One thing that costs nothing which would revitalise languages in England.

A sure-fire way, costing no money, to revitalise and reinvigorate take up of MFL at GCSE.

Do you see what this is?

It's anonymous targets for a random bunch of pupils in different GCSE subjects.

These targets may be given to pupils as they start their GCSE course. Or perhaps when they are considering their options to give them an idea of what they could be aiming for in each subject. Some schools may even give them to pupils in year 7. And they may be used throughout KS3 and KS4 to assess whether pupils are "on track" or not.

They are based on the pupils' KS2 SATs results in English and maths, and how this correlates to how pupils with similar scores go on to perform at GCSE. And by the law of averages, for the thousands of pupils in the year group, there is an overall correlation on average between the predictions and the GCSE grades awarded. Although you might want to look more carefully into just how many (how few) individual pupils get their "target" grade. Because the words "on average" includes... surprise surprise... some getting above and some getting below target. And of course there's another reason why the correlation is a good one: the same data is used to allocate the overall number of grades given. So it's not a coincidence, or a function of the correlation or averages. It's deliberately calculated that way.

What these targets do NOT show, is any reflection of an individual pupil's performance, past, present or future, in a language. The targets are not based on any knowledge of the pupil's study of languages. They are no reflection of the teaching they receive. No reflection of any government initiatives or new GCSE syllabuses or Ofsted Research Reviews. None of that will have any impact. They are set before they start their GCSE course; in fact they are determined before they even start KS3.

But they are a true reflection of something. They very clearly show one important thing.

Look down the column for the target for French. And compare it to the other subjects.

It is lower for French than for the other subjects in the range of grades 5 and above. For a pupil targeted a grade 3, it is more in line. But the higher the target grade, the more likely it is to be lower, often a grade lower, than in other subjects.

This is not a reflection of the pupil's performance in languages. It's nothing to do with the content of the course or the difficulty of the exam. So what is it a reflection of?

It is a true and accurate reflection of the fact that lower grades are given out in languages. It's right there, correctly presented to pupils to help them inform their options choices. And confirmed to them by the reports of exam results from older pupils, siblings and friends.

We can tell the pupils it is no reflection on them. And that the target grade doesn't limit what they can get. Although by then the damage is already done. The targets speak for themselves. 

But if we tell them the truth, we should explain to them that, although no reflection on them, the targets do accurately indicate that they are likely to be given a lower grade than in other subjects.

FFT have reported on the statistics of severe grading in MFL many times over the years. But to see it so starkly in the targets given to pupils drives home the fact that this is not some marginal statistical issue to be debated and tweaked by experts in ivory towers. It's right there in black and white in the targets given to pupils: "You are likely to get a lower grade in languages than in other subjects because that's how many high grades get given out."

So before we do ANYTHING else. Before we have a subject review, or national initiatives, or hubs, or an Ofsted Research Review, or a new GCSE. Before we spend another single pound of tax payers' money. Before we publish any more articles lamenting take up of MFL, or have a debate in the House or a committee. There's one thing we can do. Stop downgrading the performance of our pupils compared to the other subjects we compete with.

If an exam one year happens to be easy, and too many pupils get high marks, they use the grade boundaries to bring it into line. If one year an exam happens to be a bit difficult and not enough pupils get high marks, they use the grade boundaries to bring it into line. Except for modern languages. Where every year they use the grade boundaries to make sure the grades are out of line with other subjects.

And then wring their hands over woe is me, what is to be done.

Not one penny would it cost to put this right.

The view from the classroom

 I don't know if it is the time to be going over the old arguments about the proposals for the new GCSE. Especially as we are busy working out the ins and outs of the new exam, which is in some important ways different from what was originally proposed. Before Christmas, a paper was published by Emma Marsden and Rachel Hawkes, looking back at what was proposed and how the proposals were received. Balancing evidence-informed language policy and pragmatic considerations: Lessons from the MFL GCSE reforms in England. This link takes you to the abstract. To open the full document, use the links that say "Access to Document." It's very readable and I would encourage you to read it.

It puts the case for the proposals very clearly and tries to address what it sees as some misconceptions. It is also clear from the introduction that the new GCSE was seen as a way to reform not just assessment, but teaching. It stresses that the GCSE assessment  (whether one likes it or not) heavily shapes curricula, materials, and pedagogy. So it is important that we continue to engage with the thinking and research behind these proposals.

You can see the arguments for this from both sides. But what it actually comes down to is what happens in the classroom when you try it out for real. Whether it has an impact, pushes us towards changes, and actually works out as intended. Which is the reason why I am writing this post, although I am somewhat conflicted as to whether I want to. So here goes...

The paper makes the case that the vocabulary list in the legacy GCSE was not central to the exam or to teaching. Teachers did not build their curriculum around the GCSE list, and the exam boards did not deliberately design the exams to test knowledge of all the words in rotation over a few years of the lifetime of the exam.

While this is true, it wasn't necessarily a problem. Or rather, the exam boards and teachers didn't turn it into a problem. Teachers taught the words that pupils needed to perform the tasks and topics required by the exam. Without consulting the vocabulary list. In the speaking and writing exam, what mattered was the pupils' ability to use their language to express themselves, rather than testing knowledge of items from a list. Apart from in the translation questions, where knowledge of the specific word in the text was required, and this isn't something that has changed. In the reading and listening exams, certainly for AQA if not for the other exam boards, the key to the texts and questions wasn't a mass of low frequency topic vocabulary. It was words like often, some, always, other, ago. And the focus on exact rendering of word by word language, rather than an answer to a comprehension question was the biggest criticism of these exams. Which seems likely to be exacerbated not alleviated by the proposed "new" approach.

So the paper is right in that the vocabulary list wasn't central to teaching or to the exam. I'm not sure that this was ever a problem. But if you do think that it was absurd that the list of vocabulary wasn't central, and thought it was reasonable to specify all the vocabulary to be learned, then you can see the case for reform. Does this mean that the new vocabulary list should therefore be determined by frequency?

I can see the arguments. The words that get used all the time are worth learning because they get used all the time. Emma and Rachel base their work on research that shows that the very highest frequency words are common to whichever corpus you use. And the words are a good fit for continuing to A Level and for reading authentic resources. 

I think this last example is something that we really ought to be exploring. In the 1990s and 2000s when reading for information and pleasure and "adapt the task, not the text" was in vogue, we encouraged pupils to spot cognates and topic words from context. And maybe told them to gloss over the little words in between. Or thought that pupils would pick them up from context eventually. Whereas now, if we concentrated on the little words in between, we would find that the topic words and cognates are just as obvious as they always were, but equipped with the high frequency words, pupils would be much more able to access authentic texts. This is something I'd love to come back to. Although in the debate about reforming the curriculum, the Ofsted Research Review warned us off authentic texts, because of its focus on language as modelling known words and grammar, rather than for comprehension or interest.

But in the classroom, teachers are finding it very hard to adapt to the high frequency vocabulary approach. We are not used to following a list of vocabulary and constructing a syllabus out of it or constructing texts out of it. It's not that we have swapped the old vocabulary list for the new one. It's that we have moved from basing our teaching on the tasks and topics that pupils are required to deal with, to basing our teaching on a list of words to be tested.

