Keeping Marking Simple in the Face of Complexity

 Year 7 have been writing about food they like and don't like. This is another classic example of where the teacher's focus and the pupils' focus are miles apart. Making marking the work almost impossible.

Remember when we were teaching pets and I told the class that we won't be doing chien, tortue, chat, oiseau for the next 5 years. But un / une and j'ai / je n'ai pas de are going to be important for ever? Well. Pupils still remember chien, tortue, chat and still mangle un, une, j'ai, je n'ai pas de. Is this bad? Should I cover their work in red ink, issue corrections, use codes in the margin to indicate spelling or gender infractions, and give a mark out of 10 for (in)accuracy?

No. I don't worry about this. It's interesting and important to notice. But clearly it is an absolutely natural feature in how language learning works. And I definitely do not want to end up with pupils who are not focused on meaning and on saying things they want to say.

This particular writing assessment at the end of the unit on Food and Drink, is haunted by this piece of work:

This is from three years ago (post on it here). You can see that the pupil has written almost nothing. And his comment underneath is that, "I was so worried about the / some, I didn't write a lot." And indeed almost every word for the (le, la, les) and some (du, de la, de l', des) is wrong. It's painful. But the real point is that it turned into an obstacle.

It made me think about exactly what are we testing in this assessment. I definitely want pupils to be using opinions: j'aime, je n'aime pas, j'adore... and some connectives: et, mais, parce que, par exemple... I want them to remember the words for foods. I think that's not problematic.

But the main things I want to see are not exactly language related. I want to see: 

• Pupils enjoying expressing themselves. 
• Pupils starting to link, contrast and develop ideas. 
• Pupils working increasingly independently, using resources only when needed.

So these are the features we mark for.

You can see the pupil's comment and the tick box at the bottom are focused on the level of support they needed. Or in this case, didn't need. And my comment is focused on how they are starting to link ideas.

You can also see that the le, la, les, du, de la, des is hit and miss. There are a couple of points here. Firstly, if I am saying to them that for the next five years, we are not going to be writing about food, just as we are not going to be writing about pets, then how much time do I want to be putting into demanding they know if beurre is masculine or feminine? Not much. So this piece of writing is interesting in that it shows whether or not the le / la is being picked up by ear as we see some of these words. Or are there patterns absorbed unconsciously so that, for example, it's rare for a pupil to say le pizza or la chocolat. Is that because they've heard it so many times? Or because there's a pattern?

You might say that there's a question of understanding being revealed. Yes. A pupil who puts le fraises or jai'me shows that they are not constructing their French from logical grammatical thought. But that understanding isn't going to be put right by some red ink. Suddenly and magically made a priority. In fact if we talked about le and les, then it may well turn out there is no misunderstanding. It is simply that they are not constructing the sentence from atomised grammatical elements. They are saying/writing chunks of French that come to them naturally to express something they want to say. If that's what's happening when learners use their language, then I would be a fool to pretend that their French is coming from a faulty grammatical assembly line that I need to fix, and to discard their writing as a flawed product that has to be recalled because some of the pieces aren't correctly assembled.

I can address le / les and j'aime, but this is going to be a long process, not a quick fix.

What if a pupil, like the example at the top of this post, was focused on the le, la, les to such an extent that they couldn't write. Well, first of all: well done that pupil for caring about the accuracy. If you really care that much, then you may well be the one who does learn it. In fact, here is what he wrote when I let him use his booklet to check the genders:

So that was my plan for this year. I would encourage all pupils to write as much as they could without using their booklets for support. And if any pupil asked about le / la, I would tell them I would let them check at the end before handing it in. To write without the booklet, putting what felt right, and then checking at the end.

How many pupils out of two classes asked me what they should do about getting gender right? One. One pupil in his first sentence said, "Sir, I don't know if it's le or la." None of the others were bothered.

Even more interestingly... As they finished, I said to them all, "Well done if you've done it without using your booklet. Now I do want you all to check one thing. Every time you have written le or la or les, I want you to use your booklet and check you put the right one."

What do you think happened?

You can see in their comments at the bottom, it clearly says, "I didn't use my booklet except when Sir told me to check le and la." Now look at le and la in their writing. Even when they check, it's not working. This isn't something we deal with by using red ink. It's a long and slow learning process of adjusting focus and attention, without making it an obstacle to self expression.

That would be a good place to stop. But I have one more to show you because it brings home the complexity of marking accuracy versus expression.

Here we have a pupil who wants to express himself, develop and link ideas and challenge himself to work independently. From an accuracy point of view, he has made some terrible mistakes. He has written je boisson eau minerale and je manger la pizza. Am I going to pull this apart for being terrible grammar and give him a low mark?

Of course not. Seen in the wider context of his language-learning trajectory, this is perfect. Firstly he is exploring the limitations of his language. Using the word for "a drink" to try to say "I drink". So this is someone engaged with expressing himself in the language. As exemplified by how his paragraphs are the most coherent and logical, with things like, "For breakfast I would like to eat a pain au chocolat but normally I eat omelets because I love eggs". And secondly, he is anticipating exactly the grammar we will be looking at next. How verbs end in er in the infinitive and how you change the ending when you conjugate the verb.

The comments on the work need to reflect an appreciation of his glorious effort and carefully manage his understanding that when you try a tricky skateboard move, you are more likely to fall off than if you keep it simple. 

So how do I mark the writing?

Firstly, clear criteria:

• Challenge yourself to use the booklet as little as possible.
• Express yourself and your opinions.
• Show off as much of the French you know as possible.
• Think about how ideas link.

Secondly, engage the pupils in commenting on these aspects. This is not for show or in a funny coloured ink. It's genuinely targeted reflection and part of a long term process of becoming aware of priorities. It's an opportunity to shape their thinking and encourage them to take control and be positive about their language-learning. And it is high quality information that allows me to understand how they wrote the piece and what their thoughts are.

Thirdly, my comments engage with theirs and engage with longer term learning, not just this piece. But my comments on the page (in my horrible handwriting) are not as important as what I say and do in the classroom as a result of reading their work. The main recipient of feedback from the pupils' assessed work is not the pupil. It's the teacher. You can see from this post how much it gives me to reflect on. Imagine if I wrote all this in red ink at the end of the pupils' work!

Fourthly. And definitely in last place. I have to record something in my markbook. It needs to be a shorthand for some of what has been discussed here. It needs to contain information on where the pupil is on their trajectory, allowing me to track individual progress in independence, coherent expression, and accuracy. But of course that doesn't work. Because the pupil who copies from the booklet will be more accurate than the pupil who takes risks and turns boisson into a verb.

What we do currently is record the level of independence. As you can see in the tick box at the end of the page, we are looking to record if pupils are:

• Writing by copying from eg a writing frame in the booklet.
• Writing their own sentences but reliant on finding things in the booklet.
• Writing independently but reliant on having prelearned, memorised material.
• Writing independently.

