Has it all been a big horrendous mistake?

 I need more space than a tweet to explain why I think the new GCSE that we may end up with is just a big horrendous mistake. So here goes:

The reforms in the GCSE (alongside Ofsted and NCELP) seem to want an end to random vocabulary items, and an overall accumulation of language rather than topics. I have said in previous posts that the current GCSE is an excellent fit for this. The Speaking and Writing exams are best taught with a core repertoire of language rather than by topics. And the Listening and Reading exams are largely built out of high frequency non topic language. And it's the non topic language which is vital for the questions and the markscheme.

My contention in a previous post was that the GCSE panel may have been familiar with the current GCSE in the specification, but not with how it has worked out in practice. I would say in 2019, I hadn't fully fathomed it either. For example, on paper, there is a very long list of random topic vocabulary. Which it turns out teachers can ignore because the key to the Listening and Reading exams is the non topic vocabulary.

I have said all this before, but today I tried to explain this to a member of the GCSE panel on twitter. I couldn't understand how it could be decided in 2019 to scrap the then brand new GCSE. Which had been presented as a generational shift reintroducing translation and the rigour of written exams. His answer was that in 2019 it was clear that the recently introduced GCSE was not working. He said that there was clamour on facebook from teachers, and he said that no-one could defend it.

Is this why we've been through all this? Because of clamour on facebook from teachers struggling with what was then the new specification?

I would say that we were daunted. We were daunted by the long vocabulary list. And the amount of content we thought you would have to get through. And how to prepare pupils to talk on so many topics. But teachers and the exam boards have found solutions to these issues. 

We are not daunted anymore by the long vocabulary list. We know to focus on the non topic section at the start of the list.  AQA do drop in one or two of the more random words into the exam each year ("hake", "hooligan"...) but otherwise the key is to learn the non topic words. And the overload of topics? This is precisely what has made the current GCSE such a good fit for what the GCSE panel say they want. It's the number of topics which has pushed teachers away from rote learning and towards a core of language that works across topics.

I was always baffled that the new GCSE should be based on the 2016 review into teaching in the landscape of the old Controlled Assessment GCSE which destroyed language learning. But if it was because of the "clamour" from teachers adapting to the first cohorts taking the new GCSE, then this is such a tragic mistake. Because those adaptations, moving away from rote learning and towards accumulating a core of language, are exactly what the new GCSE panel ended up prescribing.

And because the current GCSE is such a good fit for these aims, there is the distinct possibility that the new one actually ends up as a retreat from this. The new vocabulary list may have fewer random topic items. But it will still have them. And this time, instead of being an irrelevant half-forgotten list in the spec, it will be central to how the exam is built. The boards will need to construct their texts and tasks from these vocabulary items, making sure they are all tested in rotation. And if the focus switches to testing pupils' knowledge of items rather than how well they can use their language to express themselves, then the focus on a core repertoire will be diminished, with a topic approach strengthened. And if the Speaking tasks are to require short accurate answers phrasebook style, then rote learning will again score higher than where pupils accumulate a repertoire they can deploy. Think of how the current Role Play works, where pupils who try to extend or express themselves score worse than someone with a ready answer. This is the sort of task the panel's brief to the boards calls for.

So the new GCSE panel may not have realised just what a good fit the current GCSE is for their declared aims. And they may have created something that actually works out worse. We are in the hands of the exam boards. We don't know what they are going to propose. Will they be able to keep a Conversation in the exam? Where there can be interaction and follow up questions? And the pupil is rewarded for extending and developing answers spontaneously drawing on a core of language they can use to express themselves? We can only hope the exam boards are wiser and better listeners compared to what we have seen in the political decision making.

Unintended Consequences. How the new GCSE may end up moving us in the opposite direction to what they wanted.