We were quite happy teaching the words pupils needed for a topic. We were quite happy teaching pupils the words and structures they needed for the exam tasks. And the thing is, we are still doing that. But with the extra worry of whether we are teaching the right words.

For many, it means no change. Apart from the creeping worry. For others, it means we are incentivised to try to gain an advantage by doing some of the things the new approach favours: paying greater attention to recycling words; rehearsing what pupils can do with words on a list, rather than saying what they want to say; making sure we cover words from a list in any context we can shoehorn them into; making sure we work across topics. Some of these incentives are positive and some are negative. But recycling vocabulary across topics was already a feature of strong teaching under the legacy GCSE.

It also gives rise to absurdities. If we are still teaching topics based around pupils' personal likes and dislikes, do we discourage them from learning words like skating, chess, chicken which may not be on the list? Or do we go against the whole point of the reforms and add more words which aren't on the list? There seems to be a serious mismatch between the tasks and topics and the language we are given. And I still haven't got to the bottom of the mismatch with the grammar. If we have to teach jouer à and jouer de, are there actually enough sports and instruments on the list?

And it raises interesting questions about the notion of difficulty in language learning. Some of the words on the Higher list are cognates. The difference between Higher and Foundation isn't about difficulty. It's about the number of words. It's interesting to think about this and whether we can control and segregate our pupils' exposure to words according to a list.

Even if you were to insist it makes sense for the GCSE to be built around a vocabulary list, wouldn't it make more sense to make sure the list matches the tasks, topics and grammar that pupils will be required to demonstrate? The paper seeks to argue that this question is a misunderstanding of the power of the high frequency vocabulary. But in practice we are finding that we are very much teaching words which are not on the list, in order for pupils to perform in the topics and tasks.

One final spectre on vocabulary that this paper raises, is the idea that the exam boards should be held to the stipulation that they should test the full range of vocabulary on the list over the lifetime of the exam. This risks meaning that the exams quickly exhaust the more obvious topic words, and that the exams look very different from year to year, and start to look very different from the texts in the coursebooks. When I've mentioned this before, representatives of the exam boards have been very puzzled by the idea and told me that it's not something they are contemplating. So I think we can stop worrying about that.

Another issue the paper raises is the Conversation part of the exam and the use of memorised answers.

This is the part of the debate that leaves me most bewildered. I am someone who prides himself on teaching pupils how to develop extended spontaneous answers in speaking and writing. The old Controlled Assessment GCSE which forced us to abandon this in favour of pre learned fancy answers was an absolute disaster for language teaching. The legacy GCSE started to see an end to this. Some teachers were quicker than others to start to make the switch, and rote learned answers had been embedded from earlier in the curriculum. All of this needed to be undone. The breadth of topics and the requirement for interaction of the examiner, responding to the pupils' initial answer, mean that pupils' ability to use their language flexibly and across topics is winning out over the idea of pre learning answers to every possible question on every possible topic.

The paper quotes research saying that a large proportion of pupils still do some pre learning of answers. This isn't the same as saying that pupils learn and regurgitate a fancy answer word for word. It may well be that faced with a high stakes exam, many pupils will want to be well prepared. It may well be that one of the steps towards spontaneity and fluency, is to have pre learned answers to some questions. It may well be that the pre learned answers are adaptable, flexible and not actually even used in the exam.

I have had pupils who thought they were doing the right thing by trying to memorise answers for the speaking exam. And it doesn't mean it goes well! They are focused on word by word regurgitation and recall. The first thing I do is interrupt them and push them away from these answers, and then they can start to talk from their repertoire and routines and make a much better job. The examiner's reports for the legacy GCSE comment on how pupils who can do this are much better equipped than pupils who have attempted to memorise answers. Keeping the Conversation, where the teacher can ask open questions and follow them up with further prompts, was the most important thing we have managed to do in engaging with these new proposals.

The proposed alternative version of "spontaneous speaking" meaning responding to unexpected questions, is one of the trickier parts of the new GCSE. We know from the Role Play in the legacy exam that the unexpected question is tricky. In an exam situation, pupils pick up on a key word from the question and give an answer which may or may not fit the question. It's a short answer, often panicky.

The new exam has four of these questions. And the expectation is for an answer with some development. We are working hard on these. My pupils have a greater familiarity with question words than previously. But we shouldn't underestimate the processing load required to accurately understand the question, formulate a sentence response, attempt to give some extended detail. Some of the questions don't help. "Where is your school?" could induce bafflement in a pupil in an exam, where both interlocutors are sitting in said school. And how to develop that answer on the spot is not clear to me at all. These questions seem designed to catch pupils out, rather than offer a platform for them to develop spontaneous speaking. This vision of "spontaneity" is from the point of view of testing pupils' knowledge, rather than their ability to use the language.

And I think that's the key. The research paper finds plenty of evidence to back up its own point of view. But it is firmly rooted in one vision of language learning. It wants to be a fair test of pupils' knowledge of what they have learned. To specify what should be learned, and to test that knowledge and to some extent the application of that knowledge. A perfectly reasonable point of view. But one that isn't so simple in the classroom when you are dealing with real pupils and real language learning. Is this the problem? That acknowledging that the GCSE (whether one likes it or not) heavily shapes curricula, materials, and pedagogy led to an attempt to deliberately shape what is learned and how it is taught. And for us in the classroom, the experience of being reshaped feels awkward, confusing and sometimes painful.

Omelettes versus Snowballs

 You will know from other posts, that my favourite metaphor for learning languages is the snowball. And that I have adopted Scott Thornbury's omelette metaphor as a critique of the synthetic grammar syllabus. In this post I will use the example of teaching er verbs in the present tense to show how they might approach a specific topic differently. And I have a sneaking suspicion that at some point I will also hint that they may not be so different. As long as you don't throw omelettes or eat snowballs... 

The omelette metaphor is a biased one. It is a cruel metaphor for something that is supposed not to work. To show the error of an approach and even to ridicule it. I can partly pass the blame for that onto Scott Thornbury but also it does have a more positive side which I haven't seen him put forward, but which is implied in his metaphor. It is the idea that a synthetic grammar syllabus is created by taking the complete linguistic grammar system and chopping it up into little bits for the learner. It's as if you were teaching someone to make an omelette by taking a cold dead omelette, chopping it up, and asking the learner to reassemble it into an omelette. That's not how you make an omelette. And here is the implied counter metaphor: You make an omelette by cooking raw ingredients. With the attention on what is happening in the pan, not on a recipe. And certainly not out of cold omelette pieces.

The snowball metaphor is my favourite, so I am clearly biased. It's the idea that an even covering of snow will have melted by the next day. The learner has to actively grab hold of language that sticks together, make it their own, have some fun with it. This will not only stop it melting, but more and more language will stick to the snowball, making it bigger and bigger.

Let's look at how this might affect your thinking if you are teaching the present tense of er verbs in French.

