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!

Getting started with the new GCSE

 The first half term with the new GCSE! Wishing maybe I'd brought some books home to illustrate some things in this post. But then again, no thanks. I'll leave it all at school if you don't mind!

For French, I put in place booklets for Module 0 (before starting the textbook) and to accompany Module 1 of the book. This was to make sure teachers and pupils were focusing on the transferable core of language and the high frequency non topic language. And working on what pupils can DO with their language as much as on knowledge of language.

This didn't leave me much time to plan the Spanish Scheme of Work or resources. Our French scheme of work is flexible and will be constantly revised as we discover what the new GCSE is actually like. The Spanish scheme of work is even more flexible. I'm just using the old one and changing things as I go! This is also because they basically start Spanish in Year 10. (Year 9 have one lesson a week after school.) So I'm really concentrating on building what the pupils know and can do. With lots of shortcuts and synergies across topics. An accumulation of language and the ability to deploy it is something that I am not prepared to throw away; because it works!

So I started with the topic of Holidays. Not the topic that comes first in the textbook. I wanted to start with a topic that is really strong on the key aspects of the course. Pupils' repertoire of opinions, reasons and references to past, present and future. Key vocabulary for time reference, qualifiers, description. Holidays is great for this. Plus it allows us to look at places in Spain and tell exciting stories. Rather than obscure navel gazing and invasion of pupils' privacy, trying to construct something on a marginal topic like Your Use of Communications Technology. Once we have the core snowball of language, we can easily scoop up things like Technology later on. But it's not the topic I want to start with when I'm trying to get the snowball to gel.

All of my Year 10 can confidently give opinions and reasons. Including other people's opinions to set up a conflict. They can narrate where they went, what they wanted, what people said, what was happening and what happened. They can do this for an amusing incident at an aquarium. Or a theme park. And transfer it to other topics we've not even done yet, for example talking about a lesson in school. There are plenty of posts on this blog looking at exactly this. If you're not familiar with it, here is a good example. It shows how the old GCSE lent itself to this approach. The requirement to "narrate" is no longer there in the new GCSE criteria. But the Conversation now requires pupils to talk for twice as long on one theme compared to the old GCSE. So I am keeping this approach! Plus it contains all the grammar my Year 10 beginners need to have at their fingertips.

Here they are improvising on the idea of different activities for different weather conditions. And including the class's pet obsession which now appears in every piece of work anyone does: rubber ducks!

Going to Cromer and playing on the arcades

As well as the core repertoire, you can see the high frequency vocabulary for time references and qualifiers shining through!

Again, this is something that I always taught. This non topic language is absolutely vital in the out-going GCSE where AQA will give 0 marks for a Reading/Listening answer that doesn't contain words like almost, part of, most... Again, if you aren't teaching this language for the old GCSE, here's a post that will open your eyes!

So what has changed? One important thing is the apparent reduction in topic-relevant vocabulary. I am hearing this from the French teachers too. Teaching Technology without having all the technology words as central. Or in a future unit, teaching TV habits without having all the types of programmes listed. Of course you can still teach pupils how to say, "I have my own youtube channel" even if channel isn't on the list. But you don't set out with the principal objective being for pupils to learn those topic words. It's no longer central.

What are we teaching instead? Well, from the first part of this post, you can see that I am teaching core powerful cross-topic repertoire plus high frequency non-topic words.

You can see this best if you continue to teach with the old textbook together with the new one. There are exercises which look similar, but which show the key differences. For example in the Holidays unit, the old textbook has a listening/reading exercise on accommodation. It contains youth hostel, cruiser, guest house, luxury hotel, campsite... The new textbook has hotel, flat, campsite.

In speaking and writing, the focus is on what you can say about a hotel or a campsite. Not learning all the types of accommodation. In listening and reading, the focus is on the exact detail of the qualifiers. In fact it always was. But now I don't need to feel guilty for skipping youth hostel because I knew we weren't going to see it again ever and it would be forgotten within days.