 One of the "selling points" of the new GCSE was always its defined vocabulary list. Firstly claiming to reduce the amount of random topic vocabulary and secondly to boost the important high frequency vocabulary. On the one hand this was supposed to be attractive to teachers who find aspects of the current Listening and Reading exams frustrating. And on the other hand it was meant to suit a curriculum which is no longer based around topics. Instead pupils should have one long learning experience, accumulating language which is always useful and never abandoned.

This is not what is going to happen. The new GCSE is going to have unintended consequences. And the biggest is going to be an increase in the amount of topic vocabulary to be learned.

Currently, the GCSE specs have a ridiculous list of topic vocabulary. Which you can safely ignore. For the Speaking and Writing exam, teach your pupils the core repertoire of opinions, reasons and tenses. Across topics. As a cumulative learning experience, focused on how well they can deploy their language. For the Listening and Reading, focus on the high frequency non-topic vocabulary. These words are key to how the exam boards construct the texts. And key to the markscheme, where pupils who understand the text but omit these key words don't get the mark.

The GCSE review panel don't know that the current GCSE matches their objectives so well. Because their brief was explicitly to respond to the 2016 Review of the landscape of the previous GCSE. And because where they are familiar with the new GCSE, it is maybe the Edexcel version. Or perhaps they are familiar with the spec (and its irrelevant vocabulary list) but not with actually teaching the course.

So how is this going to be different in the new GCSE? The vocabulary list will be shorter. But this time you WILL have to learn it. The exam boards will have to make sure that all the items on the list do come up in the exam, rotating the content and checking that words are being tested. People attending NCELP KS4 training report that it is being sold as "a big vocabulary test".

So you could well end up with an exam where in practice you have to learn more topic words than in the current one. And skew your curriculum away from a core repertoire that works across topics.

The exam boards are going to have to pick contexts and construct texts that work using the words on the list. And they will be keen to make sure there's as much continuity and as little change as they can manage, in order to ensure comparability of standards, and to create a specification that they know teachers will be able to opt for with confidence.

There was clamour in the MFL community for new content based on the culture and Culture of target language speaking countries. It would have been a spectacular opportunity for the GCSE review panel, if they wanted to see progress away from the First Person narratives and diet of opinions and reasons, to work with the community and make this happen. It didn't happen. I don't know what contexts the exam boards will come up with, but I suspect in the face of changes, they will try to stick as closely as they can to what we are familiar with.

15% of the words on the list can be specified by the exam board to fit the contexts they decide on. They are going to have to create texts and tasks year on year for the specified contexts using the limited number of words. So when it comes to choosing the other 85% of their words from the "High Frequency Words" list, they are going to need to chose as many words as possible which can be directly linked to one of the chosen contexts. And with this exam, you WILL have to know these words. It's a test of the specified knowledge.

So in terms of Vocabulary, we may well end up with an exam which has fewer items on the list than the current GCSE in the specification. But in practice it will feel like an exam with more vocabulary, including more "topic" vocabulary that you actually need to memorise. This has implications for teaching at KS4 and also for how the curriculum is organised. And also for KS3. I've been rewriting the curriculum and the resources, but I am reluctant to make further changes until I know more about what is going to happen at GCSE.

This may be where I should end this post. But there are more worries perhaps for a future post. If the idea of pupils expressing themselves and showing off what they can do with their language is to be replaced by testing of knowledge and accuracy, then there is a risk that this will reintroduce rote learning and phrasebook learning. Think of what currently can happen on the Role Play in the existing GCSE. A pupil who sets out to express themself and try to say what they want, communicating and extending their ideas, will score worse than a pupil who has a quick ready response. The new Speaking exam criteria given to the boards specify this kind of short accurate answer. It's hard to say more without knowing more about what is coming. I suppose we have to trust to the expertise of the exam boards and whether they listen to teachers more than the GCSE review panel were prepared to do.

Ofsted Inspectors' Questions and Curriculum Progression in MFL

 So this week's big story was the leaking of Ofsted Inspectors' Question Crib Sheets, on the website Quality Schools. The MFL one doesn't really hold any surprises - it's based on asking how you ensure progression in the three "Pillars" of Phonics, Grammar and High Frequency Vocabulary.