A synthetic grammar approach is one which selects and sequences the language in order to conceptualise and practise the components of the linguistic system. So if you were teaching er verbs, your primary concern would be for pupils to know the endings. It would be important to you that your pupils as putative linguists would understand the paradigm of the persons of the verb and the importance of correctly inflecting the verb to match the subject pronoun. You might start by giving a table of the verb endings. You would have to emphasise which ones are silent and which ones are pronounced. You could then give exercises to make sure that pupils have to make decisions as to which ending to use, practising getting it right.

There are several pitfalls you will have to negotiate. Firstly with an emphasis on correct endings, you may find that the difference between the written and spoken forms of tu manges and ils mangent becomes an issue. You might blame the nature of the French language for this rather than your approach. And that might be a mistake. You may find that pupils can do an exercise correctly but don't incorporate the knowledge into the language they can deploy for themselves to create meaning. And you may decide that that doesn't matter because pupils at this novice stage shouldn't be required to express themselves. And that also may be a mistake. You may find that you come back a month later and find like the snow that the knowledge has melted away. And you may decide to mix your metaphors and that what is required is to force-feed them some more cold omelette.

How would the snowball approach be different? Time to mix metaphors again, I'm afraid. The snowball approach would be concerned not with chopping up the linguistic system of the grammar omelette. It would be concerned with cooking the raw ingredients. Growing the pupils' snowball. Above all it would be taking care that new knowledge sticks to the existing snowball, that the ingredients are coming together to make something edible and tasty.

So maybe teaching the present tense of er verbs would look something like this... Pupils are already good at saying what foods they like and don't like. The sort of thing they might do next is to ask other people what they like to eat. And to report back on who likes what. In spoken French, there are no endings to learn for I like, do you like, he likes, she likes, they like. It is just the pronoun or the person's name and aime. You can even do we like if you use on. Pupils can get good at using this in spoken French, using their language to ask, answer and report on food likes and dislikes. Once that knowledge starts to stick to the snowball, once the mixture starts to cook, then you can decide to bring in the written form of the endings. And if pupils are writing nice paragraphs comparing what different people like and don't like to eat, and some of their written endings get missed, then that's not a disaster. Because it's not your primary concern. Because you know they have cooked something pretty tasty for now, and they can cook something more fancy as their skills develop. Oh. And once they've mastered using the verb aimer, they can branch out into manger, saying who eats/doesn't eat what. Whereas the chopped up grammar approach would avoid the verb manger because it's "irregular" in the nous form. (Actually it's not irregular. The whole point of the silent e is to preserve the perfectly regular pattern.)

Another thing would be to ask why the pupils are learning the endings of er verbs. If the answer is because it's obvious they need to, then that is the chopped up omelette talking. If you look at it from the pupils' snowball point of view, what makes a sticky useful snowball isn't quite as obvious.

Our KS3 curriculum works on pupils being able to develop answers more and more spontaneously and coherently along the lines of I like to live in my town because I can see my friends and go to the park to play football, but if I want to see a film I have to go to Dereham because there isn't a cinema in my village... If we are going to add third person to that, we need to think carefully about how it is going to fit. In another post I introduce another metaphor - language learning as football - to make this happen. To summarise, we make it a rule that if you mention someone else ("my friends" in the example above) then you deploy a he/she/they/we with a conjugated verb. I like to live in my town because I can see my friends. We play football in the park but... This is also a key ingredient in the way we move to more complex narration, setting up a conflict of opinion; for example in the aquarium story. The focus is on what pupils can do with their language, not on what they know.

You may be thinking that the snowball approach is being as prescriptive as the omelette approach in getting pupils to use certain language points rather than to express themselves. For example in giving pupils routines to follow in order to deploy their language to tell stories. I think the answer to this is that pupils' focus is always on saying things, not on the form of the language. In the world of cold omelettes, this is a problem because pupils get things wrong. In the world of a big snowball, it's all part of pupils hoovering up more and more language and making it their own and having fun with it. 

From the pupils' point of view, language isn't a neatly ordered complete system. It's messy and unknown. They are more interested in meaning and saying things than on the links, rules and patterns. Language links to the real world of meaning, as well as the internal links of grammar. We don't want pupils who have nothing to say and don't want to try to say things. It's our job to show them how grammar and patterns mean they can say more and more things. And they will always push the limitations of their language, because they cannot know the ways in which French will be different from their own language.

I do think though, that the approaches have things in common. The return to fashion of a synthetic grammar approach is a reaction to the kind of functional syllabus we saw in the 1990s, where pupils were taught to say things. A collection of things they could say. With supposedly little conceptualisation or explicit teaching of grammar. Both the snowball and the omelette approach want to avoid this. They want pupils to accumulate grammar step by step and in small pieces. The difference is that one approach focuses on the language and chops it up and gives it to the pupils because they ought to be learning it. The other focuses on what the learners know and can do with the language, and seeks to develop it.

Working on the three types of questions for the new GCSE Speaking Exam

 Year 10 have been working on the three different types of questions for the new Speaking Exam. In this grid, they give 3 different answers to the question Where do you stay on holiday?

For the Role Play, the pupils are given the questions in the preparation period and can plan their answers. Then in the exam, they are asked these questions word for word, but in Spanish. They need to know to give a short sentence answer. (In my Y11 mocks this week for the old GCSE Speaking, many of my candidates were giving Role Play answers which were too long, and risked losing marks if they started making errors.)

In this case, the question is, "Where did you stay on holiday?" And the answer for the Role Play is "I stayed in a hotel." No need for any extra details unless the question specifies it.

The middle column is for the Unexpected Questions. In the AQA exam, these come after the Read Aloud text. They are on the same topic as the text, but are not questions about the text. This was one of the areas of the new exam that I particularly wanted to focus on. We know from the current exam that the unexpected question in the Role Play, and the 2 unexpected questions after the photo card are a challenge. The cognitive load of switching from prepared answers, to listening to a question from the teacher is a shock to the system. Then to process the question, either by picking up on a key word and hoping for the best, or by understanding every word... Then to think of an answer... And how to say it in Spanish... You can see pupils struggling. And in the new exam, there are 4 questions like this. And they are supposed to give developed answers.

So far, my class haven't panicked at the stage of dealing with understanding the questions. We've worked on it, and they are confident. What they struggled with at first was the full sentence answers. "Where did you stay on holiday?" Answer: "In a hotel." In your relief and pleasure at grasping the question, it's not natural to start the sentence again and say, "I stayed in a hotel." We have made progress on this.

By the way, for the role play at Higher Tier on the Sample Assessment Materials, there are past tense questions such as Where did you stay? The questions for the Unexpected Questions seem more along the lines of giving opinions, disadvantages, describing, saying what you do... The question Where did you stay? was chosen by my class for the purpose of this exercise.

And some of the Unexpected Questions don't seem particularly friendly for giving a developed answer. In the French SAMs there is Where is your school? So I am telling my students to:

1. Answer the question.

2. Say some more stuff.

Answer the question. Say some more stuff.

It's not their fault if the questions are unhelpful. They have to say more in order to get the marks.

