Working on the three types of questions for the new GCSE Speaking Exam

 Year 10 have been working on the three different types of questions for the new Speaking Exam. In this grid, they give 3 different answers to the question Where do you stay on holiday?

For the Role Play, the pupils are given the questions in the preparation period and can plan their answers. Then in the exam, they are asked these questions word for word, but in Spanish. They need to know to give a short sentence answer. (In my Y11 mocks this week for the old GCSE Speaking, many of my candidates were giving Role Play answers which were too long, and risked losing marks if they started making errors.)

In this case, the question is, "Where did you stay on holiday?" And the answer for the Role Play is "I stayed in a hotel." No need for any extra details unless the question specifies it.

The middle column is for the Unexpected Questions. In the AQA exam, these come after the Read Aloud text. They are on the same topic as the text, but are not questions about the text. This was one of the areas of the new exam that I particularly wanted to focus on. We know from the current exam that the unexpected question in the Role Play, and the 2 unexpected questions after the photo card are a challenge. The cognitive load of switching from prepared answers, to listening to a question from the teacher is a shock to the system. Then to process the question, either by picking up on a key word and hoping for the best, or by understanding every word... Then to think of an answer... And how to say it in Spanish... You can see pupils struggling. And in the new exam, there are 4 questions like this. And they are supposed to give developed answers.

So far, my class haven't panicked at the stage of dealing with understanding the questions. We've worked on it, and they are confident. What they struggled with at first was the full sentence answers. "Where did you stay on holiday?" Answer: "In a hotel." In your relief and pleasure at grasping the question, it's not natural to start the sentence again and say, "I stayed in a hotel." We have made progress on this.

By the way, for the role play at Higher Tier on the Sample Assessment Materials, there are past tense questions such as Where did you stay? The questions for the Unexpected Questions seem more along the lines of giving opinions, disadvantages, describing, saying what you do... The question Where did you stay? was chosen by my class for the purpose of this exercise.

And some of the Unexpected Questions don't seem particularly friendly for giving a developed answer. In the French SAMs there is Where is your school? So I am telling my students to:

1. Answer the question.

2. Say some more stuff.

Answer the question. Say some more stuff.

It's not their fault if the questions are unhelpful. They have to say more in order to get the marks.

My school is in Dereham. I live in a village so I go to school by bus.

I am hoping that would count as a developed answer to Where is your school?

For the Conversation Questions, I would never ask Where is your school? Or How many maths lessons do you have? This isn't really a conversation. It seems to be more to do with testing if the pupils know question words like where and how many, which is all very well, but doesn't help them demonstrate they can meet the criteria for developed answers. You'll see their grid refers to a Mr E question.

I don't want my questions to be catching any pupils out. I want them to be a platform for them to show what they can do. So instead of Where did you stay on holiday? I would ask Do you prefer to stay in a hotel or a campsite? And when they answer (with an opinion and a reason), I would simply say, For example? And they would know to answer with a past tense example and develop it.

You can see in their grid, they have written to Keep talking on and on. It says: When I went to Spain I was going to go camping but I decided to stay in a 5 star hotel so I could go to the pool... The criteria for developing answers are less than for the current GCSE. And the word "narrate" has been removed from the mark scheme. But they have to talk for much longer on one topic than previously. So talking on and on is still going to matter!

We are going to come back to this grid regularly, and build answers suitable for the Role Play, the Read Aloud, and the Conversation. And of course we'll use that distinction when answering questions spontaneously in class. How's everyone getting on with all this? Let me know!

When everything you've told pupils about the new GCSE comes true!

 This week, everything I have been telling pupils about the new GCSE came true. And in quietly spectacular fashion.

I suppose that means I'll have to tell you what it is that I've been telling them and what happened in this week's lessons. But I promise you there is a point and it's got positive news about the textbooks and positive advice for the new GCSE. So here goes as quickly as I can to get to the point...

Some context on how I am teaching the course. I am using the new textbook. I am not a big user of textbooks generally. For the outgoing GCSE I used the textbook for the first couple of units and then stopped. But for the new GCSE, if I make my own resources then how will I know if I am covering the words on the GCSE vocabulary list?

