In a previous post, I declared that I wasn't going to let the new GCSE Vocabulary List worry me. We didn't use to worry about the vocabulary list in the old GCSE. We didn't even look at it. We should just be able to get on with teaching the pupils Spanish, and they will pick up the words they need. The textbook should cover the words. And how different can it be? And maybe nearer the exam we can give pupils bits of the vocab list to learn or something.
Well. It is different. We are now doing the topic of jobs. And the old materials with vet, builder, cabin-crew, child-minder and all the other jobs, are still useful, but not for those words. There are only about 7 jobs on the vocabulary list. From memory, doctor, hairdresser, teacher, lawyer, celebrity and a couple of others. So when we look at texts in the jobs unit in the book, we are not looking at the jobs words. We are explicitly looking at how the texts on jobs are a vehicle for encountering and re-encountering non-topic vocabulary. Things like have just, started to, chose to, managed to, succeeded in.
One problem is that this no longer bears any resemblance to what the pupils are saying in their speaking and writing, where they will be talking about how they want to be a vet because I would love to work with animals and if I can earn lots of money, I would like to travel the world and see wild animals in different countries... The texts in the book are not modelling the sort of language pupils are looking to use. And the language in the Listening and Reading exam is radically different from the sort of language pupils are learning to use in order to do the tasks required in the Speaking and Listening exam.
This problem of the split between the language needed for the Listening / Reading compared to the language needed for the Speaking / Writing, was one of the main issues with the old GCSE which I wrote about here. This new GCSE has really pushed the wedge further. And at the moment, I feel confident teaching pupils for the Speaking and Writing exam. But I have no idea if I am covering what they need for the Listening and Reading exams.
Time to really get to grips with that Vocabulary List.
The problem is, if we are not talking about topics and topic words, how do we break up the vocabulary list for pupils to revise week by week?
Can chatgpt be the saviour here? If we give it words from the list, can I give it simple administrative jobs to do? Things like tidy up the formatting or categorise them? Can it do more sophisticated jobs like create short phrases that would be more memorable than a list of single words?
AQA already supply a spreadsheet of the words so you can sort for nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. It has a Spanish and English column. But for verbs, the English column is a mess. It gives different forms of the word: eat, eating, to eat which are superfluous. For example if I were to paste this into a Quizlet set, it would make the tasks undoable, with the pupils having to type in all 3 forms verbatim. Can chatgpt tidy this up?
Then what if I only want verbs for the topic of Jobs and Education. But as we saw, also including any non topic verbs that could be used in this context. So what I actually want is all the verbs on the list, minus the ones that obviously belong to another topic. Can chatgpt do this?
What about nouns? Maybe nouns are easier to learn from a list than verbs. What if I gave chatgpt all the nouns and asked it to sort them into topics. Being very strict with it and saying to make sure to include as many as possible in topics, and to give me a list of all the words it hadn't managed to put in a topic. Then I could ask it to put each word into a short phrase, ready to make into Quizlet cards in Spanish and English. Could chatgpt do this?
How did it do?
First of all, I noticed that it has developed the annoying habit of asking ridiculous questions to check how you want it to proceed. I strongly suspect this is a deliberate tactic to use up your limit of free questions on the more powerful version.
Then, yes, it can tidy up a list. It can categorise words by topic. It can create short phrases for each word.
BUT...
But when it had finished, I spot checked its list against the original list of words I had given it. The words on my list that I checked, had not made it onto the final chatgpt list. And there were words on the chatgpt list that were not on the original AQA list. And, yes, I was clear with it to not add words or remove words. But to no avail. It can't stick to that kind of instruction. Its job and purpose is to make stuff up.
I did give the list of verbs to pupils. For them to tick off the ones they knew, so I could gauge the size of the task ahead of us. And I asked them to highlight ones they thought would be particularly tricky, and to practise conjugating them in sentences to deploy. But they noticed the phrases in English and Spanish had words missing or were odd. And I had to admit I had used chatgpt. Their reaction was one of horror. AI really does not have a good reputation with young people.
Famously, when it comes to schools and teachers, even "good enough" is not good enough. AI is definitely NOT good enough to do even simple administrative jobs in support of teachers. So why would anyone suggest we use it?