My school is in Dereham. I live in a village so I go to school by bus.

I am hoping that would count as a developed answer to Where is your school?

For the Conversation Questions, I would never ask Where is your school? Or How many maths lessons do you have? This isn't really a conversation. It seems to be more to do with testing if the pupils know question words like where and how many, which is all very well, but doesn't help them demonstrate they can meet the criteria for developed answers. You'll see their grid refers to a Mr E question.

I don't want my questions to be catching any pupils out. I want them to be a platform for them to show what they can do. So instead of Where did you stay on holiday? I would ask Do you prefer to stay in a hotel or a campsite? And when they answer (with an opinion and a reason), I would simply say, For example? And they would know to answer with a past tense example and develop it.

You can see in their grid, they have written to Keep talking on and on. It says: When I went to Spain I was going to go camping but I decided to stay in a 5 star hotel so I could go to the pool... The criteria for developing answers are less than for the current GCSE. And the word "narrate" has been removed from the mark scheme. But they have to talk for much longer on one topic than previously. So talking on and on is still going to matter!

We are going to come back to this grid regularly, and build answers suitable for the Role Play, the Read Aloud, and the Conversation. And of course we'll use that distinction when answering questions spontaneously in class. How's everyone getting on with all this? Let me know!

When everything you've told pupils about the new GCSE comes true!

 This week, everything I have been telling pupils about the new GCSE came true. And in quietly spectacular fashion.

I suppose that means I'll have to tell you what it is that I've been telling them and what happened in this week's lessons. But I promise you there is a point and it's got positive news about the textbooks and positive advice for the new GCSE. So here goes as quickly as I can to get to the point...

Some context on how I am teaching the course. I am using the new textbook. I am not a big user of textbooks generally. For the outgoing GCSE I used the textbook for the first couple of units and then stopped. But for the new GCSE, if I make my own resources then how will I know if I am covering the words on the GCSE vocabulary list?

I am not doing the topics in the order of the textbook. Firstly because I want to build a strong core repertoire of language on the easy to expand topics such as Holidays, School, Free Time. These topics lend themselves to developing spontaneous answers giving opinions, reasons, detail of past experiences and plans for the future. This can then be transferred from one topic to the next. Secondly because my Year 10 are essentially beginners and I want to keep the backbone of my teaching intact because I know it works.

What messages have I given pupils about the new GCSE? By using the old textbook and the new textbook, I have shown them that we don't have to learn sets of topic words. Hotel, guest house, cruise, youth hostel, campsite in the old textbook, compared to hotel, campsite in the new one. With even words like ducha for "shower" not on the list. Instead what matters is what you can DO with your language to develop what you can say about a hotel or a campsite, using your core repertoire. And as teachers we all know that albergue juvenil was never going to be seen again in the course and all the effort you put in to explaining what it is without making it sound weird was going to be wasted.

Instead, the message is to watch out for the non topic high frequency words. Here are the words my pupils extracted from the texts (in the new textbook and from the old) on the topics of holiday accommodation and transport:

Words like quite, first, too, never, always, however, learn, together, fear, noise, broken. The words that can fit into every topic. We've written them strategically inside the cover of their exercise book. The pupils said, "If this is just from one topic, we're going to run out of room." And my message was, "No. These words will be the same in every topic." A bit of an ostrich to fortune, but as we shall see, the point of this post is that things are turning out uncannily as I promised them.

And if you look carefully, another type of word is also on this page. Huelga meaning strike and obras in this case meaning roadworks. The opposite sort of word. The words that fit in no topics at all. But which are on the GCSE list because they feature in the EU parliamentary debates used as the source of the list. Pupils know to keep hold of these words. And I told them that if the textbook was well written we would meet them again. These words are easy to skip over if you are following a topic vocabulary based approach.

So this week, we moved on to the topic of School. So we've gone from Module 2 in the textbook to Module 5. And when I say "moved topic", my message to pupils is that they can instantly transfer their Holidays language to the School topic. Here's the first lesson back after half term. Bear in mind these are beginners (they did Spanish in Year 9 one lesson a week after school). This is them writing on School before we've started the topic.

You can see the repertoire from talking about going to a theme park or an aquarium (I like, because I can, but if, X doesn't like, what was happening, speech, what happened...) transferred instantly to the new "topic." And you can see one of them has deliberately used fear from their non topic vocabulary page. The message is getting through.

But things got even better.

This is a text from Module 5 of the new textbook.

New Pearson GCSE Spanish textbook AQA version

First of all I focused on the "School" vocabulary. Particularly words you would recognise if you saw them writtten down but which sound different. For example religión, educación, justo. Hidden cognates such as esfuerzo, aprobar. And potential false friends like asignatura and in the second text on the page buenas notas and suspender. I did this as a dictation, dictating single words and then teaching the meaning. (The next lesson we came back to these "school" words and used dual coding to make sure we knew them.)

Then I read the text through aloud without the pupils seeing it. And they ticked off the "school" words on their dictated list as they heard them.

So what are the other words the text is made up of? Our core repertoire words feature strongly: tenemos que, me encanta, a __ le gusta, porque... And what else? The words from the list on the yellow inside cover of our book. However, always... And in the second text on the page: Ya no tengo miedo cuando tengo que actuar en una obra de teatro. With our word for fear and... you will not believe it! Our word for roadworks, cropping up as the word for a play in the sense of a work of theatre.

Pearson Spanish GCSE textbook AQA version.

Of course, spotting this word in the text also led to recalling where we met it, and the word for strike got recalled as being the other obscure word we'd met it with. So even though strike wasn't in the text, we've effectively met it again.

So my pupils can turn to page 111 of the textbook. And find that once we've learned a handful of "School" words, their core repertoire plus their high frequency words are the key to this new GCSE. And even their red list of high alert obscure and random words is revisited! This spectacularly delivered all the points I have been trying to make about learning for this new GCSE!

In one respect we got very very lucky. I had not designed it so that the words I picked out of the old and new textbooks would all reappear on page 111. And the authors of the textbook had not imagined that I would jump from Holidays to School. But it's feeling very positive for how we are approaching the GCSE and for how the textbook has been written. It made the pupils realise they are accumulating language that will be met again and again, transferred across topics. And it made me feel I can trust that the textbook will serve us well. Thank you! It's looking good!

Note added later in the School Unit.

I have to come back and add this, because this is getting ridiculous! You may remember from other posts that I started the year with the topic of holidays so we could build the Y10s' repertoire. Specifically with a story about going to an aquarium and then a story about going to a theme park. In which someone ate and drank too much and was sick on a ride (sorry). I mentioned in this post that we then transferred the skeleton of those stories to being able to talk and write about the topic of school. Well. In the text book, we got to the page in the School Unit about going on a school trip. Which turned out to be about going to a theme park and someone drank too much and was sick on a ride (sorry). My pupils have the impression I have planned this in purpose!

Getting started with the new GCSE

 The first half term with the new GCSE! Wishing maybe I'd brought some books home to illustrate some things in this post. But then again, no thanks. I'll leave it all at school if you don't mind!

