Part 3 of A Spanner in the Works. AQA Guidance for Marking the Conversation.

 Now we know that pupils will NOT have to speak for 5 minutes on one theme in the Conversation, what should their answers look like?

We have to interrogate the exemplars from the specification. They are likely to creak under this exercise, as they were originally intended to be examples. But now they are being forced into the role of definitions of "extended" and "good".

Here they are:

You can see that they have been chosen to exemplify that pupils will NOT need to have extended answers or fancy language. The choices are deliberately, even knowingly at the level which previously we have aimed to move pupils away from. Now "I don't like social media because it is boring"  is the definition of Good development of an answer. The GCSE panel wanted to remove the Conversation because it led to rote delivery of long answers containing fancy language. The exam boards put the Conversation back in, and are signalling that it will not reward long memorised answers and deliberately inserted fancy language.

Of course, this also avoids rewarding pupils who can spontaneously develop answers and naturally use sophisticated language as part of a complex narration.

Looking closer, we can see that "amount of information" is being interpreted in a weird grammatical way. The exemplar for "extended response" includes three clauses.

So I think we are to assume that an answer delivering more information, but all in one clause, would not count as extended.

I love to go to the cinema in Norwich with my friends or family but not on my own to see an action film or another good film most weekends in a cinema with a big screen and a great sound system.

This example only has one conjugated verb I love... And although it contains a greater "amount of information" than the exemplar, we would have to count it as "minimal development". "Minimal development" of the "amount of information".

So verbs are crucial. Not the "amount of information".

What about the fact that the exemplar for "extended response" contains three different verbs. This is all we have to go on. So are we to assume this is also a requirement? What if I repeat the same verb?

I love to go to the cinema and I love to go to Norwich. I love to go with my friends or my family, but not on my own. I love to see an action film but I also love other sorts of film and I love to go most weekends to a cinema with a big screen and I love a cinema with a great sound system.

Is that now an "extended response"? Or is it disqualified because it is the same as the earlier "minimal response" with the verb repeated?

This makes a difference. One of these would be "good development" and the other one would be "an extended response"? Or not?

I like to play tennis because it is fun and exciting.

I like to play tennis because it is fun and it is exciting.

And the overriding question remains. Is "I go to the cinema and I watch films. I love films" really what is required for a grade 9? If so, we have got an awful lot of thinking to do about what we are teaching.

Of course, this exemplification was there all along, and isn't changed by the new 17 question guidance.

What is changed, is the dropping of the requirement to talk for between 4 and a half and five and a half minutes on just one theme. This has been replaced by the requirement to give short simple accurate answers with 3 verbs for 17 questions (some of them can fall short of 3 clauses). 

What also has changed, is that everyone will make sure that pupils can tick this box, so the Conversation is now the equivalent of Controlled Assessment. Planned and prepared against a tickbox that everyone meets, so effectively irrelevant in its effect on the grade. And remember, AQA have already done the same thing to the Photo Card. We are right back in the bad old days of 2016 and the Baukham report, with the wrong answer to the wrong problem.

This is exactly what this new exam was meant to avoid. And exactly what I feared it would do right from the start. An exam explicitly designed to change the way we teach. Ends up ruining language teaching again.