens by meeting words over and over (in a deliberate and rigorously programmed way) in a range of different contexts. So starting from the Vocabulary list, not from Topics.

Whether topics can be made out of these words was in doubt. So the exam boards have been allowed "free choice" for 15% of the words on their lists. These precious few words have been carefully chosen and rationed, shared out between the topics that have been proposed. Even so, it is important to note that in the initial wording of the specifications, the topic areas are indicative of the sorts of contexts in which the words may be used in the exam. Rather than topics being central to the way the course is designed.

I do not have the capacity to create this kind of course. To meticulously plan when words are met and re-met. To imagine what texts and contexts I could construct from them in a well selected and cumulative syllabus built from words rather than from developing pupils' growing ability to communicate. And neither do I have the capacity to write texts when I am starved of the words I need. You can't write a text on Marie Curie if you haven't got the words chemist or Polish. You could gloss them. But then our texts aren't doing their job of constantly focusing on decoding sentences of known words that are actually going to be in the exam.

So I have been waiting to see what the publishers come up with. Would they produce something spectacular, building on NCELP's work on logical step-by-step sequencing where learning happens not by enthusing the learners about the topic content and self expression, but by having secure building blocks and intellectual self efficacy?

Well. A strange thing has happened. Faced with a vocabulary list of very selective high frequency vocabulary, Edexcel from the start have gone with the promise of diversity, culture and self expression. The very opposite of the tools at their disposal. The problem of a restricted vocabulary list was always going to be a narrowing of possible expression, not a diversification and opening up to people with low-frequency lifestyles. And now I've seen advance materials from a publisher for the AQA specification, there seems to be a similar emphasis there too. And topics. Topics, topics, topics.

And we need to look very closely at the advance materials. Just as we had to look at the sample exams. If the books are written based on topics, are they over-reliant on the 15% of "free choice" words the exam boards were given? Because those words can only come up a couple of times in the lifetime of the exam before they have to give way like Man City players in your Fantasy Football team. They might be great players, but if they get rested and rotated then they aren't scoring you any points.

At the ALL in the East meeting in October, Rachel Hawkes pointed out that this risks happening with the exam board's sample assessment materials. In just one listening question, Edexcel used up all the shops and a third of the clothes words. Once we're into actual exam setting, they can't repeat those words year on year. So what may look like a familiar topic-based exam may be unsustainable. Will the same thing happen with textbooks if they are built from topics, not from the vocabulary list? 

A topic based approach to exams and to resource creation may end up creating a Death Star trash compactor curriculum. If the books and then also the exams are over-reliant on topic words in the initial years of the specification, we will be increasingly left with the dregs. Exams concocted more and more from words with no obvious topic and that don't feature prominently in our teaching or resources. The walls could start to close in.

I don't know how Darth Vador's strangulation works. But I know about boa constrictors. They don't exactly crush. They just tighten every time you breathe out. So after a couple of years of exams, we could see the oxygen of topic vocabulary getting shorter and shorter in supply. If we go with resources that stick to a topic based approach.

Another thing that has happened is that the idea of the restricted vocabulary list has actually gone out of the window. Because we will still teach pupils the words they need in order to express the things they want to say. In the speaking and writing exams, pupils will need to be able to say Portuguese, chicken, trombone, snake, canoeing, jam, trainers... All the things they want to say in order to express themselves and complete the tasks. The exam boards will have to construct tasks such that they could be answered just with words from the list. But pupils won't be doing it that way. Imagine having to know and think of one of the handful of random items that are on the list, when you could have a range of words to deploy. And words you actually want to say and which fit the tasks.

What this means is that the published vocabulary list will apply for the receptive skills of Listening and Reading. And for Speaking and Writing, pupils will have a wider and greater knowledge of vocabulary. Which is the wrong way round from a language-learning perspective, where you normally have a greater receptive vocabulary than active.