For French, I put in place booklets for Module 0 (before starting the textbook) and to accompany Module 1 of the book. This was to make sure teachers and pupils were focusing on the transferable core of language and the high frequency non topic language. And working on what pupils can DO with their language as much as on knowledge of language.

This didn't leave me much time to plan the Spanish Scheme of Work or resources. Our French scheme of work is flexible and will be constantly revised as we discover what the new GCSE is actually like. The Spanish scheme of work is even more flexible. I'm just using the old one and changing things as I go! This is also because they basically start Spanish in Year 10. (Year 9 have one lesson a week after school.) So I'm really concentrating on building what the pupils know and can do. With lots of shortcuts and synergies across topics. An accumulation of language and the ability to deploy it is something that I am not prepared to throw away; because it works!

So I started with the topic of Holidays. Not the topic that comes first in the textbook. I wanted to start with a topic that is really strong on the key aspects of the course. Pupils' repertoire of opinions, reasons and references to past, present and future. Key vocabulary for time reference, qualifiers, description. Holidays is great for this. Plus it allows us to look at places in Spain and tell exciting stories. Rather than obscure navel gazing and invasion of pupils' privacy, trying to construct something on a marginal topic like Your Use of Communications Technology. Once we have the core snowball of language, we can easily scoop up things like Technology later on. But it's not the topic I want to start with when I'm trying to get the snowball to gel.

All of my Year 10 can confidently give opinions and reasons. Including other people's opinions to set up a conflict. They can narrate where they went, what they wanted, what people said, what was happening and what happened. They can do this for an amusing incident at an aquarium. Or a theme park. And transfer it to other topics we've not even done yet, for example talking about a lesson in school. There are plenty of posts on this blog looking at exactly this. If you're not familiar with it, here is a good example. It shows how the old GCSE lent itself to this approach. The requirement to "narrate" is no longer there in the new GCSE criteria. But the Conversation now requires pupils to talk for twice as long on one theme compared to the old GCSE. So I am keeping this approach! Plus it contains all the grammar my Year 10 beginners need to have at their fingertips.

Here they are improvising on the idea of different activities for different weather conditions. And including the class's pet obsession which now appears in every piece of work anyone does: rubber ducks!

Going to Cromer and playing on the arcades

As well as the core repertoire, you can see the high frequency vocabulary for time references and qualifiers shining through!

Again, this is something that I always taught. This non topic language is absolutely vital in the out-going GCSE where AQA will give 0 marks for a Reading/Listening answer that doesn't contain words like almost, part of, most... Again, if you aren't teaching this language for the old GCSE, here's a post that will open your eyes!

So what has changed? One important thing is the apparent reduction in topic-relevant vocabulary. I am hearing this from the French teachers too. Teaching Technology without having all the technology words as central. Or in a future unit, teaching TV habits without having all the types of programmes listed. Of course you can still teach pupils how to say, "I have my own youtube channel" even if channel isn't on the list. But you don't set out with the principal objective being for pupils to learn those topic words. It's no longer central.

What are we teaching instead? Well, from the first part of this post, you can see that I am teaching core powerful cross-topic repertoire plus high frequency non-topic words.

You can see this best if you continue to teach with the old textbook together with the new one. There are exercises which look similar, but which show the key differences. For example in the Holidays unit, the old textbook has a listening/reading exercise on accommodation. It contains youth hostel, cruiser, guest house, luxury hotel, campsite... The new textbook has hotel, flat, campsite.

In speaking and writing, the focus is on what you can say about a hotel or a campsite. Not learning all the types of accommodation. In listening and reading, the focus is on the exact detail of the qualifiers. In fact it always was. But now I don't need to feel guilty for skipping youth hostel because I knew we weren't going to see it again ever and it would be forgotten within days.

Here's the list of words my pupils extracted from the Reading/Listening texts on transport and accommodation:

Not a single transport or accommodation word there! And it's prominently located on the inside cover of their exercise book. Because that vocabulary is going to be useful in every unit. I'm hoping that every sub topic doesn't yield that much key vocabulary, because we're going to run out of room on the yellow covers, and because I've told the pupils that this vocabulary will set them up for the whole course. Unlike youth hostel, I am certain they will see these words again and again in Listenings and Readings. In fact they already have. And have another look at the plastic duck writing above and see how these words mesh with their core repertoire for Speaking and Writing.

Plenty of "topic" words have stuck with pupils. This kind of concrete topic vocabulary is easily lapped up. Chubascos stuck literally by me telling them they didn't need to learn it anymore. But our main focus has been on the non topic words.

One last thing on using the old and the new textbook that brings this out. Having worked on accommodation or transport with the new book, you can do the exercises from the old book. And use this to show them how the vocabulary works. But also to show them how AQA questions tend to work. They are NOT comprehension questions in the sense of giving an answer about the information in the text. They are language testing questions where you have to demonstrate you can show your knowledge of the words and structures.

Use the listenings from the old book. Give the pupils the comprehension question "answers" (he stayed in a youth hostel etc). But show them how for AQA this isn't how they view the exam questions. You can see in this example, I gave them the questions. And I gave them an insufficient answer. You can spot these because they have been marked by a cross. Their job is to listen and give the full AQA compliant answer.

What the pupils have to do is focus on the detail of the language around youth hostel, not the youth hostel itself - this is no longer in the exam. What they are listening for is the detail:  near the beach, quite, very, small, a bit. These are the words AQA have always wanted pupils to identify if they are to get the marks. And there they are, right there in the old textbook. But we were being distracted by guest house and cruise ship.

So far so good. I have some things to share in another post related to unexpected questions and the different requirements for the Role Play, Read Aloud Questions and Conversation Questions. But the biggest difference so far is it allows me to continue to teach exactly how I taught the old GCSE, but without worrying so much about cutting corners on youth hostel and lists of topic vocabulary. Because building what pupils can do with a core repertoire is much more important.

Cognitive Science in Practice

 In a previous post I wrote about the Cognitive Science ideas that are so current in schools today. I characterised them as being uncontroversial, fairly obvious, and as giving no actual precise answers as to how they make teaching and learning go better.

That post wasn't really attacking the Cognitive Science. It was about the dangers of the right wing Knowledge Curriculum which is using the Cognitive Science as a Trojan Horse. More on that toxic Knowledge mutation here. 

The Cognitive Science has been pulled into this in two main ways. Firstly as cover for the toxic Knowledge mutation. And secondly by the "Research" mutation. Instead of research into the messy complexity of teaching and learning, this has come to mean a policing of teaching and how it conforms to a neat and very basic model of learning. 

None of this is the fault of the Cognitive Science. So in this post I will try to set the record straight a little and find a middle way!

When it comes to the Cognitive Science, I think that being basic (fundamental), uncontroversial and vague are positives. Yes, even vague. The sooner we can get away from polarised models and magic bullets, the better. True research is in the messy middle ground. Cognitive Science tells us, for example, that the balance between challenge and pupils being overwhelmed is a vital sweetspot. It doesn't tell us how to find this. Of course not. But we look for it in every lesson. Teaching and research into learning ought to be about looking at this rich interplay, not a tidied up version with arrows, outlines of heads and memories forming as a spark across a synapse.