Here's the list of words my pupils extracted from the Reading/Listening texts on transport and accommodation:

Not a single transport or accommodation word there! And it's prominently located on the inside cover of their exercise book. Because that vocabulary is going to be useful in every unit. I'm hoping that every sub topic doesn't yield that much key vocabulary, because we're going to run out of room on the yellow covers, and because I've told the pupils that this vocabulary will set them up for the whole course. Unlike youth hostel, I am certain they will see these words again and again in Listenings and Readings. In fact they already have. And have another look at the plastic duck writing above and see how these words mesh with their core repertoire for Speaking and Writing.

Plenty of "topic" words have stuck with pupils. This kind of concrete topic vocabulary is easily lapped up. Chubascos stuck literally by me telling them they didn't need to learn it anymore. But our main focus has been on the non topic words.

One last thing on using the old and the new textbook that brings this out. Having worked on accommodation or transport with the new book, you can do the exercises from the old book. And use this to show them how the vocabulary works. But also to show them how AQA questions tend to work. They are NOT comprehension questions in the sense of giving an answer about the information in the text. They are language testing questions where you have to demonstrate you can show your knowledge of the words and structures.

Use the listenings from the old book. Give the pupils the comprehension question "answers" (he stayed in a youth hostel etc). But show them how for AQA this isn't how they view the exam questions. You can see in this example, I gave them the questions. And I gave them an insufficient answer. You can spot these because they have been marked by a cross. Their job is to listen and give the full AQA compliant answer.

What the pupils have to do is focus on the detail of the language around youth hostel, not the youth hostel itself - this is no longer in the exam. What they are listening for is the detail:  near the beach, quite, very, small, a bit. These are the words AQA have always wanted pupils to identify if they are to get the marks. And there they are, right there in the old textbook. But we were being distracted by guest house and cruise ship.

So far so good. I have some things to share in another post related to unexpected questions and the different requirements for the Role Play, Read Aloud Questions and Conversation Questions. But the biggest difference so far is it allows me to continue to teach exactly how I taught the old GCSE, but without worrying so much about cutting corners on youth hostel and lists of topic vocabulary. Because building what pupils can do with a core repertoire is much more important.

Cognitive Science in Practice

 In a previous post I wrote about the Cognitive Science ideas that are so current in schools today. I characterised them as being uncontroversial, fairly obvious, and as giving no actual precise answers as to how they make teaching and learning go better.

That post wasn't really attacking the Cognitive Science. It was about the dangers of the right wing Knowledge Curriculum which is using the Cognitive Science as a Trojan Horse. More on that toxic Knowledge mutation here. 

The Cognitive Science has been pulled into this in two main ways. Firstly as cover for the toxic Knowledge mutation. And secondly by the "Research" mutation. Instead of research into the messy complexity of teaching and learning, this has come to mean a policing of teaching and how it conforms to a neat and very basic model of learning. 

None of this is the fault of the Cognitive Science. So in this post I will try to set the record straight a little and find a middle way!

When it comes to the Cognitive Science, I think that being basic (fundamental), uncontroversial and vague are positives. Yes, even vague. The sooner we can get away from polarised models and magic bullets, the better. True research is in the messy middle ground. Cognitive Science tells us, for example, that the balance between challenge and pupils being overwhelmed is a vital sweetspot. It doesn't tell us how to find this. Of course not. But we look for it in every lesson. Teaching and research into learning ought to be about looking at this rich interplay, not a tidied up version with arrows, outlines of heads and memories forming as a spark across a synapse.

Here's an example to get us going.

When I use dual coding to teach food vocabulary in French, I have used these pictures.

As in comfy chair

As in moooootard

[Ironically the only magic bullet Cognitive Science offers is misunderstood to such an extent that I am often told this is NOT in fact dual coding.]

Pupils doing a single transition taster lesson in French in July of Year 6 still remember most of the words when we come to do them 8 months later in March of Year 7. From a single lesson. So dual coding works - go back and click on the link above if that makes you want to read more.

But it doesn't work equally well for all the pictures. Jam works great. This particular picture for moutarde doesn't. And if you pay attention in the lesson, you will see why. There is always a pupil whose immediate reaction is to shout out, "Why is that cow pink?" And the answer is because I really liked the picture, I thought it would be fun and maybe even memorable. And then the Cognitive Science whispers, "Too memorable." Too memorable and too distracting. The pupils have remembered "pink cow" not mooootard. So time to try a different cow picture that's less the centre of attention.