I am not doing the topics in the order of the textbook. Firstly because I want to build a strong core repertoire of language on the easy to expand topics such as Holidays, School, Free Time. These topics lend themselves to developing spontaneous answers giving opinions, reasons, detail of past experiences and plans for the future. This can then be transferred from one topic to the next. Secondly because my Year 10 are essentially beginners and I want to keep the backbone of my teaching intact because I know it works.

What messages have I given pupils about the new GCSE? By using the old textbook and the new textbook, I have shown them that we don't have to learn sets of topic words. Hotel, guest house, cruise, youth hostel, campsite in the old textbook, compared to hotel, campsite in the new one. With even words like ducha for "shower" not on the list. Instead what matters is what you can DO with your language to develop what you can say about a hotel or a campsite, using your core repertoire. And as teachers we all know that albergue juvenil was never going to be seen again in the course and all the effort you put in to explaining what it is without making it sound weird was going to be wasted.

Instead, the message is to watch out for the non topic high frequency words. Here are the words my pupils extracted from the texts (in the new textbook and from the old) on the topics of holiday accommodation and transport:

Words like quite, first, too, never, always, however, learn, together, fear, noise, broken. The words that can fit into every topic. We've written them strategically inside the cover of their exercise book. The pupils said, "If this is just from one topic, we're going to run out of room." And my message was, "No. These words will be the same in every topic." A bit of an ostrich to fortune, but as we shall see, the point of this post is that things are turning out uncannily as I promised them.

And if you look carefully, another type of word is also on this page. Huelga meaning strike and obras in this case meaning roadworks. The opposite sort of word. The words that fit in no topics at all. But which are on the GCSE list because they feature in the EU parliamentary debates used as the source of the list. Pupils know to keep hold of these words. And I told them that if the textbook was well written we would meet them again. These words are easy to skip over if you are following a topic vocabulary based approach.

So this week, we moved on to the topic of School. So we've gone from Module 2 in the textbook to Module 5. And when I say "moved topic", my message to pupils is that they can instantly transfer their Holidays language to the School topic. Here's the first lesson back after half term. Bear in mind these are beginners (they did Spanish in Year 9 one lesson a week after school). This is them writing on School before we've started the topic.

You can see the repertoire from talking about going to a theme park or an aquarium (I like, because I can, but if, X doesn't like, what was happening, speech, what happened...) transferred instantly to the new "topic." And you can see one of them has deliberately used fear from their non topic vocabulary page. The message is getting through.

But things got even better.

This is a text from Module 5 of the new textbook.

New Pearson GCSE Spanish textbook AQA version

First of all I focused on the "School" vocabulary. Particularly words you would recognise if you saw them writtten down but which sound different. For example religión, educación, justo. Hidden cognates such as esfuerzo, aprobar. And potential false friends like asignatura and in the second text on the page buenas notas and suspender. I did this as a dictation, dictating single words and then teaching the meaning. (The next lesson we came back to these "school" words and used dual coding to make sure we knew them.)

Then I read the text through aloud without the pupils seeing it. And they ticked off the "school" words on their dictated list as they heard them.

So what are the other words the text is made up of? Our core repertoire words feature strongly: tenemos que, me encanta, a __ le gusta, porque... And what else? The words from the list on the yellow inside cover of our book. However, always... And in the second text on the page: Ya no tengo miedo cuando tengo que actuar en una obra de teatro. With our word for fear and... you will not believe it! Our word for roadworks, cropping up as the word for a play in the sense of a work of theatre.

Pearson Spanish GCSE textbook AQA version.

Of course, spotting this word in the text also led to recalling where we met it, and the word for strike got recalled as being the other obscure word we'd met it with. So even though strike wasn't in the text, we've effectively met it again.

So my pupils can turn to page 111 of the textbook. And find that once we've learned a handful of "School" words, their core repertoire plus their high frequency words are the key to this new GCSE. And even their red list of high alert obscure and random words is revisited! This spectacularly delivered all the points I have been trying to make about learning for this new GCSE!

In one respect we got very very lucky. I had not designed it so that the words I picked out of the old and new textbooks would all reappear on page 111. And the authors of the textbook had not imagined that I would jump from Holidays to School. But it's feeling very positive for how we are approaching the GCSE and for how the textbook has been written. It made the pupils realise they are accumulating language that will be met again and again, transferred across topics. And it made me feel I can trust that the textbook will serve us well. Thank you! It's looking good!