I am going to be writing a post looking at what needs to be done for Modern Languages, which will include explaining why the lack of mainstream language learning pathways, unencumbered by the need for essays and intellectual heft, is a major problem. And why A Level and academic degrees with essays and literature or linguistics are all very lovely for the tiny few. But irrelevant to the problem of why MFL is a deadend subject for the mainstream post 16. And it will focus on the fact that our obsession with academic A Levels, rather than mainstream language learning, is the issue. Not the specifics of the A Level itself. Hence this preliminary post. Because there are some issues with the current A Level that mean it's not even appropriate for the tiny few.
It's glaring us in the face. We probably teach a tiny group of pupils who got grade 8 or grade 9 at GCSE. Who have high powered lessons and individual attention. They may have a teacher who literally wrote the textbook. (Well, some textbooks for previous A Levels and a current A Level Grammar and Translation Workbook.) Plus a native speaker assistant. And they do more homework and more independent learning than in their other A Levels and say they are learning more and making much more progress than in their other subjects. At open evening they are the sort of student who sells this as a plus, "It's like doing three A Levels just in one." Even if that comes back to haunt them when they start to think about exams and university entrance grades. Because in their other subjects, which they may have picked up without a GCSE in the subject, they have been nailed on for an A* since the end of Year 12. But in MFL they could drop to a C despite their redoubled efforts in the subject.
There are several reasons. Firstly they notice the difficulty of the exams is getting harder. The Listening/Reading/Writing paper has much harder questions compared to 2019. And the grade boundaries aren't getting any easier. The Essay questions are more abstruse. And so are some of the questions on the Speaking cards, asking for more specific areas of knowledge.
Secondly, the whole exam is out of kilter. The amount of content, the difficulty, the time spent, don't match the reality of the exam. They have to cover every aspect of culture, history, politics, life, and Culture of the Spanish-speaking world. Whether Salma Hayek breastfed the baby in Sierra Leone for publicity or out of altruism. How well Esther Expósito coped with her co-host's inebriation in the awards ceremony. Whether there is some exclusively Hispanic way of using the Internet that stands out from the rest of the world. Whether the use of prehispanic images on Peruvian banknotes is a link to the past or government propaganda. Whether a technocrat like Fujimori was a dictator in quite the same way as a right winger like Pinochet or a revolutionary like Castro. If the Spanish royal family are a frivolity or key to the survival of democracy. The role of the Catholic Church in family values in Spain without harking back to the Franco regime. Whether Spanish dependence on Bolivian women for childcare and elder care is a sign of integration or exploitation. If the music video for Despacito depicts wholesome community life or degenerate sexualisation. Why secular tourists can visit Córdoba Cathedral but not Muslim pilgrims. How the use of Catalán in a hospital could be inclusive or exclusive.
But times that by 100. What for? Just in case they get a card on it in the Speaking exam with a "What do you know about..." question. One question out of 3 on a card worth 10% of the A Level. But which requires study worth about 200% of a normal A Level. It's completely out of kilter.
Year 12 can't believe this. They can't believe that all the stuff they have studied is in case one aspect of it may or may not come up in one of the 3 exams they are going to study.
That card itself. In six minutes you have to:
1. Show understanding of the material on the card. Including a reaction or value judgement.
2. With a follow up question to make sure you've shown understanding of the material on the card. Even though the material on some cards is pretty thin.
3. Ask the examiner a question which they must shrug off and waste none of the time answering.
4. Ask the examiner another pointless question.
5. Answer a question on the card demonstrating analysis of an aspect of the topic.
6. Answer a follow up question demonstrating analysis.
7. Answer a question on the card to demonstrate further knowledge of an aspect of the topic.
8. Answer a follow up question demonstrating further knowledge of an aspect of the topic.
So eight things in 6 minutes, with boxes to tick for responding to the skimpy written material, analysis, knowledge and language. An exam designed to be done by painting by numbers against the clock. Routines to cope with each of the silly demands in turn. Box ticking. The 2 questions to be asked by the candidate are the absolute paradigm of box ticking. There's no time for the examiner to engage in answering them or a discussion. There's no criteria for them to be good or bad or interesting or sophisticated or even relevant. You just have to ask two questions. Response to the card seems to be best done by having a Value Judgment Plus Subjunctive ready to deploy come what may. Eight things in 6 minutes. You'd better be slick, over-prepared on the multiplicity of obscure topics, and have some fancy expressions up your sleeve to respond to the card.
