Congratulations to all departments for your GCSE results!
Whatever your students got, remember, not YOU, it is important to analyse the data, to celebrate success, to look at trends, to identify strongholds and weak links. At Princess Risborough we are extremely happy, as students performed above national overage for MFL and they obtained the results we had predicted, which is extremely important, to avoid nasty surprises on results day!!
It is important and fascinating to look at the data provided by the exam boards, for example, using Centre Services in AQA. You can analyse results by skill, but also by question: which part of the writing or oral exams did your students struggle with? Which particular questions in the Listening and Reading papers were challenging or very accessible? Why?
Although next year our students will sit a different exam format, still this information is extremely valuable to practise skills and make realistic and spot on predictions in your next cohort of Y11 students.
If your department is lucky enough to have different groups/classes per language, can you spot a trend in performance among classes, which may lead to teaching and learning issues and approach? This can then be addressed in CPD for your department. Can you notice trends in relation to gender and tiers?
This information will be key for your school departmental results analysis and will help you analyse trends and most importantly, identify an action plan to boost grades and overall performance in all your students.
Once trends have been identified, think about which skills students performed the best at and why and which skills were the weakest.
How are you going to tackle the weakest areas in your department?
Here are some strategies that have worked for me over the years and will help your new Y11 students to prepare for the next exams in June 2026.
Tackling Listening an Reading skills
In our case, these two skills seem to be the weakest links year after year, mainly because of the mismatch between the language we teach for productive skills and the language students encounter, in very different contexts, in the Reading and Listening papers. This issue is meant to be corrected with the new GCSE for MFL and the introduction of specific vocabulary lists to be revisited within a variety of topics.
Nevertheless, these papers are all about exam skill and getting used to the type of language that students will encounter in the exam.
To overcome this issue, dedicate, as a department, one lesson every two weeks to independent listening and reading practice.
To start with, you will need to do this as a whole class. Get past papers questions, for example from the questions that students found the most challenging from your this year analysis. Even though we are dealing with a new GCSE syllabus, model with your class how to tackle the questions, by using the strategy “I do, we do, you do” and progressively expecting students to work independently in class.
For this, have a set of headphones in your department, or ask students to bring theirs together with their own device so they can carry out listening tasks, independently: going forward, backwards or even manipulating the speed of the audio.
Give students the transcript of any task, so that they can read and listen to the audio material. Create your own listening tasks with fill in the gaps, fill in the gaps without gaps, so you make students focus on key words which they normally find difficult to identify.
Give students the mark scheme so that they can mark their work and reflect on their performance.
However, the most important thing is for students to make a note of new vocabulary encountered in these questions, add it to their Quizlet lists, or their vocab books. Then ask them to revise the list every so often. It is important to make students aware of how different words appear in different contexts!!!
Tackling writing and oral skills
Dedicate another lesson every two weeks to timed writing tasks to be carried out in exam conditions. These sessions are vital in Y11 and will allow you to start revising Y10 topics as from September.
I give students a writing question, one for Foundation and one for Higher, based on past topics and students prepare it as h/w, in our case, making sure they use our 5 Magic Powers in their answers.
This forces students to revise past topics, key vocab, structures and grammar! Then, in exam conditions and for 30 minutes, they carry out the task in class.
It is important to mark these tasks as soon as possible using the official mark scheme for your board and to give students feedback while sharing the mark scheme with them.
This will allow students to become familiar with mark schemes and will make them aware of what is needed to achieve a particular grade.
At this point, it is vital that students see the link between the writing and the oral exams!!!
When they revise for these writing tasks, strategically set by you, they are also revising and learning potential questions for the oral paper!
This takes me to how to boost oral performance:
After spending 30 minutes carrying out the timed writing task, students can use the other 30 minutes to revise oral skills on the same topic as their writing task.
The way I do this successfully, is by using MWBs.
I show two photocards in the screen and students write in their MWBs what they would say about the photos. Remember that in the new GCSE, students will have 15 minutes preparation time when they can take notes which they can take to the exam room. This technique prepares them to make good use of that time, quickly! As I only give them 3 minutes to write possible answers before shouting “Boards up”.
After that, I ask questions in Spanish on the theme in relation to the photos and students write down what they would say. This really helps students to gain confidence before moving to individual oral practice in pairs!
Using Mizou has been a revelation for this technique, as students can practise individually their oral skills! I have crated courses in Mizou for all topics covered so far in Y10 with potential/model questions that students may encounter in the actual oral exam. These are always available in Google Classroom and will form a key element of revision before their oral exam.
As the year progresses, you may practise the Roleplay and Reading Aloud components of the oral exam, as a whole class or in pairs carrying out different games.
The important thing is to link the writing question that students prepare for h/w, with the oral practice tasks that you plan for these sessions.
This means that one lesson every week, is used for students to practise specific skills: either reading with listening or writing with speaking.
To carry out these tasks you may use external platforms such as Languagenut too but just by using past questions using a platform such as Exampro or ExamWizard is just enough.
In fact we believe so much in the power of consciously teaching listening, that at KS3, students have a lesson every two weeks dedicated to independent listening practice.
Finally, think of the power of departmental CPD: what about requesting a recall of papers at different grades to analyse them as a team?
Does your team need training on the use of AI to boost teaching and learning in your department?
For example by learning how to use Mizou, Brisk, Diffit, ChatGPT or Gemini for Google. There’s a very interesting tool in Gemini to create photo stories based on given vocabulary which will allow students to practise reading for pleasure using GCSE vocabulary away from the exam context!
Remember, that we are teachers of languages to communicate and although we teach GCSE courses, the maximum goal should always be reaching Proficiency at the language to Communicate.
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