The idea is that all pupils produce writing of similar quality, reflected in our KPI exemplars. And we record whether they achieved this spontaneously, by memorisation or by using the booklet.

We do need to tweak this. Because pupils DO produce work of differing quality. Especially as almost all pupils challenge themselves to write spontaneously without using their booklet, or only checking at the end. We're going to be talking about this at the next department meeting. I am a fan of simplicity. So I don't think it's going to be useful to attempt to encode all the many possible variations of different combinations of expression, coherence, risk taking, accuracy and all the play-offs between them. I don't want to preempt what the department decide. But I am leaning towards keeping our current method of noting the level of independence, plus a simple + = - code to indicate how successful it was. Because this "marking" part of the whole writing and feedback and engaging with learning process really is the least important.

Really cool translation challenge.

 I've been working on a really cool translation challenge for the last 3 days. And I've nearly cracked the first 5 words. You'll love it. It's a linguist's dream. I could write a whole paper on just the first 5 words.

Here it is. Translate into Spanish, accurately and completely: "Boys will always be boys."

Of course, "Los niños siempre serán niños" won't do. It's an English idiomatic expression that doesn't translate into Spanish. Because it has to be specifically boys. Not all "children" of both genders.

I have been through all the words I know for child, to see if any of them specifically refer only to male children especially in the plural. Niños, chicos, muchachos, mozos, mocosos, nenes, chavales, esquincles...

And all my words for male to see if they could apply to children. Varón, macho, hombre, caballero, güey, vato...

I have to admit I cheated. For this kind of untranslatable expression, I like to use linguee. It collects examples of where (hopefully) real people have attempted to translate things on the internet. Here's what it said for "Boys will be boys."

It showed straight away that I was right to be cautious. People generally avoid using "children will be children". And I absolutely love, "Los machitos serán machitos." For a day or so I thought that was perfect. And I liked the way that los machitos seems deliberately despectivo. But then I started to worry that although in the context of the text, the writer is being critical of machitos, the original sayer of the saying, is not.

I also don't like the "always". It's not part of the expression. It's been put in as an extra, and feels as if it has the value of "of course" or "as we know" or "as the saying goes." And it creates another problem alongside the future tense. "Children will always be children" sounds as if it's saying they won't grow up.

This is all delicious and thoughts about it kept coming to me. This morning I had a feeling that the English modal "will" isn't entirely functioning as the future. It's more in the true sense of "will" meaning "want" or "insist on". We see this in "Will you marry me?" which translates into Spanish as "Do you want..." And "I will" as "Sí quiero".

So my current favourite, while it doesn't solve all the problems, and means I have to let go of my old favourite machitos, is: Así se comportan los niños. With a siempre to fit in somewhere. And I am pretty sure I want it in present tense, not future tense.

Of course this isn't a fun intellectual challenge. This is the opening of the AQA A Level Spanish translation. And I have NO idea what they will have as an acceptable translation on the markscheme. Especially as, to give us an extra kick in the teeth, later in the translation they want you to render the word "children" to encompass both genders. I imagine the markscheme will accept, "Los niños serán niños" just to spite the candidates who recognised this doesn't work. 

I doubt, "Así siempre se comportan los niños" would get the marks. Unless they've read this post.

They will end up accepting a lot of literal translations that gloss over the difficulties or efforts to make a good job. And penalise you for putting in an extraneous los or missing out a de.

I have read the JCQ rules and there's nothing in there about not talking about the exam after it's been sat. Students are definitely talking about it on student forums. Teachers are cautious because the exam board like to keep it secure for next year's mock. But the thought of this being next year's mock makes me feel even more sick on top of the thought of it being this year's actual exam.

What are they trying to do with an exam like this? 

The way the markscheme works, with the text divided up into roughly 4 word chunks worth a mark each, means that if you have something wrong somewhere in that chunk, you get no marks. I can easily see valiant attempts at wrangling with this translation coming out with 0 marks overall. Easily.

This 5 word opening puzzle wasn't even necessarily the worst part of the translation. At least the problems were blatantly obvious, even if the solutions have given me something to think about for a couple of days.

I don't think there's any harm in discussing the first 5 words, as it's already known on social media and student forums as the "boys will be boys" translation. And I've also see "Big boys don't cry" discussed by native speakers saying that the Spanish expression doesn't have the word "big".

Too many of the things in this translation depend on feel for the language rather than testing any knowledge or rule appropriate for this level. Avoiding too many details, I think there are real difficulties in picking the right word for things like, heard, anything, language, was part of, environment. And decisions as to whether to include an article which again, depend on "feel" for the language rather than testing knowledge of a rule.

There's a vicious negative antecedent which isn't a use of the subjunctive usually required at this level. And a nasty imperative with indirect object pronoun. But while unnecessarily hard, these aren't pushing into native speaker territory in the same way as handling nuances of idiomatic connotation and collocation. I personally can enjoy this translation as a challenge to my "feeling" for Spanish, having read vast amounts of literature and having lived in a Spanish-speaking country for four years. That's not what we should be testing at A Level.

I know the point of being "the nice man who teaches languages" is to be honest and fair and not angrily hurt people's feelings. And to remember that in the precarious situation of languages, we are all in the same boat together. But I really don't know what possessed the exam board to think this translation was in any way suitable for English pupils who have studied Spanish in school. A hugely damaging and irresponsible mistake.

Generally I always think the exam boards do a good job and have huge expertise in making the specifications imposed on us work. Or work as best they can given the hand they are dealt. As I spell out in a recent post, the current A Level is awful, but not because of the exam boards.

But this translation was a mistake. All around the country, students who did well in Spanish at GCSE, eagerly picked A Level, stuck with it despite the ridiculous expectations, only to be faced with this at the end of all their hard work. And we wonder why only 2 students per high school pick A Level Spanish. Or actually, thank goodness it's only 2. Who would wish this on anybody?

For me, this translation is a huge kick in the teeth. For the students, they may not even have realised how impossible it was and the kick in the teeth won't come until August. On one level I am intellectually in awe of how such an incredible translation was put together. But that of course is utterly insignificant faced with how sick I feel that this was done to our students.

There will come a point where in all honesty, we won't be able to justify letting pupils take this. Already I would never actively encourage anyone. And I know cases of languages teachers and college heads making sure their own children don't. I don't know how long I can carry on pretending to the pupils that it's a viable option. It's heartbreaking.

Reading Strategies - Part 2.