This was brought in to replace what used to be an intelligent discussion with the examiner, which meant lessons were spent in intelligent discussion in Spanish. Not rehearsing routines for a card to deliver 8 things in 6 minutes with anecdotes to be launched into at the drop of a hat on whatever one recondite topic on the Spanish-speaking world happened to come up out of the hundreds of aspects you've had to learn.
Followed by the Independent Research Project. In which at least one of your sources has to be from the Internet. (Perplexed face.) But which isn't best approached as a research project at all. Because it's for the speaking exam. For an extended discussion. Except we're not allowed to rehearse it or give feedback, and the rules are so vague we avoid practising it at all, in case it's cheating. All the while feeling pretty certain that somewhere there are other schools where the pressure is on teachers to get students "the grades they deserve". And that the idea that they send their students into a high stakes exam without properly preparing them would not be tolerated.
Let's move on.
The essay paper. Imagine reading La Sombra del Viento for one essay worth 10% of the A Level. A novel it takes sixth months to just read, for an essay in which you are supposed to spend 30 minutes writing. Of course no-one picks La Sombra del Viento. It's preposterous. And the other set texts? Pretty familiar to anyone who studied Spanish in the very olden days.
The Listening/Reading/Writing paper. This has very odd "Summary" questions. Which are not a summary at all. It's not about rewriting in your own words. It's about transforming the grammar from 1st person to 3rd. So where it says "me preocupa", knowing if that me should be changed to se or le or lo or la. Quite a tricky and recondite area. But with a whole task constructed around it. I've written about these questions here.
It also has tricksy synonym questions where if you select se preocupa instead of se preocupa por as the synonym for le inquieta then you lose the mark. And a gap fill text where they have removed some of the words. But for this they choose a literary text, usually quite old for copyright reasons. So there's no context and nobody knows who the characters are or what's going on, so how are you meant to understand when they've removed words from each sentence? And a translation where you can get the whole sentence right but then get no marks because you put catalán with an accent which means you haven't translated it into English. Or you wrote gallego instead of translating as Galician. And that handful of oddball mistakes are enough to drop you from an A* to a B. The 2025 translation has a post all of its own!
So you end up with pupils who have excellent and fluent Spanish, who have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Spanish-speaking world, who can write intelligently about how La Casa de Bernarda Alba is a descent from realism into surrealism, how Almodovar's Volver is an examination of the existential reasons for living and creating art, and do it all in Spanish, worrying that by picking this subject they have sabotaged their chance of getting into the University of their choice.
I know teachers, including MFL teachers or Sixth Form leadership members, who have discouraged their own children from taking A Level languages for exactly this reasons. I didn't have to discourage my own children, but it was certainly a relief that I wasn't put in that position. The exam isn't suitable even for the tiny minority that do select it.
Let's remember where this out of kilter, badly designed exam came from. Universities complained that A Level wasn't preparing students for language degrees. The bizarre idea that because the exams didn't test "knowledge", we weren't teaching through the context of the Spanish-speaking world. They wanted to make sure that we weren't just teaching students the language. There had to be intellectual heft and knowledge. They wanted literature with specified set texts of the right calibre. And they originally wanted the essays to be in English. To make sure that the "intellectual level" was prioritised over language learning.
Which is going to bring me on to my next post when I get there. On why insisting on intellectual heft means we've ended up with no mainstream language learning pathways post 16. And why it is that we only value academic study with essays, literature, linguistics for the few. This particular A Level is bad. But that's not even the real problem. It's a distraction from the real question, which I will come onto in another post...
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