This applies to everything. Not just pictures. What is helpful? What is attractive? What is distracting? Like the Millennium Falcon, we are stuck in some kind of traction beam between attraction and distraction. The Cognitive Science can alert us to our fate, but we still have to figure it out for ourselves on a case by case basis. Sometimes you can just bypass the compressor. And sometimes you have to fly straight at the Imperial cruiser and hide until it jettisons its trash.

And it gets really quite complicated when we move away from just images. Our whole approach to teaching languages comes into question:

Authentic texts. Genuinely engaging, interesting and meaningful? Or leading to a superficial reading based on guessing, alienating pupils who need to understand the words, are overloaded by the content, and aren't that interested anyway? Attractive or distracting?

Using language to communicate, be creative, express yourself. Is this exciting or overwhelming? It brings with it the overload of having to think up what to say, and having to interact with other people. And incredibly complex decision making of how to express yourself using the limited language you have, balancing accuracy and communication. 

We don't need Cognitive Science to tell us this. We know that all these aspects need developing: learning the language knowledge, and learning to use the language. But we should listen to the Cognitive Science here. Because it is trying to escape from the paralysing  Knowledge Curriculum tractor beam paradigm of "Novices and Experts." Learners can and should be learning to develop how they use their language. Because we understand the Cognitive challenges that are in play here. We don't give up on it and say that learners can't use their language until they are "Expert." We know to break down the demands and develop knowledge of language and how to deploy language, working on both.

Grammar or Meaning? When I teach pets to Year 7, I know that un and une, and j'ai and je n'ai pas de are more important than chien in terms of their French over the next 5 years. But I also know that for pupils at this stage, links and patterns internal to the language are insignificant, compared to links between the language and the real world. Their real world. When they go round the classroom asking, Tu as un hibou qui s'appelle Archimedes ? until they find that person, I know they are practising phonics, gender, the verb to have for asking and answering, negatives, question forms, how to interact... But from their perspective... They are finding out who has an owl!

Like the pink cow, I need to watch and make sure that it's not a distraction. But without this, it's not language learning. It's memorisation of some sounds and letters with no meaning other than that they can be translated into English. But the kind of meaning that means referring to reality - the reality in the classroom, the reality of the owl - that needs to be in the balance too.

And when I teach je n'ai pas de... Cognitive Science doesn't tell me how to do it. Should I explain how it's formed, with Mr Apostrophe eating the letter e? Or should they learn it by chanting it over and over to a video of an accelerating steam train? Should we meet it when we do the grammar of the verb to have? Or should we do it when we are doing a dialogue and someone finds they need to say, "I don't have an owl"?

We do all those things. But in what order and in what balance? Cognitive Science doesn't tell me. Experience tells me. Trying it and coming back to it again tells me. Constant observing and monitoring tells me. Talking to the pupils about it tells me.

And that's just fine. Cognitive Science isn't the answer. It is a question. A dynamic question of balance that is never going to be answered and which will always be asked in every single lesson, every single day. In every single classroom of real pupils and real teachers being human beings.

Differentiated Dictransalation.

 Yes. You read that correctly. Today Y11 did Differentiated Dictransalation.

The translation was a model text on the topic of Work Experience mainly from words in their repertoire, but with plenty of non topic high frequency words as well.

Depending on how much support I thought they would need, different pupils were allowed different approaches.

1. Allowed the text in English and a pen. So when I read the text in Spanish, they can write down any words they had half forgotten or get the verbs or try to write any unknown words as a dictation... But I read it too quickly for them to be able to write down all the words.

2. Allowed the text in English but no pen at this stage. So they can read and follow the text as I read, to check they know words, to listen out for any word order changes or unknown words. But not write them down.

3. Not allowed the text yet. Just have to listen. This group will be further subdivided later in a final twist!

So then I read the text in Spanish. Quickly enough that the group with pens couldn't write down all the words.

Then they did it as a translation.

Group 1 had written down most of the words they might have been missing.

Group 2 had kept any tricky words in their heads.

Group 3 had at least heard the Spanish.

