The new GCSE was meant to stop rote learning in the Conversation...

 My position is: I teach pupils to speak spontaneously, developing their answers. So keeping the Conversation part of the Speaking Exam in the new GCSE was a huge relief. But how will it work out?

From 2011 to 2017 we had the controlled assessment GCSE which totally destroyed language teaching. If you wanted to teach spontaneous speaking, you were letting your pupils down. The interpretation of the markscheme, with its emphasis on accuracy, variety and amount of information, meant that the answers that scored best were long rote-learned scripts. If your pupils were speaking more spontaneously, they would deliver less information, make more mistakes, and have fewer fancy expressions.

So we breathed a sigh of relief when the current (now legacy) GCSE came in, in 2018. The conversation was to be unscripted, with teachers able to prompt pupils for further information and to develop their answers. And it was no longer on one specified topic that could be memorised. It could be on any two of the three Themes, and could not be limited in advance to just some of the topics. There were to be marks for interaction, and less focus on delivering pre-prepared fancy expressions. The examiner's reports have commented on the successful transition from rote-learning to more spontaneous speaking.

Of course there is some use of rote-learning still, as I noted in this post looking at research published by Rachel Hawkes and Emma Marsden. But the exam didn't incentivise this memorised answers approach. So we had gone from a GCSE that actively penalised spontaneous speaking, to one which incentivised it. It was easier to teach pupils a core of language and how to deploy it across topics, than to ask them to memorise answers to questions across such a wide range of topics.

At least one person (very close to the powers-that-were) and a member of the panel responsible for creating the new GCSE, didn't realise this. I wrote in this post how he told me that the reason they decided so bizarrely to almost immediately replace the then brand new GCSE, was the clamour from language teachers on social media. The clamour of teachers finding that they couldn't teach rote-learned answers to such a wide range of topics. Which, if he had been in a position to understand, he would have seen was directly linked to the declared desire of the new GCSE to do away with rote-learned answers.

My current Year 11 are taking the "old" GCSE. When it came to starting revision for the speaking exam, they were gobsmacked that I didn't let them get out their books and look at the "answers" they had written on each topic back in Year 10. Instead I went directly to speaking. Tell your partner in Spanish what you remember from your stories in Year 10, using Spanish you know.

This works fantastically for students aiming for a high grade. They are able to speak Spanish, using their repertoire of language, spontaneously and with good interaction with the examiner. This also works fantastically with students who would struggle to memorise answers or pupils who are not necessarily motivated to memorise answers. The important thing is they get good at delivering answers using Spanish they know, without having to memorise word by word.

So I said to the pupils, Here's a blank piece of paper. Write me your answer. Then you can look at your Year 10 answers afterwards and see if there's anything wrong or anything missing.

And this is the sort of thing I got:

Some of it recreated a story they remembered (especially if it was true) from Year 10. Some of them made up new answers completely from the routines we have embedded of opinions, reasons, stories.

But remember, this is for the legacy GCSE with Year 11. These pupils are taking a GCSE which incentivises having narration, interaction, improvisation. And most of all, being able to construct an answer on any of the topics, rather than rote-learning an answer to each of the possible questions across the full range of topics.

The question is, Will I keep this approach with the current Year 10?

I certainly want to. And I am teaching that way for now. But when it comes to the exam, which approach will win out? Will rote-learning once again out-score spontaneous speaking?

The guidance for the conversation still includes this important stipulation:

So teachers can't narrow down the Themes to favourite topics to be rote-learned. But on the other hand, the content of the exam has already been streamlined. This exam has cut down on the "overload" of topics following "clamour" from teachers. Has it shifted the balance and incentives back towards rote-learning?