So where are we at the moment? The textbooks seem to be based round topics. The Speaking and Writing exam will be based round the tasks and pupils' answers to real questions, not words from a vocabulary list. I don't have the capacity to imagine a syllabus or write the materials for a vocabulary weaving approach. So the situation I'm in at the moment is that the textbooks on offer, from what I have seen so far, don't offer a solution to my problem. So I am coming to the conclusion that I might carry on with our current textbooks for French. And our development of a strong core of reusable language for Speaking and Writing. This will be based around opinions, reasons and tenses as it is now. One thing that will change is the vocabulary learning pupils do at home. We will be able to tell them which words to focus on.

I think "conclusion" is the wrong word. It's the shape my thoughts are taking at the moment, but I am very much wanting to continue to think and to bounce ideas off people. In my department, on social media, at conferences, and at ALL Meetings. This is key. Listen and talk. And listen most to the people you don't agree with. That's when you learn most.

What Role Will Role Plays Play in deciding between exam boards?

 Looking at the new GCSE specifications from AQA and Edexcel, it's the Speaking Exam that draws most of my attention. Because I feel this is the one that will have the most impact on what happens in the classroom.

Perhaps I am wrong here. Dr Rachel Hawkes warns against over-preparing pupils for the speaking exam, resulting in the Listening and the Reading grade boundaries having to work overtime to discriminate between pupils of different grades. But it always seems the case that pupils are either prepared for the speaking exam or not. And looking at the array of tasks they will face - reading aloud, role play, photo description, compulsory questions, conversation - it's going to take quite a lot of preparation just to negotiate the ins and outs of the tasks: 

Keeping track of whether to give a short answer or a long answer; if you are talking about the photo; if you are in character; if you are being yourself; if you are talking about the topic of the photo; if you've moved to a different topic now; if you are reading a text without worrying about meaning; if you are reading your notes; if you are listening and responding; if you are against the clock... I had to use semi-colons in that sentence which is always a sign that something is too long, convoluted and getting out of control.

In a previous post, I already looked at where the new exam gives scope for responding spontaneously to questions. Next, I want to look at the Role Plays and see how they fit in with the obstacle course of demands on pupils.

Both exam boards have Role Plays which pupils can look at in their preparation time. They can write out their answers and read them out. For both exam boards the Role Play is worth 10 marks. For short full-sentence answers. There are no marks for extending or developing, and no marks for the quality of language used.

AQA Role Play Marks

Edexcel Role Play Marks

Ostensibly these are marked solely for communication of the message. But the word "ambiguity" is a slightly ambiguous way of bringing in accuracy marks. By pretending that the message hasn't been fully understood because of some error or omission. For example Edexcel, which is selling their spec on the grounds of containing "real life communication", has the following guidance for a role play in a tourist information office:

Edexcel "partially communicated"

Asking for a plan of the town without a verb, is deemed to be only partial communication. Odd, I know. Especially as phrasebook learning of things like je voudrais is the opposite of what this exam was meant to be about.

This is at the heart of the difference between the two exam boards when it comes to Role Plays. Edexcel have ignored the new focus on teaching well sequenced grammar and vocabulary in that they have gone for situational role plays. Which smacks of pre-learned phrases.

The Edexcel Role Play will always be in one of the following formal transactional situations: 

Café / restaurant, shop / market / shopping centre, hotel, railway station, tourist information office, cinema / theatre / concert hall, campsite, leisure centre, doctor's surgery / hospital, in town.

Confusingly perhaps, it says the pupils won't have to use the formal register. At Foundation Tier answers are in the present tense or in familiar set phrases (!) such as je voudrais. And the pupil will have to ask the examiner one question. At Higher Tier, one of the bullet points will always be in a future time frame. And the pupil will have to ask the examiner two questions.

Personally, I am absolutely gobsmacked by the decision to go for transactional Role Plays. It seems almost to be going back to the teaching of phrasebook functions for a series of situations that we used to teach in the 1990s. The exact opposite of where the new GCSE was supposed to be taking us.