And I invented a group 4. Most of group 3 now got a copy of the text in English to translate just like the others. But group 4 just got a piece of lined paper to try to reconstruct in Spanish the text that they had heard me read.

You need a class who are up for a challenge and won't feel aggrieved at being treated differently. And as part of the challenge they have to understand that there will be mistakes and guesses and things to learn. Watch out the first time you do it, for group 1 writing down words they already know instead of listening out for the bits they need.

We will come back to it tomorrow and see if they can all reproduce a version of the text from memory. And then adapt it to talk about their own work experience!

Using AI to plan lessons

 The government have suggested that teachers need to harness the possibilities of AI to help them plan and resource lessons. The idea is that this will save time, and may help new teachers or non-specialists to come up with useable lesson plans.

A year ago to the week, I wrote a post looking at AI and some aspects of language learning. It found that AI was very poor at manipulating language. It could explain in general terms, but as soon as you tried to use it for specific examples or exercises, it started to go wrong. Its examples didn't match its explanation, and it couldn't stick to the brief. And it was sexist and racist. So not a good start. But let's look at how it fares with lesson planning.

We should get the howlers out of the way to start off with.

We know from last year that AI struggles with analysing letters in words.

(By the way, looking at pronunciation in the above example was from my wrangling with the AI. It would never come up with something as focused as that.)

It still struggles with taking words apart.

(And people laugh because it doesn't know how many rs there are in strawberry!)

AI thinks that je vais meaning I am going, can be explained because it is made of the French word va + the English word is

(It didn't randomly come up with this. It was as a result of me asking for clarification.)

AI designs an activity where the teacher reads out the pupils' name and age (11) and the pupils have to guess who it is.

Admit it, you tried saying it to see if there's a difference.

I asked it how long it expected this task to take. It said about 30 minutes. There are not enough words in the dictionary to complete the task!

Writing out the French alphabet for homework. (It's the same as the English alphabet.)

So it makes mistakes. Mistakes with language, mistakes with tasks. And sometimes they are enormous and obvious and hilarious. Although I have to say, that one of my own kids was actually set that very task of writing out and illustrating (with English words) the French alphabet for homework. I may still have it in the loft!

But how does it do in terms of planning lessons?

It always produces a very similar lesson plan. It starts with a warm up, then a repeat after me, then a matching activity, then a write your own paragraph, then listen to some native speakers, then do a role play with a partner, then write a paragraph for homework. Oh. And I forgot flashcards. It loves flashcards.

A sequence of activities, with very little focus on what language is being taught and how the lesson should evolve around knowledge of the teaching points required by the specific content of the lesson. It treats every lesson as some language to be heard and repeated, with some grammar to be explained. As a result, there's no care or attention paid to whether the tasks can be done using the language that the pupils have. So most often, its lessons would not work because the tasks pupils are being asked to do, are not doable.

I have then had to engage with it in a protracted conversation where I give up my time and experience and expertise in order to coach and coax it into producing something better.

Here's an interminable conversation where I tried to get it to focus on teaching the language rather than just a series of activities. Click here to see me wrangle with it.

Here's another one where I tried to start from a language point rather than a topic to see how it did. Unfortunately, its grasp of French is so poor, it was never going to work. In case French isn't your specialist subject, hardly any of the letters it claims are silent are actually silent. Click here to see me trying to help it.

So, far from being time saving, this is taking up hours of my time to try to get it to produce something workable. And far from being suitable for new or non-specialist teachers, it requires huge experience and expertise to try to guide it round horrible pitfalls, and try to get it to focus on teaching language, not stringing together activities.

I have tried it for science lessons too, with the same result. It comes up with activities, with no notion of what it is actually trying to teach and how to engage pupils in that learning. It doesn't use the experiments to tackle fundamental concepts or address misconceptions. In fact at one point it said that a balloon flying along a guide string was demonstrating Newton's Third Law, because the string moved in the opposite direction to the balloon. Here's a summary of its science lessons in a thread unroll.

So I could be quite insulted by the government. They are always on our back and telling us that good enough isn't good enough. But if they recommend this half baked unskilled nonsense, then they clearly have no knowledge or respect for our expertise.

