How much of a roadblock is the new GCSE going to be? There are several things to look forward to over the next few years. The NCLE hubs working to share good practice, the possibility of a new government, and hints of a National Language Strategy being formulated. Will this be a period of renewal and excitement? Or will it all be insignificant pretty little daisies growing around the edges of a hulking great boulder: the new GCSE.
We know what is in the new GCSE: grammar, vocabulary, role plays, pictures, translation, dictation, reading aloud. Will it be similar enough for us to easily move to teaching the new exam? Or does it require fundamental change?
The exam boards have indicated that the areas of content will be similar to the current topics. Many of the tasks and question types will look familiar. It would be reassuring to think that minimal adjustment is needed in planning and teaching. And yet, this exam was supposed to be a lever in bringing about change in how we teach. So is it dangerous to assume we can carry on as we were?
At the East of England Association for Language Learning meeting in June 2023, Rachel Hawkes warned us to be careful. Of the current GCSE, only 50% of the vocabulary list is on the new GCSE list. So there is a lot we could cut out. Perhaps more importantly, 50% of the vocabulary on the new list, wasn't on the old list. So we do have to teach words that we haven't been teaching before.
The vocabulary list is central to the new GCSE. The idea is that with limited time for learning, the content to be learned should be clearly defined. And the GCSE panel specified that the most logical vocabulary to learn is the words which are used most frequently. This way, from KS3 (or even KS2), we can cut out words which are not going to appear in the GCSE. All those lists of pets, foods, sports, places in town, pencil case items, family members. We don't need to teach so many nouns.
And the words we do choose to teach can be revisited regularly. When they are introduced and how often we come across them again (and again) can be preplanned. Texts can be built out of the words and out of the carefully sequenced grammar. And this is what NCELP did. Their materials are a marvel of carefully sequenced and revisited language. A far cry from so many text books with long lists of words met only only once and grammar points covered ticked off on a grid.
This is the task facing exam boards and publishers. To do it properly, they have to take this approach: start with the defined content (grammar and vocabulary), sequence it, and then build texts out of it. Starting from the vocabulary list, planning the occasions when the words are to be met, and then writing texts using those words.
Sounds easy. But it is immensely difficult. The exam boards have already come a-cropper with words in the Sample Assessment Materials creeping in which are not on the list. I think, like a vegetarian exchange student staying with a French family, that one of the offending items was chicken!
This summer I have turned down writing work from companies wanting to tweak and update resources for the new GCSE. Because doing it properly will not be tweaking. Doing it properly means starting from the vocab list and planning what to create. Like cooking based on what is in the fridge, not on what you and your guests would like to eat.
It means you have to hold at arm's length any actual texts of interesting or true information. Because the words you need will not be the words you have at your disposal. So you have to start to create an alternative reality built out of the words you do have. Reminds me of this sketch rewriting the the Sesame Street song, being forced in frustration to change one word at a time until you end up with "Stormy Nights... can you tell me how to get to Yellowstone Park." Because ultimately content, culture and meaning are secondary to meeting and practising the language.
If this is how professional published material will work - starting from the word list - I think teachers will work differently. When we write or re-use texts, we will write the text first. Then we might use the multilingual profiler to check which words we have used are not on the list. And then we can give a gloss of those words in English so pupils don't have to worry about them and we don't have to throw away our text.
So we won't be doing it "properly" like the publishers will have to. We will be doing it pragmatically. Taking texts and checking them, tweaking them where we can.
Will we be cutting back on vocabulary taught in KS3? It sounds like a great idea. But what words will be cut? We've already mentioned chicken. If not many foods or animals are on the list, then what do we do? Teach the core ones and let individual pupils know the ones they personally want to ask for? Because at GCSE, they can use "chicken" in the speaking and writing exam. But it won't be in the Listening or Reading exam, and the Speaking and Writing tasks will be devised so as not to require any chicken.
This model of teaching the core high frequency vocabulary and handing out individual preference words to individual pupils sounds like a lot of work. Teaching individual pupils individual words. But it also puts a stop to communicative tasks in the classroom. If the only animals all pupils know are dog and fish -and you teach cat, bird, snake to individual pupils but not to all - then how do they do a survey about what pets they have, when they don't know what the other pupil is saying?
Here's a question. What are the Restaurant Role Plays going to look like at GCSE if words like chicken aren't on the list?
So again, I don't think I am going to be doing it "properly". I will not be removing words from KS3 which are not on the GCSE list. I don't think I'll be removing them from GCSE either. When it comes to revision, homework and exam preparation, I can be much clearer in telling the pupils what words they have to know. But I don't think that is the same as long term language learning.
At KS3, I will be sticking with our approach of simultaneously building pupils' accumulation of language and developing what they can do with it. So that, like snow, rather than having an even coating (prone to melting away), they have a snowball that more and more language can stick to.
And I think that if that's what works at KS3, then it's what works at KS4 too.
It would be lovely to think that rather than a massive boulder we crash into or have to find a way around, the new GCSE is a bit of a speed bump that slows us down and makes us pay attention, but doesn't actually make us change our plans completely.
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