There's one section that has got me wondering. There's a section of questions for Inspectors to ask staff to see if they are on top of exactly how and when certain features are taught:

Now we know that the curriculum envisaged by Ofsted and NCELP and the new GCSE is a curriculum based NOT on growing the learners' language - their evolving conceptualisations, repertoire, and ability to use the language to interact with meaning and to express themselves. Instead it is a curriculum that takes the linguist's language and chops it up and tries to reconstitute it. (As in Scott Thornbury's metaphorical rubbery omelette analogy.)

The thing is, I have it very clear in our curriculum how we take the raw ingredients and carefully let them cook into the learners' language. What I don't know is where Ofsted get their idea of what the lumps of chopped up cold omelette should be. The quoted question above shows some random spot check items: agreement, word order, comparatives, superlatives.

If you ask me when we teach comparatives do I have an answer ready? Isn't it literally just the word "más"? What else are they expecting me to have planned? How have I organised the curriculum to accommodate radical changing verbs, impersonal expressions, adjectives before a vowel like nouvel, verbs where the spelling follows the sound like mangeons? These are hardly the architectural pillars of a curriculum. And it's starting to sound like a tick box curriculum on paper. Not something robust that builds what you want pupils to know or be able to do.

And I know it's just a spot check random example, but it seems adjective heavy. And in our curriculum we're not big on adjectives. You can't spend 5 years on "it is..." And one thing the current GCSE doesn't ask for is description. I don't ask, Décris ta chambre... Comment est ta soeur... Because the criteria want rather more than is + adjective. Even if you can say Elle est plus intelligente que moi.

Is there a list of things that the language curriculum has to be made up of? The NCELP curriculum isn't compulsory. The GCSE syllabus isn't supposed to determine KS3. The 2016 Review had idiosyncratic things to say about verb paradigms. What is it that Ofsted are actually meant to be inspecting? It's whether we are teaching the National Curriculum. Which sets out what we are meant to be teaching. Spoiler alert. It does not mention the comparative or the superlative.

It's worth going back and looking at the National Curriculum to remind yourself (and Ofsted if need be) what it is we are supposed to be teaching. Here's the central points:

It should enable pupils to understand and communicate personal and factual information that goes beyond their immediate needs and interests, developing and justifying points of view in speech and writing, with increased spontaneity, independence and accuracy... Write prose using an increasingly wide range of grammar and vocabulary, write creatively to express their own ideas and opinions, and translate short written text accurately into the foreign language.

I'm glad I checked. Because that is exactly what we do. I am not going to lose sleep over whether a member of the department may or may not be able to answer the question, "When do you teach the superlative?" Because I will already have told the Ofsted inspector that we follow the National Curriculum and develop what pupils can do with the language, with increasing spontaneity, independence and accuracy in order to understand and communicate, developing and justifying points of view.

So if I didn't start with the linguist's map of the whole language and chop it up like a dead omelette, how have I structured our curriculum progression?

By what pupils can do with the language. And how well they can do it in terms of expression, independence, spontaneity, coherence and sophistication. That's our curriculum progression model.

These are the exemplars for our Key Performance Indicators for Year 8 and Year 9. They are based around pupils developing and being able to deploy their repertoire across topics. So everything builds up, and nothing is left behind. By the end, they can give and justify opinions, talk about other people, give examples in past and future and narrate anecdotes.

The second half of the KPI sheet shows the other half of the progression model. Not what they are learning but how well they can deploy it. With increasing expression, coherence, accuracy and spontaneity. Here is the Year 8 model:

So I have kept this overall vision of progression which seems eminently compatible with the National Curriculum. With pupils learning to speak and write and express themselves in French. And I have rewritten the booklets to make all the grammar, phonics and non-topic vocabulary more explicit. Because we do teach word order, adjectival agreement, irregular adjectives, the words more  and most, infinitives, tenses, possessives. And we teach them in a way that ensures they become integrated with the body of language the pupil is accumulating and can deploy. Far from being incompatible with teaching the nuts and bolts of the language, a curriculum which expects pupils to communicate using the language REQUIRES them to be acquiring an understanding of how the language works. In order to express themselves.