BUT...

But I think I have found a use for it. Just it's the opposite of what the government is suggesting. Clearly, AI is no use at all for new teachers or non-specialist teachers. Or for saving time. It takes an immense amount of expertise and time to coax it towards something useful. It has no knowledge of pupils. It can quote some insight into teaching principles but struggles to apply them. Its subject knowledge is a worry. It likes to string together activities, rather than build learning around the specific concept it is teaching. Does this remind you of anything? 

It reminded me a lot as I was doing it, of the way you can work with a very new trainee teacher to develop their ideas into a workable lesson plan. Of course trainees arrive with differing levels of experience, but this seems to share so many of the things that they have to hone. Spotting flaws, refocusing on what matters, avoiding distracting activities done for the sake of the activity, factoring in knowledge of what will work with pupils, targeting concepts and misconceptions, building in progression.

Here's one where I try to persuade it to change its focus to really think through the language needed for the tasks. After a couple of hours, we did get somewhere.

So maybe we have discovered a useful tool. It was a rehearsal/simulation of how as a mentor, I might work with a trainee. So perhaps this could be used for mentors to hone their patience with new trainees. Or for course tutors to use with their trainees to live-model lesson planning. It would be great if there were a use for it!

Cheating Translation - a neat trick

 I am very much enjoying working through the new GCSE textbook as I plan for the new GCSE starting in September. They have achieved a good balance between progression and accumulating language, and sharp focus on developing pupils' exam skills in a cultural and motivating context. It's a great fit for the overall vision we have in our school of how we want the course to work for our pupils. I have been creating a booklet to go with Module 1 to really draw this out and get us off to a great start.

In this post I am going to show you one clever way to make use of the texts and activities in the book: Cheating Translation.

Put simply, Cheating Translation is where you have a series of texts for pupils to translate - some from English into French, and some from French into English. And what you do, is you hide the language pupils need for one translation, inside one of the other texts. So they can do most of the translation using language they know, but if they are stuck, they know they can hunt for the words in the other texts on the page.

Here's an example from our Year 8 Unit 1 booklet.

You can see that text B helps pupils with text A. And text A helps pupils with text B. This is great for a cover lesson where you need a worthwhile activity that works smoothly for the cover teacher.

So how does this work to make using the new GCSE textbook go smoothly?

This is from the Module 1 Booklet I have written to go with the new textbook.

You can see from the list that there is an awful lot going on on this page. Irregular verbs, plus jouer à, jouer de, faire du sport, j'aime le sport and important time words. All of these things must not just be seen but actually learned. With attention drawn to them and planning for how they will be met again and again, and added to the repertoire of French which pupils can use confidently and accurately.

Here's the first text on the page:

Pearson AQA GCSE French

This "Manon" text is in fact one of four in the first exercise. And what the book does is ask the pupils to look at all 4 texts and match them to the pictures. This is a perfectly logical way in. The pupils have a first read through of the text, picking out the vocabulary for the activities (cooking, cycling etc) and matching them to the pictures. It's a natural and important way to approach the text. But it works entirely by asking them to find obvious known language or cognates, and ignores entirely the features of the text which are actually useful.

Of course there are follow up tasks. Firstly to translate the sentences in blue which contain the irregular verbs. And then secondly to find mentions of other people in the texts. Although this will need teacher input to steer pupils away from just listing her brother, her friends and actually focus on nous and the verb endings.

The various other features such as jouer de, faire du, are picked up in grammar boxes on the page, but I want to get as much as possible out of the text itself.

Let's look at just the Manon text again:

It's fabulous. It's just what's needed as pupils move from KS3 to GCSE. They are already brilliant at saying what they like to do and why, adding if sentences and linking it up. They are poor at adding convincing detail, nuance and they are only just starting to work out how to move from talking about themselves to talking about other people, either as a conflict of opinions or as working together.

I want to get at the move between je... mon frère... nous... on... And I want the nuance words like tout and plusieurs, the time words like après and normalement, and the handling other people words like ensemble.