 In Part 1 on Reading Strategies, we looked at some of the language reasons why we might want pupils to read texts in the Target Language. There are of course other reasons than just to meet words and structures. Reading can be a source of pleasure, interest, and learning. It can allow for greater independence than language lessons sometimes permit. And the texts can give a new perspective on the world, and help pupils realise that French is for real, not just for lessons. We can over-egg some of these benefits. Pupils are not necessarily interested and motivated to read in the Target Language. Reading can be superficial, and it can be hard for pupils to apply reading strategies independently and without support.

What we are trying to do is to teach a way of reading which builds understanding, through cumulative and cyclical reading. Knowledge of the subject matter combines with understanding of known words to build a picture where more and more of the pieces fall into place: new words, the words that link and structure the sentence, the grammatical form of the words. All constantly checked against the emerging picture.

We want pupils to be confident in making and testing assumptions, and then revising them if it doesn't quite make sense. This is what the best readers do and others do not.

Here's a text on the French balloonist Sophie Blanchard:

The first strategy is to look through the text for features we expect to find in a historical text:

The point is to start to build understanding by asking pupils to do a quick first reading of the text, without getting stuck. Some pupils will simply find the names and numbers. Others will start to read the context. Names, numbers, lists, speech, technical terms, known words, cognates... There are always things you can ask pupils to locate in a text. And they can learn to make a first reading in this way.

The next thing we do with this particular text is to give pupils questions in English.

The questions guide the pupils through the text. They locate the information and read the detail that is needed. You can ask them to answer in French and in English so that they start to map the meaning of the whole sentence onto the French. Having questions like this makes the text accessible.

Questions like these work well as a teaching strategy. But would it work as an independent reading strategy? I suppose the closest we could come would be for the pupils to ask their own questions and see if the text provided the details they wanted. So for this text, you could watch this trailer for a film about her life. As a trailer, it teases information but keeps the detail back... Then the pupils can look for the missing details in the text.

Another way to make the text completely accessible is to give parallel English and French texts.

We ask the pupils to find the underlined words in the other language. Sometimes these words jump out and are easily identified. Sometimes they push the pupils into reading the French closely, mapping the French sentence onto the English, and exploring the different sentence structure.

In this particular example, there is a further use to this. The words the pupils are finding in this part of the text, are deliberately chosen to help them read the end of the story:

We have built up their knowledge and interest in the historical character. We have equipped them with some key vocabulary. We have shown them how to build up meaning over several readings of the text. Now we can ask them to read the ending of the story for themselves.

This is part of a worksheet I leave for cover lessons. So pupils ARE working independently, reading the text and extracting information.

They have the activities on the sheet to support and guide them. The worksheet is deliberately guiding them through the text. But are they learning and deploying strategies?

I would say that they are at the beginning of this process. They are learning important strategies such as:

You build up understanding by reading repeatedly.

You can find words you know.

You can recognise new words that are similar to English or from their place in a sentence.

Your cultural knowledge helps see the pieces of the jigsaw.

You can find specific pieces of information.

Words you figure out in one sentence may come up again later.

Little words that hold sentences together are important and so are word endings. These should all fall into place as you make your understanding more focused and accurate.

You can figure out what it says from the words. And you can figure out words from what it is saying.

You may have made assumptions that need revising.

And most importantly: You may not understand all the words. But you can puzzle out what some of it says.

Reading Strategies. Part One - A Rationale.

 In the era of "knowledge", it seems that reading "strategies" have fallen out of favour. We no longer tend to have regular lessons where pupils select from readers in the Target Language to practise their reading. Was this because the whole idea of reading strategies you can deploy was bogus? Or because there wasn't enough focus on deploying focussed strategies that work?

There certainly seems to be inequality around pupils' confidence in accessing texts in a foreign language. Some seem more "skilled" than others. This suggests that there are skills and strategies that some have learned and others haven't. In this case, we need to find out what those pupils are doing, and work out how to teach other pupils to do it too.

What are we hoping that pupils are doing when they read in a foreign language? In purely linguistic terms, perhaps it is: 

• Meeting known words in new contexts
• Seeing how sentences are articulated by high frequency words and inflections of words.
• Engaging in a feedback loop between decoding word by word, and overall meaning.

But each of these contains interesting complexities around the two opposing views of language learning: acquisition through incidental input and communication, versus direct instruction of step by step conceptualisation and deliberate repeated retrieval.

Meeting words in new contexts.

There is an argument that in order to learn a language, we have to use language not just in practice exercises, but in order to comprehend or communicate real information. This strikes me as something of a romantic argument. But even the opposing point of view, based on repeatedly and deliberately tracking how many times learners meet new words, stresses the value of meeting them in different contexts. Perhaps because this is how the brain processes language and builds the complex articulation of the way words can fit together and create meaning.

Seeing how sentences are articulated by high frequency words and inflections of words.

In the past, the accusation leveled at this kind of reading text, was that pupils were finding cognates and guessing from knowledge of the content, and glossing over the high frequency little words. The knowledge approach puts much more emphasis on the high frequency words found in all texts. So although it usually advocates pupils reading sentences which tightly model known language, this approach could actually be compatible with texts to be read for information or pleasure. Because pupils are much more familiar with the little words that hold sentences together. A caveat would be that there is a reason why the focus continually slips away from these words. Learners' attention is inevitably drawn towards words strong on meaning, rather than the nuance of words that articulate sentences but whose own meaning is more slippery.

Engaging in a feedback loop between decoding words and overall meaning.

The direct instruction approach would have us believe that reading consists of parsing known words and known grammar to arrive at meaning in a one way street process. This is clearly not true. The overall understanding of the content, and the interpretation of individual words is held in constant tension. The reader actively makes sense of the text. At all levels. This includes their prior knowledge of the subject matter, their vocabulary knowledge, their grammatical knowledge, and their willingness to hypothesise meaning. And most of all their resilience with a degree of uncertainty and the ability to monitor the strength of the validity of their emerging hypotheses.

So this brings us on to the "skills" and possible strategies to employ. What is it that confident readers can do, that less confident readers could learn to do?

Of course, some pupils will have a firmer grasp of vocabulary than others. And one of the purposes of asking pupils to read in the Target Language, is to encounter those words and to practise retrieving their meaning. Our strategies will need to challenge pupils to do this, while finding ways to make sure it's a learning opportunity for pupils who didn't know the words.

And equally, depending on the text, some pupils will bring greater prior knowledge of the topic than others. We can exploit this by tailoring texts to pupils' interests and knowledge. We need to make sure we use this as a way of engaging with the text, not to allow them to gloss over it!

When it comes to confidence in dealing with uncertainty, hypothesising and bouncing between the overall meaning and the detail of the sentence structure, we need to observe carefully how different learners behave. Often it is confidence that is key. A pupil who fears being told they are wrong, may tend to jump to an answer and give that as their one attempt, before giving up with an "I knew I couldn't do it." It takes a lot more confidence to go through the process of tentatively assigning meaning to words, working out what that would mean for the overall sentence, accounting for all the words and even the inflections, tweaking or revising assumptions depending on whether it all made sense or not.