And what if an inspector asks a pupil about their learning. Is it terrible if the pupil says, "I'm learning to talk about my free time"? Instead of saying, "I am learning to use verb + infinitive constructions to give and justify opinions"? Surely we want pupils to feel they are learning to communicate. And that this is what drives their learning and their progress. The planned curriculum can show how learning to talk about free time is bringing in tenses, adjectives, comparatives, superlatives. And the teacher may want pupils as part of the learning process to start to think about what is the most powerful and transferable language. But isn't it entirely natural for the learner to be focused on meaning, expression and what they can do in the language?

Longest Sentence or Bust!

 My normal approach to Open Evening is to showcase examples of creative and communicative outcomes in our curriculum like the Year 7 French Art Exhibition. This year, on Monday lesson 2 I was told I needed a more exciting activity for Open Evening on Thursday. By the time the International Leaders met at lunchtime, I'd made one: World's Longest French Sentence or Bust!

These are not dice. They only have four faces with French on, not six. And you don't roll them. You spin them. Skillfully between two index fingers. The International Leaders stand in a row as a human fruit machine. And they invite the Year 6 pupils to make the World's Longest French Sentence. With the warning that if you carry on too long, it will say something nonsensical and you will be out!

The boxes are always spun in order. So you can see the sides facing the punter currently say, I don't like to visit a castle with my family but... And the sentence will always be grammatically correct. The Year 6 pupils say when they want each International Leader in turn to stop spinning.

The conjunction on the end sends you back to the first box to go round again. So you could end up with, I don't like to visit a castle with my family but I love to swim in the sea in France and I like to eat snails in a hotel but I prefer to take photos in Paris...

As you build the sentence, the International Leaders read it to you in their beautiful French. And translate it into English. And another International Leader writes it up on the whiteboard in their beautiful handwriting. Before each spin they give you the chance to decide whether to stick or twist. Because you might up saying, I like to take photos on the beach with my family but I don't like to take photos on the beach with my family. The most common way of going Bust was ...and I like to swim in the sea in Paris. I must say the International Leaders were very strict about what they considered an incoherent sentence. Even so, the record was a 40 word sentence.

There were others who managed more than 40 words but at around the 45 word mark they went bust and were erased from the board. Sadly I didn't get a photo of the winning sentence so you will have to imagine it in all its beauty. If you were going to do this activity for your own Open Evening, you could issue little cards to say, "I took part in..." and take away a little certificate with your score.

It was fun to take part in, fun to watch and simple to run. Having said that, I don't think it would have been any of those things had we not had an excellent team of International Leaders making it fun and professionally run. Parents liked the way you could produce something impressive from simple building blocks. I was impressed with the Year 9s' fluent pronunciation, confident translation and tidy board writing. The element of competition and jeopardy was also an attraction. By comparison, nobody went on the gimkit game on the board all evening!

Would I use it in class? Yes, but not with these boxes for spinners. We already do a lot of work that starts with creating randomised grammatically correct sentences. This post talks about how randomisation is one step in getting pupils to confidently produce longer answers in French. And then moving on to the task of curating meaning and coherence. This is an important message in our curriculum: saying things in French isn't hard. What we work on is making what we say more coherent, developed, personal, expressive.

So instead of sets of spinning boxes, you could play the same stick, twist or bust game with a Keep Talking sheet or a Dice Game sheet. I would probably also get pupils to write down their answers in felt tip on the table - you want them to write quickly without worrying about neatness, without the writing getting in the way of the speedy generation of multiple sentences. And erasing any that go wrong. You could ask them to do the activity without writing the words down. But then the job of remembering 40+ word sentences and assessing them for internal consistency becomes a task in itself!