Here's an example to get us going.

When I use dual coding to teach food vocabulary in French, I have used these pictures.

As in comfy chair

As in moooootard

[Ironically the only magic bullet Cognitive Science offers is misunderstood to such an extent that I am often told this is NOT in fact dual coding.]

Pupils doing a single transition taster lesson in French in July of Year 6 still remember most of the words when we come to do them 8 months later in March of Year 7. From a single lesson. So dual coding works - go back and click on the link above if that makes you want to read more.

But it doesn't work equally well for all the pictures. Jam works great. This particular picture for moutarde doesn't. And if you pay attention in the lesson, you will see why. There is always a pupil whose immediate reaction is to shout out, "Why is that cow pink?" And the answer is because I really liked the picture, I thought it would be fun and maybe even memorable. And then the Cognitive Science whispers, "Too memorable." Too memorable and too distracting. The pupils have remembered "pink cow" not mooootard. So time to try a different cow picture that's less the centre of attention.

This applies to everything. Not just pictures. What is helpful? What is attractive? What is distracting? Like the Millennium Falcon, we are stuck in some kind of traction beam between attraction and distraction. The Cognitive Science can alert us to our fate, but we still have to figure it out for ourselves on a case by case basis. Sometimes you can just bypass the compressor. And sometimes you have to fly straight at the Imperial cruiser and hide until it jettisons its trash.

And it gets really quite complicated when we move away from just images. Our whole approach to teaching languages comes into question:

Authentic texts. Genuinely engaging, interesting and meaningful? Or leading to a superficial reading based on guessing, alienating pupils who need to understand the words, are overloaded by the content, and aren't that interested anyway? Attractive or distracting?

Using language to communicate, be creative, express yourself. Is this exciting or overwhelming? It brings with it the overload of having to think up what to say, and having to interact with other people. And incredibly complex decision making of how to express yourself using the limited language you have, balancing accuracy and communication. 

We don't need Cognitive Science to tell us this. We know that all these aspects need developing: learning the language knowledge, and learning to use the language. But we should listen to the Cognitive Science here. Because it is trying to escape from the paralysing  Knowledge Curriculum tractor beam paradigm of "Novices and Experts." Learners can and should be learning to develop how they use their language. Because we understand the Cognitive challenges that are in play here. We don't give up on it and say that learners can't use their language until they are "Expert." We know to break down the demands and develop knowledge of language and how to deploy language, working on both.

Grammar or Meaning? When I teach pets to Year 7, I know that un and une, and j'ai and je n'ai pas de are more important than chien in terms of their French over the next 5 years. But I also know that for pupils at this stage, links and patterns internal to the language are insignificant, compared to links between the language and the real world. Their real world. When they go round the classroom asking, Tu as un hibou qui s'appelle Archimedes ? until they find that person, I know they are practising phonics, gender, the verb to have for asking and answering, negatives, question forms, how to interact... But from their perspective... They are finding out who has an owl!

Like the pink cow, I need to watch and make sure that it's not a distraction. But without this, it's not language learning. It's memorisation of some sounds and letters with no meaning other than that they can be translated into English. But the kind of meaning that means referring to reality - the reality in the classroom, the reality of the owl - that needs to be in the balance too.

And when I teach je n'ai pas de... Cognitive Science doesn't tell me how to do it. Should I explain how it's formed, with Mr Apostrophe eating the letter e? Or should they learn it by chanting it over and over to a video of an accelerating steam train? Should we meet it when we do the grammar of the verb to have? Or should we do it when we are doing a dialogue and someone finds they need to say, "I don't have an owl"?

We do all those things. But in what order and in what balance? Cognitive Science doesn't tell me. Experience tells me. Trying it and coming back to it again tells me. Constant observing and monitoring tells me. Talking to the pupils about it tells me.

And that's just fine. Cognitive Science isn't the answer. It is a question. A dynamic question of balance that is never going to be answered and which will always be asked in every single lesson, every single day. In every single classroom of real pupils and real teachers being human beings.

Differentiated Dictransalation.

 Yes. You read that correctly. Today Y11 did Differentiated Dictransalation.

The translation was a model text on the topic of Work Experience mainly from words in their repertoire, but with plenty of non topic high frequency words as well.

Depending on how much support I thought they would need, different pupils were allowed different approaches.

1. Allowed the text in English and a pen. So when I read the text in Spanish, they can write down any words they had half forgotten or get the verbs or try to write any unknown words as a dictation... But I read it too quickly for them to be able to write down all the words.

2. Allowed the text in English but no pen at this stage. So they can read and follow the text as I read, to check they know words, to listen out for any word order changes or unknown words. But not write them down.

3. Not allowed the text yet. Just have to listen. This group will be further subdivided later in a final twist!

So then I read the text in Spanish. Quickly enough that the group with pens couldn't write down all the words.

Then they did it as a translation.

Group 1 had written down most of the words they might have been missing.

Group 2 had kept any tricky words in their heads.

Group 3 had at least heard the Spanish.

And I invented a group 4. Most of group 3 now got a copy of the text in English to translate just like the others. But group 4 just got a piece of lined paper to try to reconstruct in Spanish the text that they had heard me read.

You need a class who are up for a challenge and won't feel aggrieved at being treated differently. And as part of the challenge they have to understand that there will be mistakes and guesses and things to learn. Watch out the first time you do it, for group 1 writing down words they already know instead of listening out for the bits they need.

We will come back to it tomorrow and see if they can all reproduce a version of the text from memory. And then adapt it to talk about their own work experience!

Using AI to plan lessons

The links to AI conversations in this post have gone dead. I think you can still get the general impression from the post. Then maybe try it for yourself?

 The government have suggested that teachers need to harness the possibilities of AI to help them plan and resource lessons. The idea is that this will save time, and may help new teachers or non-specialists to come up with useable lesson plans.

A year ago to the week, I wrote a post looking at AI and some aspects of language learning. It found that AI was very poor at manipulating language. It could explain in general terms, but as soon as you tried to use it for specific examples or exercises, it started to go wrong. Its examples didn't match its explanation, and it couldn't stick to the brief. And it was sexist and racist. So not a good start. But let's look at how it fares with lesson planning.

We should get the howlers out of the way to start off with.

We know from last year that AI struggles with analysing letters in words.

(By the way, looking at pronunciation in the above example was from my wrangling with the AI. It would never come up with something as focused as that.)

It still struggles with taking words apart.

(And people laugh because it doesn't know how many rs there are in strawberry!)

AI thinks that je vais meaning I am going, can be explained because it is made of the French word va + the English word is

(It didn't randomly come up with this. It was as a result of me asking for clarification.)

AI designs an activity where the teacher reads out the pupils' name and age (11) and the pupils have to guess who it is.

Admit it, you tried saying it to see if there's a difference.

I asked it how long it expected this task to take. It said about 30 minutes. There are not enough words in the dictionary to complete the task!

Writing out the French alphabet for homework. (It's the same as the English alphabet.)

