Why I don't call it "The Summary Question"

 In the A Level Spanish Listening, Reading and Writing exam, there is a question called "The Summary Question". It comes up in the Listening section and again in the Reading section. In this post I am going to look at how to approach it, and why calling "The Summary Question" is a dangerous red herring.

I am going to look at the 2018 A Level Spanish paper. It is important to point out that what follows applies to Spanish but not necessarily to French. In French, it seems to be much more of a "summarise in your own words" task, based on re-writing the relevant parts of the text using synonyms and re-wording of sentences. And of course, if a new paper-setter comes along for Spanish, the nature of the task could change fundamentally in Spanish too, without warning. But my analysis of the demands of the task in previous Spanish papers, backed up by explicit comments in the Examiner's Report, suggest that it is not really about summarising points from the text in your own words. And once you understand what the hidden agenda of the examiner is, your students can approach the task in a completely different way.

Here is the first part of the reading summary text from 2018.

AQA 2018 A Level Paper 1

From the start, we have to be on our guard. The text is accompanied by a photo to give "context". Unfortunately, the topic of the text is a photo. But the photo discussed in the article is NOT the photo we are given. The photo we are given is presented as if it were part of the press article. But it's important to understand it is not part of it at all. It's part of the exam paper to gloss the concept of the Catalán human pyramids "los castellers." As students read the article, the false clue of the picture immediately leads to confusion.

Secondly, the entire first paragraph is also entirely for "context" and should not be part of your "summary" of the text. If you approach this innocently as a summary task, you can easily be trapped into including content which is just not on the examiner's markscheme. This is even more important when we come onto the Listening, as we shall see.

The first bullet point we are asked to summarise is, "According to Ana, what did she do that day?"

This is where we start to realise what is behind some of the examiner's thinking. The words, "according to Ana" direct us to the second paragraph. And as an innocent "summariser" I would say that what she did was to go to see the castellers, take a photo, and put it on social media.

Here is what the markscheme accepts for this bullet point. You will see that my innocent summary would score one mark at best. I don't have the specific detail they want, even though I thought I gave a concise summary answer to the question, "What did she do?".  

Now, we can rail against the bizarre markscheme - is what she wanted to do really the answer to the question what did she do? But instead, it would be more helpful to find out why the examiner accepts these answers. And why this is not really a summary question at all.

The first clue is in the Reject column. Answers in the first person are to be rejected. This is why the text is in the format of an interview. So that the student has to change the language from the first person to the third person.

The second clue is in the explanation of how the marks for language are awarded:

You could be forgiven for thinking that the mention of "complex language" might be an invitation to include fancy phrases or personal evaluation. But the key is in the words "where required by the task". You might expect this to mean "required by the bullet points" where the points are constructed in such a way that you have to give a certain angle that would require language for evaluating or suggesting. No. It's not the bullet points. It's the text itself. The examiners have built the complex language into the original text. You might think that your job as a summariser is to simplify this, expressing it in your own words, more concisely. This is where the word "summary" starts to be unhelpful.

A more specific clue comes in the definition of "serious errors". It specifically mentions "incorrect use of pronouns." This is going to be a very important area of interest to the examiner.

Let's look back to the example in the castellers text.

The answers are textually very close to the original text. Despite the requirement to write "in your own words". So the answer to "What did she do?" is to hunt for the verbs in the first person: I decided, I fancied, I posted and to turn them into the third person. And now you are looking at it this way, you will see throughout this text, they are feeding you verbs in different tenses and with little quirks (colgué - colgó...).

Except of course, "I fancied" isn't in the first person. It is a construction with "me". And this is where the reference to pronouns looms large. The direct object pronoun is me. The indirect object pronoun is me. The reflexive pronoun is me. But when you put it into the third person, it could be le, lo/la, or se. Have a look at this question and other examples of the "summary" and see how often this comes up. Now you understand why "le apetecía" is in the markscheme as a correct answer, even though it doesn't actually answer the question "What did she do that morning?".

It's not a Summarise the Bullet Points in your Own Words task at all. It is a Find the Complex Language and Manipulate It task.

This is confirmed by the examiner's report.

This understanding now tells us how to approach the Listening "summary".

The Listening question in the 2018 exam is about Miss World. Again, there is a first paragraph for "context" which is not to be used for the answer. Remember, the candidate has control of pause, play and rewind. They must not spend time re-listening to the introductory section!

Then the passage is again in the form of an interview. And the best way to approach it, once you have listened through to get a general understanding, is to transcribe the verbs.

When you do this, you find a selection of tenses, a bunch of expressions with me and some irregular verbs. Now you understand this is a grammar manipulation task, you can proceed to put these into the third person. Paying particular attention to se sintió and le encantó. And spotting that although the si no hubiera sido por... doesn't actually answer the bullet point "What does she remember?", it is irresistible to the examiner and IS on the markscheme as the correct answer.

You must not call this the Summarise in Your Own Words Task. If you use your own words you risk what you put not being on the list of acceptable answers. You must not go for simplification. The complex language is there for you to use. And finding the complex language will guide you to the parts of the text that the examiner wants, even when they don't seem directly relevant to the bullet points.

Hopefully if you are one of the happy few who made it to A Level Spanish, you already understood at GCSE that the examiner has a hidden agenda, and that the Reading and Listening questions are not comprehension questions at all. So the fact that A Level has its own bizarre secret society handshake designed to exclude the poor innocents will come as no surprise. But please, keep it to yourself. We don't want everyone knowing, or they will have to change the secret code!