More on The Real Problem with GCSE Listening

 In a previous post, I wrote about how the GCSE Listening exam is not a Listening exam at all. If you haven't read it, you might like to follow this link and start there. It has examples from an Edexcel paper that show exactly what is really going on.

In this post, I am going to show more examples from AQA which confirm that it is not a Listening Comprehension test at all.

Here is the Question:

Here is the Transcript:

And here is the Mark Scheme:

You can see that the Question asked "What did one school do that she really approved of?" And from the transcript you can see that this school grew its own fruit and vegetables on the sports field. But look at the mark scheme. The fact that the school grew its own fruit and vegetables is NOT what she approved of. The fact that the school grew its own fruit and vegetables on the sports field is NOT what she approved of. What she approved of was much more precise. She approved of the fact that "the school grew fruit and vegetables on PART OF the sports field." I imagine because as well as fruit and vegetables she was also keen on exercise. Although, that is an inference I am drawing.

We could tut at the ridicuous mark scheme and expectations, as if the examiner had momentarily taken leave of their senses. But we shouldn't. And they haven't. What they have taken leave of is the comprehension question. Clearly the answer to the question is not that she is impressed that they only grew fruit and veg on PART OF the field. The actual question is irrelevant to the examiners, because this is not a comprehension test.

The examiner would refer you not to the question, but to the transcript. Which clearly says half the sports field had been turned over to fruit and veg. The examiner doesn't want you to do a comprehension question showing you understand the passage. The examiner wants you to transcribe and translate the passage word-by-word.

For one mark you have to have the 3 key ideas in the box. Or be able to transcribe (in your head) every word and translate it into English.

It is not a comprehension question. And it's not really a Listening question. All Listening cues are removed. Tone of voice, natural speed, intonation are all deliberately neutral to avoid pupils deploying any Listening strategies.

For anyone at a level below fluent speaker, Listening is NOT about understanding every word. Listening is about learning to use all the cues - including context, intonation, known words, deduced words, sentence structure - to work together to extract information. And simultaneously evaluating that whole process to judge whether it seems reasonable or whether you need to think again.

AQA do not agree. They think that Listening is to test word-by-word processing. Basically a reading that you do in your head. This is a very unusual definition of Listening. In the rest of the world, using Listening cues and strategies is about using intonation, context and other cues to work out what is being said. Even when you don't know what every word means. Although you can work out new words in the process.

It's an affliction that comes from a view of language-learning too based on the idea that it is learning a set of structures and words to be plugged in to those structures.

The recent Ofsted Research Review is quite clear that it thinks that reading and listening are done by word-by-word parsing of sentences. And the proposals for a new GCSE also promised unnaturally slow speech and seem to come from the same narrow point of view.

Now we understand it's not just badly set questions, but their actual understanding of what a Listening is, you can spot it everywhere:

What she does is NOT visit schools and give talks on the environment. (Spoiler: Well, it is.) Because the question isn't really, "What does she do for the environmental group?" The question is, "Can you transcribe and translate word-by-word." And the answer to, "Why is she impressed by young people?" is NOT because they have clear ideas about saving energy. You have to transcribe word by word, "Because they have clear ideas about HOW TO save energy." It's not a comprehension question.