So it makes mistakes. Mistakes with language, mistakes with tasks. And sometimes they are enormous and obvious and hilarious. Although I have to say, that one of my own kids was actually set that very task of writing out and illustrating (with English words) the French alphabet for homework. I may still have it in the loft!

But how does it do in terms of planning lessons?

It always produces a very similar lesson plan. It starts with a warm up, then a repeat after me, then a matching activity, then a write your own paragraph, then listen to some native speakers, then do a role play with a partner, then write a paragraph for homework. Oh. And I forgot flashcards. It loves flashcards.

A sequence of activities, with very little focus on what language is being taught and how the lesson should evolve around knowledge of the teaching points required by the specific content of the lesson. It treats every lesson as some language to be heard and repeated, with some grammar to be explained. As a result, there's no care or attention paid to whether the tasks can be done using the language that the pupils have. So most often, its lessons would not work because the tasks pupils are being asked to do, are not doable.

I have then had to engage with it in a protracted conversation where I give up my time and experience and expertise in order to coach and coax it into producing something better.

Here's an interminable conversation where I tried to get it to focus on teaching the language rather than just a series of activities. Click here to see me wrangle with it.

Here's another one where I tried to start from a language point rather than a topic to see how it did. Unfortunately, its grasp of French is so poor, it was never going to work. In case French isn't your specialist subject, hardly any of the letters it claims are silent are actually silent. Click here to see me trying to help it.

So, far from being time saving, this is taking up hours of my time to try to get it to produce something workable. And far from being suitable for new or non-specialist teachers, it requires huge experience and expertise to try to guide it round horrible pitfalls, and try to get it to focus on teaching language, not stringing together activities.

I have tried it for science lessons too, with the same result. It comes up with activities, with no notion of what it is actually trying to teach and how to engage pupils in that learning. It doesn't use the experiments to tackle fundamental concepts or address misconceptions. In fact at one point it said that a balloon flying along a guide string was demonstrating Newton's Third Law, because the string moved in the opposite direction to the balloon. Here's a summary of its science lessons in a thread unroll.

So I could be quite insulted by the government. They are always on our back and telling us that good enough isn't good enough. But if they recommend this half baked unskilled nonsense, then they clearly have no knowledge or respect for our expertise.

BUT...

But I think I have found a use for it. Just it's the opposite of what the government is suggesting. Clearly, AI is no use at all for new teachers or non-specialist teachers. Or for saving time. It takes an immense amount of expertise and time to coax it towards something useful. It has no knowledge of pupils. It can quote some insight into teaching principles but struggles to apply them. Its subject knowledge is a worry. It likes to string together activities, rather than build learning around the specific concept it is teaching. Does this remind you of anything? 

It reminded me a lot as I was doing it, of the way you can work with a very new trainee teacher to develop their ideas into a workable lesson plan. Of course trainees arrive with differing levels of experience, but this seems to share so many of the things that they have to hone. Spotting flaws, refocusing on what matters, avoiding distracting activities done for the sake of the activity, factoring in knowledge of what will work with pupils, targeting concepts and misconceptions, building in progression.

Here's one where I try to persuade it to change its focus to really think through the language needed for the tasks. After a couple of hours, we did get somewhere.

So maybe we have discovered a useful tool. It was a rehearsal/simulation of how as a mentor, I might work with a trainee. So perhaps this could be used for mentors to hone their patience with new trainees. Or for course tutors to use with their trainees to live-model lesson planning. It would be great if there were a use for it!

Cheating Translation - a neat trick

 I am very much enjoying working through the new GCSE textbook as I plan for the new GCSE starting in September. They have achieved a good balance between progression and accumulating language, and sharp focus on developing pupils' exam skills in a cultural and motivating context. It's a great fit for the overall vision we have in our school of how we want the course to work for our pupils. I have been creating a booklet to go with Module 1 to really draw this out and get us off to a great start.

In this post I am going to show you one clever way to make use of the texts and activities in the book: Cheating Translation.

Put simply, Cheating Translation is where you have a series of texts for pupils to translate - some from English into French, and some from French into English. And what you do, is you hide the language pupils need for one translation, inside one of the other texts. So they can do most of the translation using language they know, but if they are stuck, they know they can hunt for the words in the other texts on the page.

Here's an example from our Year 8 Unit 1 booklet.

You can see that text B helps pupils with text A. And text A helps pupils with text B. This is great for a cover lesson where you need a worthwhile activity that works smoothly for the cover teacher.

So how does this work to make using the new GCSE textbook go smoothly?

This is from the Module 1 Booklet I have written to go with the new textbook.

You can see from the list that there is an awful lot going on on this page. Irregular verbs, plus jouer à, jouer de, faire du sport, j'aime le sport and important time words. All of these things must not just be seen but actually learned. With attention drawn to them and planning for how they will be met again and again, and added to the repertoire of French which pupils can use confidently and accurately.

Here's the first text on the page:

Pearson AQA GCSE French

This "Manon" text is in fact one of four in the first exercise. And what the book does is ask the pupils to look at all 4 texts and match them to the pictures. This is a perfectly logical way in. The pupils have a first read through of the text, picking out the vocabulary for the activities (cooking, cycling etc) and matching them to the pictures. It's a natural and important way to approach the text. But it works entirely by asking them to find obvious known language or cognates, and ignores entirely the features of the text which are actually useful.

Of course there are follow up tasks. Firstly to translate the sentences in blue which contain the irregular verbs. And then secondly to find mentions of other people in the texts. Although this will need teacher input to steer pupils away from just listing her brother, her friends and actually focus on nous and the verb endings.

The various other features such as jouer de, faire du, are picked up in grammar boxes on the page, but I want to get as much as possible out of the text itself.

Let's look at just the Manon text again:

It's fabulous. It's just what's needed as pupils move from KS3 to GCSE. They are already brilliant at saying what they like to do and why, adding if sentences and linking it up. They are poor at adding convincing detail, nuance and they are only just starting to work out how to move from talking about themselves to talking about other people, either as a conflict of opinions or as working together.

I want to get at the move between je... mon frère... nous... on... And I want the nuance words like tout and plusieurs, the time words like après and normalement, and the handling other people words like ensemble.

We know in an AQA markscheme for the reading exam a candidate who writes "They cycle a long way with their brother" might get 0 marks if AQA insist it has to contain the words several and together. We know they do that in the current GCSE. And in the new GCSE with its increased focus on high frequency vocabulary, they are just as likely to work this way. And in planning our teaching for the new GCSE, I am also determined to keep the focus on these non topic words which can appear in any text. And which also make the difference, in pupils' own speaking and writing, between a good candidate and an outstanding one. Ultimately these are the words which allow pupils to frame narrative, move coherently from one idea to another, and to develop longer, detailed answers.

So where does Cheating Translation come in?

Have a look at this translation text and compare it to the Manon text.

It is designed so that pupils can translate almost all of it from their repertoire of French. But it is deliberately a mirror of the text they are going to meet when they get to the Manon text in the book. So when they meet a word they don't know, they can find it in the Manon text.