We know in an AQA markscheme for the reading exam a candidate who writes "They cycle a long way with their brother" might get 0 marks if AQA insist it has to contain the words several and together. We know they do that in the current GCSE. And in the new GCSE with its increased focus on high frequency vocabulary, they are just as likely to work this way. And in planning our teaching for the new GCSE, I am also determined to keep the focus on these non topic words which can appear in any text. And which also make the difference, in pupils' own speaking and writing, between a good candidate and an outstanding one. Ultimately these are the words which allow pupils to frame narrative, move coherently from one idea to another, and to develop longer, detailed answers.

So where does Cheating Translation come in?

Have a look at this translation text and compare it to the Manon text.

It is designed so that pupils can translate almost all of it from their repertoire of French. But it is deliberately a mirror of the text they are going to meet when they get to the Manon text in the book. So when they meet a word they don't know, they can find it in the Manon text.

It is doing two things, both as important as each other. In doing the tennis/football translation, it is showing them how to extend and give detail/nuance to an answer they can already produce. They see that the words in bold type naturally fit well into their repertoire and enhance their expression.

And secondly it means that the first time they encounter the Manon text, it's not as a problem or a threat or a challenge. It's as a useful helping hand. It gives them the words they need. Instead of tackling the text as a skimming for known words exercise, it takes them straight in to looking for unknown words. And very useful unknown words!

But that's not even half of how Cheating Translation works! Next you can do this!

They move from translating my mirrored text into French, using the Manon text for help, to translating the Manon text into English, using my mirrored text for help if needed. And then they shut the textbook and translate it back into French. You can choose whether to do this as a sequence of translations in one lesson, or if you want to spread it out over several lessons to boost the requirement for pupils to retain and retrieve what they learned in the previous lesson.

So instead of fishing around in the Manon text for known words and then new grammar, they are straight in to working with every word in the sentence, for comprehension and for extending their own repertoire of French. The support is there to make them successful, the challenge is there, and the vision of how it all builds their learning is definitely there.

This idea of rewriting texts from the textbook on different topics is something I am going to continue. Either as here to anticipate texts, or to deliberately revisit them in new contexts later. As well as revisiting being important for retaining vocabulary, you can see from this example that it's even more important for switching the focus to the non topic words and for how they are integrated into the pupils' repertoire, ready to be deployed.

New GCSE Module 0 Booklet

 I have created a booklet for our Year 10s called Module 0. Why Module 0? Because it's for before they start the textbook. And because the 0 is the shape of the snowball of French I want them to have so it doesn't melt and so more French sticks to it. And because a 0 Module approach is lurking behind this GCSE, where as much as possible we are not sticking to one topic at a time and then moving on.

And I've put all that in the booklet for the pupils too. Here's a slide from the powerpoint that introduces it:

The first thing we do is to ask pupils to analyse their own snowball from KS3 with this double page activity. They place the French they know and always use at the core, working outwards to French they don't know yet. In 2005 I wrote that this is all the grammar that you need for GCSE - what matters is how well you use it. And nothing has changed!

Then we go straight in with 3 key aspects in turn. The Role Play, the Unexpected Questions, and The Conversation.

For The Role Play, I have picked out from the Sample Assessment Materials all the Role Plays that I think pupils can do successfully using their snowball of French and the vocabulary they have learned in KS3. The questions are in English and they can write down their answers. They should write short answers in a sentence. The answers aren't about their own lives; they are role playing a conversation between two imaginary people.

This will give the pupils and the teachers the opportunity to see how well KS3 has prepared them for GCSE, and any gaps that will need to be filled. It tackles exam technique from the start of the course, and immediately demonstrates the power of the snowball of French.

The messages I hope to come out of this are:

• You are already well on the way to GCSE French.
• You have to think about how to use French you know, to give a correct answer.
• You may want to say other things. We have 2 more years to work on that.
• There may be things you can't do. In particular asking questions or describing. We will work on that.
• Many of the topics are familiar, but there are more topics that we will cover.

Then we look at the Unexpected Questions. There are four of these and for AQA they all follow the Read Aloud task. This is a big step up from the Role Play questions, firstly because you don't see these questions written down. They are fired at you by the examiner. And secondly because unlike the Role Play, you are expected to give some development of your answers.