And it also seems potentially incompatible with the defined vocabulary list. The Sample Assessment Materials seem to draw very heavily on the 15% of words the exam boards were allowed from beyond the 2000 highest frequency words. They have to design tasks that can be carried out only using words on the list. The transactional words are very restricted - they have had to include a few items of food or clothing to work with. But this could quickly become unsustainable, as the exam must not repeat the same items year after year. Which means that the "transactional" role plays may not be as transactional as you are expecting. And Edexcel have form on this. In the current GCSE, the Edexcel "in a restaurant" Role Plays can take a sudden and disturbing turn, where you ask for the menu, and the waiter asks if you are alone and new in town and if you have any plans for later.

Sure enough, here is an example Role Play from the new Edexcel GCSE Sample Assessment Materials.

Edexcel sample role play

It's in a transactional situation. The first bullet is a je voudrais set phrase with one of the drink items from the vocab list. At a quick glance I have spotted coffee, tea, milk and water as the options. The second is a set phrase for asking how much something costs. With a choice of chocolate, cheese, French stick, ice cream, pasta, rice, fish, fruit, egg, cake, sugar or rabbit. The third bullet point is an opinion, with one of the aforementioned food items. Then the fourth is the future reference, answering one of the nosy waiter's impertinent questions. And finally the second question to be asked by the pupil, which is a mixture of a set phrase to ask "at what hour" and maybe a set phrase about closing, or perhaps testing the grammar/vocabulary knowledge to concoct a sentence.

Can't help wondering about the turn this has taken, with the pupil responding to the waiter enquiring about whether they have any plans for later, by asking what time they finish work...

Here's another example from Edexcel:

Edexcel sample role play

Again, it's a mish-mash. Some situational language learned phrasebook style. Some opinion/tense questions. Having the cues in English was meant to make the Role Play clearer, but even so, there are some questions on these sample role plays that leave me scratching my head. "Say why you are in France." Or "Say why your friend is paying." Taken in the high stakes exam context of constant chopping and changing between being yourself, being in character, talking about a photo, this topic, that topic, short answers, long answers... there is still the potential for pupils to be bamboozled and just not knowing what to say. I don't want my pupils to be bamboozled.

And I don't really want my teaching to be a mish-mash. I will have to have planned a grammar progression that covers the spec, building in each new item as part of the pupils' growing conceptualisation and repertoire. I will want to make sure they can express themselves on any topic, using opinions and reasons and tenses to develop an answer where required. I will need to be covering a huge vocabulary list of adverbs and adjectives. In addition to all this, do I really also want to have to fit in phrasebook learning for situational role plays that may or may not turn out to be situational transactional role plays? It seems like a whole extra dimension to the course for just 10 marks. Some people may love this idea. But I don't think I do.

So what do AQA role plays look like? Here's some.

AQA sample role play

AQA sample role play

In terms of the exam, these AQA Role Plays don't require the pupil to suddenly imagine they are in character ("Say why your friend is paying."?!?!?!) or in a bizarre conversation with a creepy waiter. 

And in terms of planning and teaching, they don't need me to teach set phrases in addition to the repertoire of vocabulary and grammar pupils are learning for the rest of the exam. In fact these AQA "Role Play" questions seem entirely in-line with the type of compulsory questions that follow the Read Aloud and Photo Card tasks (see previous post) and the Conversation questions I will be asking. I won't have to teach pupils a separate set of rote-learned language just for the Role Plays if we go with AQA.

I don't know if Role Plays will be the deciding factor for me in choosing between the specifications. There is a clear difference here between the boards which could make it easy to decide. There may be other features which could push me in the other direction. And of course I could be wrong or you may love the real life dimension or even the learning of useful phrases. This may be a really important feature for you. We will have to keep up the debate and sharing insights as we come to our own conclusions.