It is doing two things, both as important as each other. In doing the tennis/football translation, it is showing them how to extend and give detail/nuance to an answer they can already produce. They see that the words in bold type naturally fit well into their repertoire and enhance their expression.

And secondly it means that the first time they encounter the Manon text, it's not as a problem or a threat or a challenge. It's as a useful helping hand. It gives them the words they need. Instead of tackling the text as a skimming for known words exercise, it takes them straight in to looking for unknown words. And very useful unknown words!

But that's not even half of how Cheating Translation works! Next you can do this!

They move from translating my mirrored text into French, using the Manon text for help, to translating the Manon text into English, using my mirrored text for help if needed. And then they shut the textbook and translate it back into French. You can choose whether to do this as a sequence of translations in one lesson, or if you want to spread it out over several lessons to boost the requirement for pupils to retain and retrieve what they learned in the previous lesson.

So instead of fishing around in the Manon text for known words and then new grammar, they are straight in to working with every word in the sentence, for comprehension and for extending their own repertoire of French. The support is there to make them successful, the challenge is there, and the vision of how it all builds their learning is definitely there.

This idea of rewriting texts from the textbook on different topics is something I am going to continue. Either as here to anticipate texts, or to deliberately revisit them in new contexts later. As well as revisiting being important for retaining vocabulary, you can see from this example that it's even more important for switching the focus to the non topic words and for how they are integrated into the pupils' repertoire, ready to be deployed.

New GCSE Module 0 Booklet

 I have created a booklet for our Year 10s called Module 0. Why Module 0? Because it's for before they start the textbook. And because the 0 is the shape of the snowball of French I want them to have so it doesn't melt and so more French sticks to it. And because a 0 Module approach is lurking behind this GCSE, where as much as possible we are not sticking to one topic at a time and then moving on.

And I've put all that in the booklet for the pupils too. Here's a slide from the powerpoint that introduces it:

The first thing we do is to ask pupils to analyse their own snowball from KS3 with this double page activity. They place the French they know and always use at the core, working outwards to French they don't know yet. In 2005 I wrote that this is all the grammar that you need for GCSE - what matters is how well you use it. And nothing has changed!

Then we go straight in with 3 key aspects in turn. The Role Play, the Unexpected Questions, and The Conversation.

For The Role Play, I have picked out from the Sample Assessment Materials all the Role Plays that I think pupils can do successfully using their snowball of French and the vocabulary they have learned in KS3. The questions are in English and they can write down their answers. They should write short answers in a sentence. The answers aren't about their own lives; they are role playing a conversation between two imaginary people.

This will give the pupils and the teachers the opportunity to see how well KS3 has prepared them for GCSE, and any gaps that will need to be filled. It tackles exam technique from the start of the course, and immediately demonstrates the power of the snowball of French.

The messages I hope to come out of this are:

• You are already well on the way to GCSE French.
• You have to think about how to use French you know, to give a correct answer.
• You may want to say other things. We have 2 more years to work on that.
• There may be things you can't do. In particular asking questions or describing. We will work on that.
• Many of the topics are familiar, but there are more topics that we will cover.

Then we look at the Unexpected Questions. There are four of these and for AQA they all follow the Read Aloud task. This is a big step up from the Role Play questions, firstly because you don't see these questions written down. They are fired at you by the examiner. And secondly because unlike the Role Play, you are expected to give some development of your answers.

The first thing we do is to say you may NOT fully understand the question. We know this from the current GCSE where the Role Play contains one unexpected question. The stress and confusion of the exam situation means very few pupils process the question fully. I must remember that I have an excellent example of this to share with you once we are out of the exam purdah period. So the first thing in the booklet is how to deal with this emergency situation:

Imagine this is what it feels like in the exam. Can you still give an answer and hope it gets some credit? This is exactly what happens with the current GCSE unexpected question. For the new GCSE, this is only the starting point, because we are really going to be working on this!

Next we do some work on Question and Command words. So the pupils are seeing the questions written down, and can also plan their developed answers in writing. The Box the question word relates to a whole school policy of BUG where pupils Box, Underline and Go over elements of an exam rubric. 

The point in Module 0 is for the pupils to see that they do have the French to do the task. So they do see the questions printed in the booklet:

The booklet then asks the pupils to work with a partner, reading questions to each other. Can they get the topic of the question? Can they get the exact question? Can they give an answer? Can they develop the answer? Again, they have questions from the Sample Assessment Material, so they can see they are using GCSE questions already.

This is just a taster, as responding to unexpected questions is going to be a major focus in every Module we do. The key messages are:

• Don't panic, pick up as much as you can of the question and always give an answer.
• Thinking up what to say is often as hard as knowing the French. How do you extend an answer to "Where is your school?" especially when you are both sitting in it!
• Use French you know in order to answer the question, then use your snowball to give further follow up details even if this takes you away from the original question.
• Throughout your GCSE course, starting right now, make the most of opportunities to practise speaking. It's not the French. It's how good you are at using it.
• Do something with scaffolding one lesson, but come back in future lessons and see if you can still do it without the scaffolding.

Then we tackle the Conversation.

The conversation has changed in some respects from the current GCSE. There is no longer any mention of the word narrate. And the exemplification of "extended answers" given in the AQA materials is just 3 clauses. But the pupils will have to talk for up to five and a half minutes on just one theme, which is much longer than for the current GCSE. And the AQA notes do recommend that teachers use follow up prompts such as Why? And? For example? So I will carry on teaching pupils to develop their answers and respond to prompts for more details.

The first thing is a model answer done as a listening (or a reading if needed).

The pupils listen and tick when they hear each of the elements of the answer:

Then they listen again and take notes on what is said for each element. Then they write up their version of the answer in French.

This answer models:

• How to use their snowball of French to create an extended and coherent answer which meets exam criteria and shows off the range of their language.
• How one thing always needs to another in a logical development.
• How to have a formula or trigger that helps you decide what to say next - thinking up what to say is harder than coming up with the French.

Then they transfer this across to other topics, either in writing and then in speaking:

This has taken the pupils way beyond what is tackled in Module 1 of the textbook, but this isn't about progression in French. The pupils' snowball from KS3 already contains all the French they need for the Conversation. The message to pupils here is that it's about having 2 years to get good at using their French.

The rest of the booklet contains a selection of Keep Talking sheets, to transfer their French across a range of topics, and to scaffold their answers. These may look like what people call Sentence Builders, but they are different in two key ways. Firstly, they are all built around the same snowball of language. And secondly, they are designed for building extended answers, not sentences. Here's one example:

One key page, which I will also be making into a poster, gives them a repertoire of activities for speaking that they can come back to throughout the GCSE course, and take ownership of making their speaking lessons purposeful and productive:

Many of these activities have their own posts on this blog, so it's worth checking them out:

Links to Speaking Activities 1. Links to Speaking Activities 2.

This is post number 200 on this blog. And I am glad that we are still talking about teaching GCSE pupils that it's not just knowing more French that matters. It's how well you can use it to express yourself and develop increasingly coherent and personal answers. That feels pretty good, I have to say!