Planning for Aspects of the New GCSE: Unexpected Questions

 The part of the current GCSE exam where my pupils do worst is the unexpected question on the Role Play. If any of them ever score marks there, it is generally through lucky chance. Processing the question, thinking of what to say, saying it in Spanish, all while still worrying they have barely understood the question... pleased to have said anything at all.

Fortunately it only requires a short answer and is only worth a couple of marks.

But the new GCSE will have 4 such questions, requiring developed answers. And worth considerably more marks.

For AQA these 4 questions follow the Reading Aloud task. And for Edexcel they are split between the Reading Aloud and the Photo tasks.

I have already written this post identifying these unexpected questions as something I need to work on. I remember Rachel Hawkes at the introduction of the current GCSE (or maybe even the one before that?) talking about the importance of questions, and I am aware I never got to grips with it in the way I wanted. I've also always thought Adam Lamb's idea of Tú - Yo practice is a great idea. Adam regularly does quickfire practice of changing the second person verb form you hear in a question into the first person form you need for an answer: vas - voy, quieres - quiero, te gusta - me gusta, tus amigos - mis amigos. There will definitely be a need to build this in to our plans for the new GCSE.

In this previous post in mentioned that I wanted to use texts as a scaffold for pupils getting better at quickfire unexpected questions requiring a full answer. I think I need to explain this more. And it then leads into another similar idea based on the exam board sample questions.

Rather than use examples from one or other of the new textbooks and risk upsetting the publisher, I'll use an example text from the 2009 OUP GCSE Spanish book I co-authored.

From the 2009 OUP GCSE textbook

I know there are no longer Target Language questions in the Listening and Reading exams. But I am going to use them in class with texts as practice for the Speaking exam unexpected questions. The pupils can use the text (reading aloud!) to give their answers.

So with this text, if I ask ¿Tienes un jardín? the pupil can use the text to reply Donde vivo no hay jardín porque vivo en un apartamento.

Other questions (in Spanish) could be Where would you prefer to live? What would you change about where you live? What problems are there where you live? Where do you like to go with your friends?

I would return to this activity several times to build speed and confidence. I would start with the questions in the order they correspond to the text. Then I would change the order of the questions in a quickfire activity where the pupils have to listen to the question and identify what they are being asked, but still able to use the text to support their answer. I would vary the wording of questions or the question form (especially in French). Later on I would ask the pupils to give a different answer to the one in the text, adapting the sentence to talk about themselves. And eventually I would expect pupils to be able to give an answer without a supporting text.

It's about getting them used to Target Language questions and giving a full answer in a sentence with some development.

Another idea is to start from the unexpected questions from the Sample Assessment Materials and for me to write reading texts from those. Then we can do the same activity, with pupils answering quickfire questions using the information in the texts. That way I can be sure I am covering the kind of questions the exam board are likely to be putting in the real exam.

Here's an example of the sort of questions pupils will be asked:

Example unexpected questions following the Read Aloud task in the AQA SAMs

And here is a text I have written to go with these questions.

Où est ton collège ?     Mon collège est en ville à trois kilomètres de ma maison.

Remember, the pupils do not see the questions; they are being asked to respond immediately in full answers to a question they hear. So they will have the text in front of them and can read it through. Then I use it for quickfire questions (in order or out of order). The pupils register the question and can find the correct bit of the text to read aloud in order to give a full answer. Then we move on to letting them modify the answer in the text. And eventually to giving their own full answers to unexpected questions.

A couple of issues that came up when writing that model text. Firstly, I had the time to think about my answers! Especially to find a way to develop them. Secondly, I hope I the text is modelling the sort of language pupils will be learning and which will tick the success criteria. Thirdly, I was careful to avoid using the pronoun "it" in the answers about school or uniform. I deliberately repeated the noun. Knowing whether to use ce / il / elle for subject pronouns (plus knowing what to do with object pronouns) is too much of a trap at this stage and I will sidestep it by telling pupils to give full sentences I like my school... My school is... rather than bounce off the question and try to say I like it because it is... 

And finally, I don't want to give you or my pupils the impression that in the exam, the answers to the questions are to be found in the reading aloud text. That is not the case! This is a technique for getting lots of practice of responding to quickfire questions by using model answer texts. By the time we get to the exam, I am hoping my pupils will be able to cope with questions without any such support!

I don't know what focus on unexpected questions the textbooks from the various publishers will have. And how sustained any focus on developing quickfire response to unexpected questions will be in their books. But hopefully the ideas in this post mean you can try to build it in, whatever course you adopt.

Let me know what you think!