In Part 2, I will look at specific texts with a series of activities which take pupils through, building up meaning. I will look at to what extent these activities are one-offs which just apply to guiding the pupils through this particular text, and to what extent they could be strategies that a pupil could apply to any text. And whether this means pupils are learning to become better readers.

If you can't wait for Part 2, here's a link to how I tried to achieve exactly this transferability of strategies in the 1990s. It will be interesting to see in Part 2 if I've made any progress!

Can we sort out Languages in English schools?

 Can we sort out languages in English schools? That's a sentence you can read 7 times putting the stress on different words in turn. How about we try, "Can WE sort out languages in English schools?" Because if WE don't do it, then who is? They will either not bother, or muck it up. And I'm not sure which is worse.

Going along with that idea of giving us the responsibility, I'm nervous of commenting on sectors I don't work in. So Primary languages, Universities, and private enterprise all have a role to play. But meddling by outsiders never ends well. So I will stick to talking about the sectors I know something about. The one thing to do first at Secondary. And what on earth to do post 16.

At Secondary level, there is one obvious and easy thing that would go a long way to changing the narrative, the incentives for SLT, the attitude of pupils, and the success of the subject: Ending unfair grading.

At Sixth Form and College, we need to see one thing: a mainstream option for continuing with languages as the norm. Universities have language courses for students NOT specialising in a philology degree: Why is there a gap from 16 to 18 where you can't just carry on learning a language? Pupils who pick a language at GCSE shouldn't be going into a dead end 2 year course just to get a grade and then quickly lose everything they learned.

Ending unfair grading

There is no reason why pupils in Languages should be given lower grades than in their other subjects. If grades were given out fairly, nobody would be clamouring for it to be changed. For grades 4 and above, on average, a pupil is given a grade lower in languages than in other subjects. If a pupil does get the same grade in languages as in history or geography, by the law of averages, this means another pupil is getting 2 grades lower. It's the way the grades are given out. FFT datalab show how this happens year after year. Because that's the way it's been deliberately set up to happen.

It is no reflection of the pupils' achievement in languages or anything to do with the teaching. When the "comparable outcomes" decisions setting the allocation of grades were first applied in 2018, the current Year 11 were in Year 4. The allocation of worse grades for them in languages was already in place. It's a historical anomaly that we've got stuck with for decades. There is some slight variation according to the SATs profile of the year group. But Ofqual's brief is to keep grading standards the same year on year, regardless of the fact that they know it's unfair.

I wrote in another post how pupils' targets clearly show them that the grades given out in languages are lower than in their other subjects. If in history or geography the target is a 6, it will be a 5 for French. This has nothing to do with the pupil's ability in French or the teaching they have received. The targets were already set, based on KS2 SATs, before the pupil started Secondary School. But the targets are a true reflection of the fact that lower grades are given out in languages. A very clear message. Pupils know, teachers know, SLT know. Taking a language is a recipe for lower grades.

But pupils inevitably blame themselves and think that it means that they are not good at languages. SLT may blame the teachers and think that they are not good at teaching. Because surely nobody would carry on giving out unfair grades year after year. Well they do. And they need to stop.

Before any new syllabuses or national centres and hubs or changes to teacher training or methods or research reviews or ebaccs, the one thing to change is grading. So that pupils can pick a GCSE in a language with the confidence that they are going to do well. The narrative of failure in languages is powerful, but as I show in this post, it is entirely manufactured.

I'm not saying that's all we need at Secondary. But it's by far the biggest and also the easiest thing.

Then we can continue to think about whether our subject is about culture and communication, or grammar and vocabulary, or useful language, or story telling. But of course the answer to that is easy too. That richness of our subject is a positive. When we try to cut teaching down and neglect one or more of those aspects, it's the worse for it. Richness and complexity is not the problem. We know what the problem is. It's unfair grading. We've seen it, we've said it, and it won't be hard to sort it.

Pupils, teachers, SLT will all feel better about the subject once we remove the disincentive.

Then we need to make sure that if pupils take GCSE, that it's not a dead end. So the second thing we need is mainstream language learning pathways post 16.

Mainstream language learning pathways post 16.

It is not the norm in England to carry on studying a language. We have A Levels for those who want academic study with intellectual heft. I wrote here about how our attitude to languages means we don't value the study of languages unless it is beefed up with linguistics or literature, history or politics. When the universities meddled with the A Level, they even wanted it to have essays in English. They put intellectual heft above actual language learning.

For a tiny minority, there is the option of A Level and then a degree in philology. I'm not going to bemoan the fact that it's only a tiny minority (2 pupils per secondary school go on to A Level French and the same for Spanish). I bemoan the fact that this is what people are worrying about. What about the 99% of pupils who are never going to want to write essays about Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer? Why is language learning not an option for the mainstream?

More 16 to 19 year olds are on Duolingo than do A Level languages. I don't have figures to prove that but I don't think anyone's going to question it. Because it's bound to be more than 4 pupils per Secondary school. 

That's a clue to how things could be. Online learning. Open access. Points based or counting hours of study rather than exams. At your own pace. And in the language or languages you fancy.

Online open access study. I'm not suggesting that Duolingo be mandated at college and Sixth Form. But whatever we come up with would need to rival it.

Of course we could call for taught language classes, the same way Sunak wanted all pupils to continue with maths. Although that feels less attractive than being given autonomy over your choice of language and level of learning.

Sunak's maths idea, is of course a warning. Nobody wants miserable classes of students who don't want to be there. In a subject you can't staff. With students coming from different high schools having done different levels of different languages.

If colleges wanted to offer taught courses, and you did want a qualification to aim for, GCSE isn't a bad option, if now you feel better able to make important choices than when you were 13. A GCSE either in the same language you started at High School or in a different language or languages. GCSE historically has kept that balance between useful language and learning the grammar required for more complex self expression.

Or a simply a points based system where the expectation is that you put in a certain number of hours or work through a certain amount of levels. Again, not unlike Duolingo.

The Duke of Edinburgh Award and the EPQ are examples of this kind of add-on that are taken seriously, where students clock up extra hours or other dimensions of study.

I teach A Level students who study other languages independently online. Even to the extent of this leading to next steps linked to the other language rather than the one they took for A Level. Because it links to their other subjects, their other interests, or their aspirations.

This could be happening for many more of our students.

A changed ecosystem.

What would this look like? More pupils taking GCSE languages without the kick in the teeth of unfair grading.

Attractive options to continue with language learning post 16. Incentivised by college minimum expectations and university entry requirements. Boosted by links to the subjects they study. And by the availability of easy access to cultural and academic resources and international communication.