The first thing we do is to say you may NOT fully understand the question. We know this from the current GCSE where the Role Play contains one unexpected question. The stress and confusion of the exam situation means very few pupils process the question fully. I must remember that I have an excellent example of this to share with you once we are out of the exam purdah period. So the first thing in the booklet is how to deal with this emergency situation:

Imagine this is what it feels like in the exam. Can you still give an answer and hope it gets some credit? This is exactly what happens with the current GCSE unexpected question. For the new GCSE, this is only the starting point, because we are really going to be working on this!

Next we do some work on Question and Command words. So the pupils are seeing the questions written down, and can also plan their developed answers in writing. The Box the question word relates to a whole school policy of BUG where pupils Box, Underline and Go over elements of an exam rubric. 

The point in Module 0 is for the pupils to see that they do have the French to do the task. So they do see the questions printed in the booklet:

The booklet then asks the pupils to work with a partner, reading questions to each other. Can they get the topic of the question? Can they get the exact question? Can they give an answer? Can they develop the answer? Again, they have questions from the Sample Assessment Material, so they can see they are using GCSE questions already.

This is just a taster, as responding to unexpected questions is going to be a major focus in every Module we do. The key messages are:

• Don't panic, pick up as much as you can of the question and always give an answer.
• Thinking up what to say is often as hard as knowing the French. How do you extend an answer to "Where is your school?" especially when you are both sitting in it!
• Use French you know in order to answer the question, then use your snowball to give further follow up details even if this takes you away from the original question.
• Throughout your GCSE course, starting right now, make the most of opportunities to practise speaking. It's not the French. It's how good you are at using it.
• Do something with scaffolding one lesson, but come back in future lessons and see if you can still do it without the scaffolding.

Then we tackle the Conversation.

The conversation has changed in some respects from the current GCSE. There is no longer any mention of the word narrate. And the exemplification of "extended answers" given in the AQA materials is just 3 clauses. But the pupils will have to talk for up to five and a half minutes on just one theme, which is much longer than for the current GCSE. And the AQA notes do recommend that teachers use follow up prompts such as Why? And? For example? So I will carry on teaching pupils to develop their answers and respond to prompts for more details.

The first thing is a model answer done as a listening (or a reading if needed).

The pupils listen and tick when they hear each of the elements of the answer:

Then they listen again and take notes on what is said for each element. Then they write up their version of the answer in French.

This answer models:

• How to use their snowball of French to create an extended and coherent answer which meets exam criteria and shows off the range of their language.
• How one thing always needs to another in a logical development.
• How to have a formula or trigger that helps you decide what to say next - thinking up what to say is harder than coming up with the French.

Then they transfer this across to other topics, either in writing and then in speaking:

This has taken the pupils way beyond what is tackled in Module 1 of the textbook, but this isn't about progression in French. The pupils' snowball from KS3 already contains all the French they need for the Conversation. The message to pupils here is that it's about having 2 years to get good at using their French.

The rest of the booklet contains a selection of Keep Talking sheets, to transfer their French across a range of topics, and to scaffold their answers. These may look like what people call Sentence Builders, but they are different in two key ways. Firstly, they are all built around the same snowball of language. And secondly, they are designed for building extended answers, not sentences. Here's one example:

One key page, which I will also be making into a poster, gives them a repertoire of activities for speaking that they can come back to throughout the GCSE course, and take ownership of making their speaking lessons purposeful and productive:

Many of these activities have their own posts on this blog, so it's worth checking them out:

Links to Speaking Activities 1. Links to Speaking Activities 2.

This is post number 200 on this blog. And I am glad that we are still talking about teaching GCSE pupils that it's not just knowing more French that matters. It's how well you can use it to express yourself and develop increasingly coherent and personal answers. That feels pretty good, I have to say!

The Best of Both Worlds

 It's been tempting over the course of the last couple of years, to feel as if we are being asked to choose between two different visions of language learning.

On the one end of this spectrum, is the idea that language learning is all about Meaning. Creating meaning by saying things and communicating. Understanding meaning by listening, reading and interacting. It's important that language learning isn't just learning and being tested on your knowledge of a collection of vocabulary and grammar items. You shouldn't wait until pupils have mastered the whole system before showing them they can use the language to communicate.

