Yesterday I gave a talk to the HMC MFL in the East conference, asking whether the new GCSE is an example of Evolution or of Intelligent Design. I might turn this into a blog post, once I've decided what the answer is. Meanwhile, on the theme of how we are going to adapt to the new environment, here's a quick post on what I am currently thinking, about creating new schemes of work and buying new textbooks.
Please take these as thinkings, not decisions. I do not know what to do. That's the problem.
The key aspect of the new GCSE is the defined vocabulary list. This vocabulary list is derived not from the topics and tasks pupils will be required to cover. It is derived from the 2000 most frequently used words in the language. The idea was that the vocabulary list should be central, and that these are the words that equip you to understand and communicate regardless of topic. It goes hand in hand with the idea that learning happens by meeting words over and over (in a deliberate and rigorously programmed way) in a range of different contexts. So starting from the Vocabulary list, not from Topics.
Whether topics can be made out of these words was in doubt. So the exam boards have been allowed "free choice" for 15% of the words on their lists. These precious few words have been carefully chosen and rationed, shared out between the topics that have been proposed. Even so, it is important to note that in the initial wording of the specifications, the topic areas are indicative of the sorts of contexts in which the words may be used in the exam. Rather than topics being central to the way the course is designed.
I do not have the capacity to create this kind of course. To meticulously plan when words are met and re-met. To imagine what texts and contexts I could construct from them in a well selected and cumulative syllabus built from words rather than from developing pupils' growing ability to communicate. And neither do I have the capacity to write texts when I am starved of the words I need. You can't write a text on Marie Curie if you haven't got the words chemist or Polish. You could gloss them. But then our texts aren't doing their job of constantly focusing on decoding sentences of known words that are actually going to be in the exam.
So I have been waiting to see what the publishers come up with. Would they produce something spectacular, building on NCELP's work on logical step-by-step sequencing where learning happens not by enthusing the learners about the topic content and self expression, but by having secure building blocks and intellectual self efficacy?
Well. A strange thing has happened. Faced with a vocabulary list of very selective high frequency vocabulary, Edexcel from the start have gone with the promise of diversity, culture and self expression. The very opposite of the tools at their disposal. The problem of a restricted vocabulary list was always going to be a narrowing of possible expression, not a diversification and opening up to people with low-frequency lifestyles. And now I've seen advance materials from a publisher for the AQA specification, there seems to be a similar emphasis there too. And topics. Topics, topics, topics.
And we need to look very closely at the advance materials. Just as we had to look at the sample exams. If the books are written based on topics, are they over-reliant on the 15% of "free choice" words the exam boards were given? Because those words can only come up a couple of times in the lifetime of the exam before they have to give way like Man City players in your Fantasy Football team. They might be great players, but if they get rested and rotated then they aren't scoring you any points.
At the ALL in the East meeting in October, Rachel Hawkes pointed out that this risks happening with the exam board's sample assessment materials. In just one listening question, Edexcel used up all the shops and a third of the clothes words. Once we're into actual exam setting, they can't repeat those words year on year. So what may look like a familiar topic-based exam may be unsustainable. Will the same thing happen with textbooks if they are built from topics, not from the vocabulary list?
A topic based approach to exams and to resource creation may end up creating a Death Star trash compactor curriculum. If the books and then also the exams are over-reliant on topic words in the initial years of the specification, we will be increasingly left with the dregs. Exams concocted more and more from words with no obvious topic and that don't feature prominently in our teaching or resources. The walls could start to close in.
I don't know how Darth Vador's strangulation works. But I know about boa constrictors. They don't exactly crush. They just tighten every time you breathe out. So after a couple of years of exams, we could see the oxygen of topic vocabulary getting shorter and shorter in supply. If we go with resources that stick to a topic based approach.
Another thing that has happened is that the idea of the restricted vocabulary list has actually gone out of the window. Because we will still teach pupils the words they need in order to express the things they want to say. In the speaking and writing exams, pupils will need to be able to say Portuguese, chicken, trombone, snake, canoeing, jam, trainers... All the things they want to say in order to express themselves and complete the tasks. The exam boards will have to construct tasks such that they could be answered just with words from the list. Like a kind of sudoku. Pupils pick an answer that fits from the selection of words available, not based on actually answering the question they are asked. But pupils won't be doing it that way. Imagine having to know and think of one of the handful of random items that are on the list, instead of having a range of words to deploy. And words you actually want to say and which fit the personal nature of the questions.
What this means is that the published vocabulary list will apply for the receptive skills of Listening and Reading. And for Speaking and Writing, pupils will have a wider and greater knowledge of vocabulary. Which is the wrong way round from a language-learning perspective, where you normally have a greater receptive vocabulary than active.
So where are we at the moment? The textbooks seem to be based round topics. The Speaking and Writing exam will be based round the tasks and pupils' answers to real questions, not words from a vocabulary list. I don't have the capacity to imagine a syllabus or write the materials for a vocabulary weaving approach. So the situation I'm in at the moment is that the textbooks on offer, from what I have seen so far, don't offer a solution to my problem. So I am coming to the conclusion that I might carry on with our current textbooks for French. And our development of a strong core of reusable language for Speaking and Writing. This will be based around opinions, reasons and tenses as it is now. One thing that will change is the vocabulary learning pupils do at home. We will be able to tell them which words to focus on.
I think "conclusion" is the wrong word. It's the shape my thoughts are taking at the moment, but I am very much wanting to continue to think and to bounce ideas off people. In my department, on social media, at conferences, and at ALL Meetings. This is key. Listen and talk. And listen most to the people you don't agree with. That's when you learn most.