When we used go on the Spanish exchange, our pupils were astounded that their exchange partners see it as part of a strategic plan. They have mapped out spending a year over the border in a French lycée as an EU citizen. They would like to go to the UK for an Erasmus year. And they want to do a Masters in America. We don't think like this. We just moan not enough people are taking A Level and writing essays in English to show their intellectual level. While actually secretly being quite proud of how difficult, demanding and exclusive we can make the subject.

With a language and an international outlook becoming the expectation post 16, Colleges with a high quality language programme will win out over ones who just direct pupils to work online. This will include attracting students with an international outlook to vocational courses and apprenticeships.

The ethos will infuse the whole College, with international links and cross curricular opportunities for students to follow their interests in different languages and culture.

Private language schools will spring up for ambitious students to meet their aspirations.

And universities will find that almost all students want to take a language course alongside their degree, because they haven't had a two year hiatus with no language learning possibilities.

The detail of what online resources and what incentives/requirements would make this work, will have to be thought through. But these two things - end to unfair grading and end to being a dead end at 16 - are key to making languages the norm for the mainstream.

You may not like the open access online study option. I didn't set out to propose that. It's not an idea I particularly like. But it seemed the obvious thing to plug the gap. There's another implication too. Because online language learning is here anyway. So our GCSE lessons have to clearly offer something that online apps don't. Communication, interaction, culture... all the things that an app might be bad at, these are the things that we have to be brilliant at...

The sharp eyed will have noticed that despite my promises not to meddle in sectors I don't work in, this post does rely on support from universities. If it is true as this article claims, that universities need researchers with language skills and an international outlook, then they should say so to schools. I know universities are in competition for bums on seats. And that they worry that requiring a language would bar disadvantaged students. But in fact the result is the opposite. Students are not having the opportunities because schools don't think universities require them.

But it could be put in place that universities clearly state that, "Whatever you study at our university, there will be international aspects. You will be taking some language learning alongside your main subjects. When you apply, we will expect you to show what language learning you have done to equip yourself for this."

Some students may have a GCSE at 16 in a language or languages. They would be required to show what they have done to continue with those languages or what they have done to pursue other languages. Some (but fewer than under the current kick in the teeth grading regime) may not have taken a GCSE at 16. They would be required to show what they have done to prepare to step into an international environment with a global perspective. Whether that be by taking a GCSE at college, or by some level of self study.

Students in Spain definitely think like this. And there are areas in this country where schools have the same attitude. We need to show that we genuinely think this is important for all our students.

I asked chatgpt to solve the 16-18 problem. I don't know how long this link is valid for. So read it NOW! https://chatgpt.com/share/6820bc63-7a00-8010-a7f8-3f0c946a4ed5

The problem with THIS A Level

 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...

Gap Fill with a twist

 Gap fills are a favourite activity in language learning lessons. Either with words to select from a word bank, or with free choice of the word to fit into the gap.

I found this one on the site kwiziq: 

Gap fill activity from the site kwiziq

It had me scratching my head for a couple of them, and for others I could think of 2 or 3 words that I could use. And I think I found one mistake. I think it's a great example to look at what we might want from a gap fill. For a start, some of the answers are the typical vocabulary we might want pupils to be recalling for this topic: beach, sand castle, bucket and spade... Then there's the markers for gender and number that we might want pupils to respond to correctly: le/la/les/son/sa/des. But this is more than a vocabulary test or a grammar exercise. The learner has to read the text and figure out the missing words. They have to understand the meaning of the sentence and parse the grammar of the sentence in order to identify the part of speech of the missing word.

And they have to do all of this, with a text missing key words!

In my experience, learners find this almost impossible. It's demanding enough to expect them to read a text in a foreign language even with all of its key words. The idea of removing some words from a text in French before asking the pupils to read it is starting to sound extraordinary. Why would anyone do that to a learner?

You could say that it mimics the situation of coping with an unknown word. Two things on that. One is that as you can see from this example, it's the known words that have been removed. The other is that if that's your intention, then by all means give them the sentence WITH the unknown word, and ask them to suggest possible meanings. Eg Lola a fait un château de sable et remplit les douves d'eau. What could be the possible meanings of the underlined word?

So I'm not a fan of gap fills. But I have been using some in a slightly different format:

These are somehow much more do-able than a traditional gap fill. In fact it's an activity that I may leave for a cover lesson, where an activity that pupils can do independently and successfully without getting stuck or needing other resources is the raison d'être of the worksheet. You can ask the pupils to write the passage out in French. And then to translate it into English.

Although words are partially or (sometimes) completely obscured, there isn't that terrible experience of staring at the gap and not knowing what word could go there. It puts the focus properly back on reading the whole sentence, rather that on the aching gap left by a word. Even though many more words are partially missing than in a gap fill, pupils can read the sentence and work out what the obscured words are. When they write it out, they are recalling the spellings, apostrophes and accents. And if you wish, you can choose to obscure endings or articles to test specific items of pupils' knowledge. You can avoid obscuring unfamiliar words such as citron here, for pupils to work out from context. Where words are repeated, you can choose how much in each case is covered up, so pupils can piece together the spelling, as in guimauves. In the case of crêpes, you can see how many pupils make the effort to go back to the first instance and insert the circumflex accent when they see the full word revealed later in the text.

So it's primarily a spelling exercise. But I think it is still doing the job of a gap fill in terms of forcing pupils to read for meaning and grammatical sense in order to correctly predict the exact missing letters. It's adding to the level of thinking required, slowing the reading down and making the reader more active. The challenge is generally accepted and pupils are motivated, doing a task that requires them to pay attention to detail and think carefully.

And here's the same activity taken to another level of purposefulness:

These are for Year 9. You can see as with the Year 7 Food example, I want the pupils to spell familiar words correctly, including accents and endings. I want them to be able to identify familiar words in sentences with some items of new vocabulary. And I want them to have to read the whole sentence carefully to make sense of what the obscured words must be.

But there's more. These 3 paragraphs are very different. And I want the pupils to think about the difference.

One has only one infinitive: jouer. Of course it's great to be able to write a whole paragraph just on jouer. And then maybe you could do another paragraph on nager. I make sure my Year 11s are able to do exactly that. Because it means you are using the full repertoire of I can, I like, I want to, I have to... And your English teachers will tell you it's good to have a paragraph based around just one idea. But of course, when the pupils do the coffee splat activity, writing the paragraph out in French and then translating it into English, they realise, and can tell me, that it's too repetitive.

One of the other paragraphs has many infinitives. But they don't have any real link. So although it's less repetitive, it's just a list of different activities, linked with and... and... The final paragraph has several infinitives, but carefully chosen to link (or to deliberately contrast).

To get at this just by reading, without experiencing writing it out, wasn't as effective. It was when I took the three model texts and splatted them, that all pupils really engaged with how it felt to write them. And it really got the message across.