At the other end, are the new exhortations from the Ofsted "Research Review" and the new GCSE panel, that language learning shouldn't just be a collection of things that pupils can say or understand. We shouldn't be learning by osmosis to give set phrasebook style answers for different situations. It is primarily about learning vocabulary and grammatical concepts. Communication can wait.

Here is a slide from Steven Fawkes from an ALL talk to enthuse new MFL teachers. Here are things that we have always thought are the strongest points of our subject:

and here's a snippet from Common Ground by Florencia Henshaw and Maris Hawkins:

Language learning happens when pupils use the language for real, for purposeful creation of meaning or understanding. Not just by practising the language.

We are being asked to consider what if this approach is not just wrong and misguided, but dangerously counter-productive.

When pupils struggle with language learning and seem frustrated or unmotivated, we reach for the levers of communication, relevance, authenticity, culture, creavity, expression... And we expect these to switch on a love of learning and engagement, a sense of purpose.  But might it be that these levers are the wrong ones? By doing this, we are increasing the cognitive demand on pupils, asking them to communicate too soon? Is it a successful approach only with those learners who come equipped with the cultural capital, awareness of language, confidence, self-efficacy and literacy skills needed to cope with this "in at the deep end" approach? The danger of sink or swim is that some just sink.

Instead, we are being asked to consider an approach focused on the language. Vocabulary and grammar, carefully selected and sequenced. Not so that pupils can say things or understand things. But so they can see how the language works. With everything explained clearly, with no guessing or glossing over or assumptions about what pupils can work out or don't need to know.

That's the thinking behind this slide from an Ofsted webinar accompanying their "Research Review." It is a view of language teaching where everything is planned and sequenced logically, boiled down to the essentials and carefully avoiding rich and complex contexts.

The examples given in the webinar are that we should teach pupils to say red dog, red tortoise but we should avoid green dog, green tortoise because this brings in adjectival agreement. And leaners already have enough on their plate with learning the vocabulary and the word order. A logical step-by-step teaching strategy. But one which is totally distanced from learners using the language to say things they want to say.

This has huge implications for things like our Year 7 French Art Exhibition.

What if...

What if we are focused on the product not the process? There's a deadline and we skip over important learning because we need to get the picture and the text done.

The pupils' attention might be too directed towards the meaning and not enough towards the forms of the words.

What if the pupils' descriptions bring in random words that they are never going to need again? 

What if pupils are trying to say things they can't? So they fall into error but we gloss over it because they are "communicating well."

That could mean that the things we think are the best for our learners turn out to be the worst!

Let's look at that spectrum diagram again. Is it really how it has been painted? How about we move things about a little.

Are those positions really incompatible?

Let's move the things we do want from language learning, into the middle. Language Learning is about Understanding and Creating Meaning. And about Knowledge linked by Conceptualisation. Sounds good to me. Spot on in fact. I want all those things.

How about the things we don't want? Language Learning isn't just a collection of knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. And neither is it a collection of phrasebook style things pupils can say. Absolutely spot on.

So instead of being asked to choose, in reality we are being given the best of both worlds.

So when I teach Year 7 j'ai un chien, I know that we are not going to be spending 5 years remembering words for pets. I know that the important things are j'ai and un/une and the sound-spelling link in oiseau and poisson. But the pupils are focused on a game where you have to guess if people are telling the truth about their pets and their names. Because the meaning and communication and link to reality matter to pupils. More than links and patterns between words at this stage.

And when I teach je n'ai pas de..., we will spend time looking at contractions of je - j'ai and ne - n'. But we will also chante je n'ai pas de over and over again to a video of a rhythmic steam train. The best of both worlds.

And I know that when I teach Year 8, we will separate out the process of randomly using the language in a ridiculous world record length "sentence" and then later working on coherence and quality of expression.

Because both are important, and there is no conflict.

And when it comes to the Year 7 French Exhibition. Why do we teach the grammar of word order, adjectival agreement, definite and definite articles, prepositions and high frequency words? We teach it so that 200 pupils can all create their own art work and they can all write about their own picture. Grammar is creativity and communication. There is no incompatibility.