A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Developing Answers for the Speaking Exam

 As we prepare for the GCSE Speaking Exam with my Spanish class and my French Intervention group, here's a counter-intuitive activity I'm using: Giving the shortest answer possible.

I can ask short questions or long ones. I can repeat a question, grunt or raise an eyebrow. The pupils have to speak. They cannot just repeat. But they have to keep their answers short. Why would we do this? Let's see the sort of thing that you get when you do it:

Tu aimes aller à la plage?

Oui.

Ah, oui?

J'aime aller à la plage.

Où est-ce que tu aimes aller?

À Cromer.

À Cromer?

Oui, j'aime y aller.

Avec?

Avec ma famille.

Pourquoi?

Parce que je peux me promener.

Pourquoi?

Parce que j'adore chercher des coquillages.

Tu aimes nager dans la mer?

Non.

Non?

Je n'aime pas nager dans la mer.

Pourquoi?

Parce qu'il fait trop froid.

Alors?

Alors je préfère jouer sur la plage.

Par exemple?

Par exemple le week-end dernier je suis allée à la plage et j'ai joué au volley-ball.

Et après?

Je suis allée boire quelque chose dans un café.

Mais s'il pleut?

This could be a pupil who's been working like this since Year 8. Or this could be a pupil who has learned answers off by heart. It could be a pupil who has prepared ideas of what they want to say. Or a pupil who has a clear idea of what structures the examiner wants to hear. It could be a native speaker who simply answers questions and needs further prompting. In this activity, all of these pupils are forced to interact. They end up developing an answer. But if this were the exam, it would be clear to the examiner that they are not delivering a memorised script.

Pupils enjoy it as a fun game. Where it almost feels as if they are being bloody-minded and frustrating, and making me do all the work. In the exam itself they don't take it to extremes, but the expectation is there that they will not deliver a long spiel, but that we will explore an answer together.

It means in the exam, most of my questions are very short. Pushing pupils in a new direction, inviting them to give reasons or explain in detail or give examples in past or future. My questions are not "testing" them. I don't ask them to describe their room or list their routine. There are no marks on the markscheme for describing or listing. The marks are for giving and justifying opinions, using tenses and narrating, extending answers and interacting. So all my questions are an invitation to do these things.

Of course, in the exam, pupils aren't deliberately giving me short answers. But they know I will prompt them to come up with more detail and bounce my questions off what they have been saying.

I know the old Controlled Assessment GCSE (that meant even my pupils had to rote-learn long fancy answers) still affects how some people approach the exam. And when my pupils go home and thoroughly learn possible answers to possible questions, that's a good thing and part of their exam preparation. But the current GCSE doesn't condemn us to teaching or testing that way. It's heart-breaking that we've only actually done this new Speaking Exam twice, and now it's going to be snatched away by people who want short undeveloped answers that test pupils' recall of structures.

Reading through this post ... Isn't this just what teaching a language is? How did we ever get a GCSE which stamped it out? How can we be getting another one which will snatch it away? What is language teaching if it isn't this?