So now they can really serve as model texts. Pupils can pick one infinitive and see if they can write a paragraph just about nager, for example. They can pick a bunch of random infinitives and see if they are happy with the resulting paragraph. Or they can choose carefully some activities that go together well - buying a bucket and spade to make a sandcastle and fill up the douves with water, for example!

Small footnote in case you want to make your own coffee splat texts. Maybe you can copy the small splat below. Or find your own image and then use Remove Background in Word or Powerpoint. (Click on the picture in Word or Powerpoint and Picture Tools tab will appear on the ribbon at the top.) Or there's one on my tes shop.

And if you are setting this for homework, use snipping tool to copy the whole text and splats as one image, otherwise pupils can just remove the splats and copy the text!

Splat:

Cream or ice cream or custard?

 We all know that the human brain can learn languages. We learn our first language. And if we live immersed in another language we can learn that language. There are arguments about whether learning a language as a child and learning a language as an adult are different. People even talk about a childhood age limit for acquiring fluency in a language. Even though most people who studied languages at university owe their fluency to a year abroad in their early 20s. There's the arguments around whether classroom learning gives enough time and real immersion for an acquisition model to work. And arguments around whether adults have an advantage in deliberately learning (rather than acquiring) a language. Unlike an infant*, adults and adolescents already have knowledge of the world, knowledge of a first language, perhaps knowledge of a second language, ability to read, self awareness as a learner...

*I love that this word literally means unable to talk

As there are no clear cut answers to any of these issues, the pragmatic view is that there are aspects of language learning which resemble acquisition and there are aspects which are more conscious learning.

On the acquisition side, we learn through comprehensible input, real communication, the music and rhythm and earworms of language. Meaning is paramount, error is natural, and patterns emerge as our grasp of the language expands.

On the learning side, we deliberately learn vocabulary and grammar and then practise using it in ways which increasingly approximate to real communication and expression.

Pragmatic teaching uses both approaches in a balance between input/communication and instruction/practice.

We are aware of the potential and the pitfalls of both. There are plenty of things that we explicitly teach, without it guaranteeing success. Let's say the perfect tense in French. We know you can explain it and practise it as much as you like. But it doesn't mean it will be learned*. Likewise you can expose pupils to it as much as you like. But how much exposure to j'ai mangé would it take for a pupil to acquire the rule that they could say j'ai joué or ils ont joué without thinking about it? So we are prepared for a process of plenty of both approaches, lasting as long as it takes, trying to incentivise learning (through testing) and acquisition (through invitation to self expression) until something starts to stick.

*I am teaching my dog to whistle. Really? What tunes can he do? I said I am teaching him. I didn't say he was learning.

What if there were an area we could put our finger on that we don't explicitly teach, but which learners successfully learn?

I think I have found one.

Stress patterns in spoken Spanish. I nearly wrote "stress rules". But I put patterns. Because I don't teach the rules. But pupils do learn the patterns.

In fact it is generally successful and pain free. The stress patterns on Spanish words is an important aspect, and pupils master it without me teaching it. At A Level, I do teach the rules, but I teach the rules so they can understand when and why a written accent is required. Usually on words they are already spelling correctly with/without accents, but would like to know why. And when I explain, it's drawing on knowledge of language they already have, in order to arrive at the rule. Rather than giving a rule in order to say or write correctly.

I was never taught the rules. I worked them out for myself from my fluent knowledge of the language. In fact there are rules around diphthongs that I still don't know properly. For example when students ask about continúa and continua or the accent on leído, I just tell them there are rules around when a diphthong counts as one syllable or two and leave it at that.

It's an interesting one for the new GCSE. Because the premise of the new GCSE is that we don't test pupils on things that they are not taught. So in the reading aloud, are we just testing the sound-spelling correspondences in the syllabus? Or are pupils also marked for correct word stress?

Well, imagine my surprise when I checked. It IS to be taught.

The Subject Content for the new GCSE - DfE

For a start, I won't be teaching the rule like this. It seems backwards. It starts by saying to stress the last syllable of a Spanish word (unless it ends in a vowel or an s or an n).

When I eventually talk to A Level students about the rules, I would do it the other way round. We start with words ending in vowels. And they instantly realise they have been stressing the penultimate syllable: casa, escucha. Then it makes sense that if you change the ending, it shouldn't alter the stress: casas, casan, escuchas, escuchan. Then you look at words ending in other consonants: hotel, profesor, escuchar. And it all makes sense.

But I still won't be teaching it for GCSE. Even with the read aloud and the dictation.

How important is this example? How many other things are there like this that are best not explained? It seems significant that there are aspects of the language that are easily and unconsciously acquired. With the explicit rule too unwieldy to be of any practical use, even if it helps make sense after the pattern has been acquired.

I know that I have more idea of German articles from memorised snippets such as Alle Kinder schauen auf das brennende Haus* than from the table of cases and genders.

*From an inappropriate 1980s joke trend

Can it be that all learning is actually acquisition? You can't will learning to happen. We don't memorise or understand things by just willing it to be learned. It has to be through an extended process of input, making sense, making connections, tentative use and articulation with other knowledge.

I don't think it means we should swing away from deliberate instruction based on selected and sequenced items of phonics, grammar and vocabulary to be learned. But I do think it means we should guard against swinging away from learning centred around meaning, comprehension and exposure to authentic language. We need to keep our pragmatic approach, designed to keep a balance and a richness to our teaching and pupils' learning. I have many great memories of my friend Liz the bus driver. But the first that comes to mind is always her answer to the question, "With cream or ice cream or custard?" Liz always asked for, and got, all three. So we can definitely have learning and acquisition. And plenty of both.

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?

Have we let testing Listening destroy teaching Listening?

 I once found the perfect YouTube video for doing actual Listening with my Year 10 class. It was someone complaining about how noisy slurpers spoil the experience of going to the cinema. It was in angry full speed Spanish, with deliberate slurping and crisp crunching thrown in. I described how my Year 10s coped in a previous post:

They understood it was a rant. They understood that she used to like to go to the cinema but that it's ruined by noise from the audience. That it can be the best film or the worst film, and she would love to watch it on the big screen and with great sound, but now she would prefer to watch it at home. They told me enthusiastically what they understood.

They did not understand every word. I did not understand every word. You couldn't in fact hear every word over the crunching and slurping. But that only added to the message rather than detracting.

This is going to be a post about GCSE. But meanwhile three more stories.

I wrote a post about listening to the Extra TV series with Year 7 learners. I stop every couple of minutes and we do a quiz. My questions guide them through the programme and make sure they are keeping up:

She dumps her boyfriend by email. What was his name?

She says "Yes, I got the present." What was the present?

They are watching the action, the interaction, the body language, the tone of voice. And picking up on language, but not language in isolation. The next time when we come to carry on watching, I can start the episode again and ask about language:

What does "C'est fini" mean?

What does "Oui, j'ai bien reçu le coussin" mean?

And they can tell me word for word. The language falls into place because you understand what is going on.

It makes me think of when I was learning a musical instrument. The best bit of the lesson was at the beginning when the teacher was doing some "warming up". (Otherwise known as showing off.) Getting to hear someone playing fluently and brilliantly, making music. How about when it came to French lessons? Our teachers were English and had studied French from books at university in the 1940s. Hardly anyone in my class had been abroad. We didn't do school trips abroad. No-one in my class spoke another language or knew anyone who spoke another language apart from English. When we learned, Monsieur Marsaud est grand mais Claudette est petite, was that the extent of what French was and could be? When did we ever get to hear it in full flow and be amazed at the real thing? We owe it to our pupils to show them what a language is!

And the third story. I was in the Czech Republic on tour with the orchestra of a school where I was teaching. I spoke not one word of Czech and in Karlovy Vary no-one spoke a word of English. We had a tour guide/translator. I witnessed a conversation in the Reception of the hotel which I followed very carefully through a lot of back and forward, as the two speakers went through various stages of consternation, disinterest, insistence, reassurance: The hotel had our booking but they had the teachers in rooms of two. This meant that I would be sharing with a female teacher. They couldn't do anything at the moment but OK, I could sleep in the duty manager's office for one night until it got sorted. I followed the back and forth of the conversation without understanding a word of Czech. But being there in the situation, following looks, tone of voice, actions and gesture, I knew exactly what was going on. Is this related to language-learning? Well, firstly I imagine that 5 years of living abroad must have given me confidence in my ability to tune in to what was going on. And secondly, language-learning emerges from exactly this kind of witnessing interaction. I didn't have time to pick up much Czech from one conversation, but much of my learning of Spanish and French would have happened in exactly this way.

So what we've been looking at is the question of whether we arrive at understanding of meaning by parsing known words and language and working out what the meaning is. And the answer clearly is that we also do the opposite. We grasp overall meaning, and so can get some grasp on the words.

The problem is that our language teaching in schools now, is so governed by testing, that this approach to language as the actual language itself and the ability to cope with it, has almost completely gone. We test pupils' knowledge of known words and known grammar. We teach a bottom up approach of putting together known words and known grammar, to test how well pupils can recall and put together specific known words and known grammar. And we want the texts they see and hear to model how to put together specific known words and known grammar.

The idea that Listening is in some way different to Reading or Speaking or Writing, and is a skill to be developed, is being denied. The word "modality" is deliberately being used to replace the word "skill". The testing of Listening is declared as a process of transcribing known sound-spelling links into known words and known inflections, which are parsed so that you arrive at meaning. The idea that the skill of Listening is to make sense of something when you don't necessarily understand all the individual words, is now lost. Even though when I watch the news in French, I'm not sure I do understand all the words. Or when I watch a film in Spanish, if I catch myself subtitling every word (whether that be in Spanish or into English) I give myself a stern talking to and stop doing it, in order to just be in the film. (This is also the mistake that people make when reading books in a language they are learning.)

You can really see this in GCSE listening. All the things that make it an actual listening are removed. It's read aloud, deliberately keeping tone of voice clues to a minimum. It's slow pace, with no natural interaction or relationship between the speakers. The content is often slightly off-beat, to stop pupils from using assumptions or deductions. The lengths that they have to go to, in order to strip out all the listening cues and use of actual listening skills, is what convinces me that these skills must actually be real. If something was imaginary or illusory, you wouldn't have to remove it.

Then there's the markschemes. Remember my Year 10s who understood a full speed angry Spanish YouTube video in great detail? That it was a rant, that it could be the best film in the world, that you wanted to see it on a big screen with great sound, but that in the end you prefer to watch it at home because of the slurping and crunching? Well that is not what is wanted. Because the markschemes are constructed to make sure that's NOT what gets the marks.

We have so many examples of how what appear to be comprehension questions are not. Because a pupil who gives a correct answer to the question gets 0 marks. What you have to do is show your knowledge of known words and known grammar.

There's these, from memory. Some from Listening, some from Reading:

What impressed her about one school?

She was impressed that one school grew fruit and veg on the school field. Nul points.

She was impressed that they grew fruit and veg on PART OF the school field. Correct answer.

As if that's the part that impressed her. The part that impressed her was that it was PART of the school field. See what I mean? That's not a comprehension question. That is a directly transcribe and translate word by word what she said otherwise I am not giving you the mark question.

He doesn't get on with his teachers. Nul points.

He gets on badly with his teachers. Correct answer.

Comprehension gets you no marks. Direct translation of all the words is what they think listening is.

It's good for your skin. Nul points.

It looks after your skin. Who even says that? AQA. That's who.

She gives talks to pupils about energy saving measures. Nul points.

She gives talks to pupils about HOW to save energy. Correct answer. According to AQA.

This isn't an accident or a quirky markscheme. This is how they see Listening.

I would actually prefer if they got rid of fake Comprehension questions. And just made every question a translation question. And sometimes I feel as if in my lessons every activity is really a translation activity. And I have to make an effort to bring in language that is not directly modelling known words and known grammar, and let them see and hear real French and real Spanish. Or hear me talking to someone in full flow, just like in my musical instrument lessons.

To be generous, we could say it's how they see testing Listening. And it's our fault if we drag that into our lessons and let it deform our teaching. But I'm not being generous when we've been told that Listening isn't a skill anymore. When we're told that Listening has to be made up of known words and known grammar. When we're told that you arrive at meaning by parsing the words in a one way street from decoding to meaning. In my opinion, it's not true, and it's not language-learning. You may not agree with my conclusion, but please at least don't ignore the question!

The New GCSE Photo Card

 This half term we started working on the Photo Card for the new GCSE. The textbook included it right from the first unit, at least in the assessment pages, but we have delayed it because it requires such different language to the rest of the GCSE.

In an earlier post on Describing, I wondered if "Describe" in the new GCSE was going to replace the emphasis on "Narrate" in the old GCSE. I didn't use to teach description as part of the old GCSE. We concentrated on building narration around opinions, reasons, if sentences, conflict of opinion, argument, decisions, what was happening, what happened, disappointment and hopes for next time. Description just wasn't an important aspect of the old GCSE, either for tasks or for the markscheme. As an aside, I will say that although narration is no longer mentioned in the markscheme for the new GCSE, I am still teaching it because pupils will have to talk for 5 minutes on one topic in the Conversation part of the exam.

But the new exam, with its long list of adjectives, its "describe your favourite celebrity/teacher/friend" questions in the Role Play, and the much longer photocard description... seemed to push teaching more towards describing.

So we concentrated in the first term on getting very good at the core of language for developing answers using opinions. And decided to delay working on description and on the photocard until term 2.

What have we discovered?

I was correct in thinking that describing has a lot to unpack. The verb to be is highly irregular in different persons and tenses. There's ser / estar to be dealt with. And adjectival agreement. Plus the verb to have.

The thing is, is this really what's required for the photocard? How comfortable are we with an obsession with looks, focusing on eye colour, hair colour, skin colour? Is that what we want from the photo description in the exam: There are three people in the picture. One is black, one is white and one looks as if they have Asian heritage. One is quite slim but the other two are not. One has dark curly hair, one is blond with blue eyes... Where is this going?

So although we have done physical description, and the pupils enjoyed doing and writing detective puzzle scenarios, when we have come to do photo descriptions, not one pupil has gone for physical description.

So what are the things that we have done?

Firstly a top tip. For AQA, there are 2 photos and the pupil has to talk about both. Even if it's only a quick mention of one of them. But what if they never get round to talking about the second photo? They lose track of time, or they get into a muddle on the first one and give up in a panic, or do so well on the first one they think they've done everything, or just forget to talk about the second one? So here's what we've decided as a class: Mention both photos straight away. There are two photos. In one photo... In the other photo... You always say this before getting stuck into the detail of one or other or the photos. At least that way you know you've mentioned it.

Then we come up against the language needed for the photocard. In the old GCSE, it was very much a stand alone task, using language that was only needed for the one question "What is in the photo?" This was a pain, having to deal with a totally different repertoire of language just for one question. Generally this meant learning There is / there are X people, they are in X location, they are doing X and they are doing X. This language wasn't useful anywhere else in the exam, which was almost entirely based on first person opinions, reasons and examples. With the odd incursion into we. And only the highest achieving candidates venturing much into he/she/they.

One way round it was to do the photocard in the first person. After all, why are we showing this photo and talking about it? I am in the park with my friend. Look: I like to play tennis. It is sunny so we are going to have a picnic. My friend said, "I love cheese." 

We experimented with this first person approach with the old GCSE photocard and it never felt comfortable. Just as pupils don't go for "She is short and a bit fat with long blond hair and blue eyes", neither did they go for talking about the photo in the first person. It felt as if the scenario wasn't one of showing a picture to a friend. It felt like an exam where you were being tested on your ability to give some formulaic sentences about a picture chosen to put you under pressure. Not surprising, given this was indeed exactly the situation.

Another way round it was to use the imperfect. Talk about what was happening in the picture. In Spanish, pupils love the imperfect with its aba/ía endings which work just as well for 3rd person as for 1st. In French it's a bit more tricky, because if you say il jouait, it's difficult not to sound as if you are making a mess of saying "il joué" or something that the examiner won't like at all. And while we are on the topic of French, let's not even start on the lack of a present continuous and how it all goes wrong as soon as a pupil tries to say They are... working. But that's what I meant right at the top of this post when I said that the photocard requires very different language from the rest of the GCSE.

The problem with the old GCSE was that you had to do this different language just for one question where the pupil had to give a shortish formulaic answer.

With the new GCSE, they have to talk a lot more on the photos. Around a minute, which is a long time. I think this counts as another important insight from this half term. Try it yourself. Pick a photo and see how long you can talk about it using the sort of language pupils have at their disposal. What on earth is there to say that can keep you going that long. Especially if you are steering away from physical description.

I actually think this is a good thing. Learning to use 3rd person singular and plural and how to say they are ---ing, and there is... for just one short answer in the whole exam seemed unwieldy. Now it is for a much longer answer and has to be done properly. It is a big feature of the course. And what we need to do is to find ways to use the language learned for the photocard in other areas of the exam.

Time for some examples.

I created some model answers for 2 photos and mixed them in together. Pupils had to separate them out.

Then next lesson, pupils had to talk about the photos using the structures that they remembered. And do a written version. 

You can see by the time they come to do the written version, it's changed from the language I gave them in the first lesson. Including mixing using the present continuous and the imperfect.

Then they had to recycle as many of the structures as possible to the next set of photos we used. Again, you can see that there's some formulaic aspects as to what to include and what language to use, but also the pupils are using their knowledge of the language to create their own descriptions, rather than relying on set structures:

Some things to note:

• You can see the initial In one picture... In the other... tactic.
• I worked a lot on pupils doing this in spoken Spanish and spontaneously. But in the exam, they do have time to write down answers in the preparation time.
• "They seem" is useful. It avoids the ser / estar problem, and also allows you to use personality adjectives. They seem kind.
• They are using a mixture of present tense llevan uniforme, present continuous están comiendo and imperfect cocinaban. Different pupils have their personal favourite.
• Using the present continuous can get you into trouble: están llevando uniforme doesn't sound right.
• I am still not sure this is enough for a minute.
• We will have to keep an eye on the exam board guidance on marking this task. Marks are for the amount of information conveyed clearly (code for accurately even where accuracy marks are not allocated). So may be just "There is" and a list of nouns would be enough.

The secret of this is going to be to keep using the language features we've worked on for the photocard in the language we use for other aspects of the exam. The imperfect is definitely part of our core repertoire. Using 3rd person is something I'm keen to do much more than with the old GCSE. Description is something we can build in to all topics. That leaves the present continuous. Which just seems to be used for this one task. At least with this GCSE it's for a more substantial task than the old GCSE. Introducing a whole tense just for one utterance didn't feel worthwhile. I think we were right to delay introducing this until pupils had a strong core repertoire under their belt. I think you can really see this in how quickly they were able to pick up the new language for describing pictures and run with it. And what I can now do, is make sure describing a photo is part of something we do regularly across topics, so none of this language gets forgotten.

There is an alternative version of this which I don't want to contemplate because it is so awful.

The AQA markscheme for the photocard is entirely based on "clarity" and "amount of information". Clarity sounds a lot like a way of marking for accuracy even though accuracy marks aren't supposed to apply here. And lewizrs.bsky.social has tipped me off on bluesky, that in AQA training, "a lot of information" has been quantified as saying 15 things. So for full marks, our pupils need to say 7-8 things about each photo, keeping absolute "clarity".

As we get nearer to the exam, this could mean simplistic formulaic responses are what works best.

There is a man. He is big. He is fat. He is blond. There is a woman. She is big. She is fat. She is not blond.

Repeat for the other picture. Full marks every time.

This reminds me of going back to the disastrous Controlled Assessment GCSE where AQA's interpretation of "amount of information", along with "variety of language" meant that rote learned answers scored higher than teaching pupils to be able to speak. 

You can see in this post, the approach I am trying to take. Where pupils develop a coherent body of language that they can deploy across topics and across the exam tasks. Avoiding silos and rote learned single use language. What if AQA's interpretation of the markscheme means this approach actually penalises pupils in the exam?

Here we go again?