Half term is nearly here for everyone and in kind of typical "last minute", "wait-for-your-busiest time" moment, last week, AQA announced their new guidance to mark the unprepared conversation after the photocards description. The time to announce this guidance, was not the best: by the end of term 1 when teachers feel tired and may be overwhelmed.
This vital information should have been announced in September or, even better, last year, when all teachers embarked on teaching the new GCSE syllabus.
The new guidance has created some upheave in the MFL teaching community and I can see why.
The guidance clearly stipulates the amount of questions that teachers need to ask on the day of the exam and the amount of extension that is required to award different marks. I can see how AQA wants to be crystal clear about what is required to achieve specific marks and, most importantly, wants to avoid students pre learning answers to questions or rote learning.
I get it. However, in doing so at this stage, AQA may have created both, stress for the teacher conducting the exam, and for students, specially lower attainers and SEN pupils, who had chosen languages as one of their options, even though, “everyone knows how hard they are”.
Why is that?
Let's focus on the MFL teacher. Up to recently, when conducting the oral exam, teachers had to make sure stuck to the stipulated time, asked appropriate questions for a given theme and tried to get the best out of students with skilful question technique.
Now, the MFL teacher will have to deal with another layer: to count/tick how many questions are actually asked. Basically, minimum of 17 questions for Higher and 12 for Foundation. Although it does not seem much, is another element added to a highly stressful situation: the conduct of the exam. However, it can be easily overcome with a good preparation sheet on the day.
I have created the following sheet to print for each candidate to help us conduct and mark mock exams, and which can be used/ adapted for the real exam to tick on boxes as we ask students questions for the unprepared conversation after describing the photocards. Click here.
From the point of view of the student, this new piece of information is not about ticking boxes, but a much more pronounced shift. Based on the guidance, which had been published so far and my own teaching experience, I had been reassuring students not to worry about the amount of questions they will be asked on the day, as it is not about hitting a magic number of questions, but, talking, clearly and confidently for a specific period of time. My focus has always been on increasing confidence in students and minimise panic factors while creating positive attitudes to learning: a "I can do" attitude. Having a specific number of questions to answer on the day, minimum of 12 for Foundation students, may be a big worry factor for lower attainer students.
Students, including those with SEN, can, indeed, do very well in the oral exam. However, having to answer 12 questions, in the stipulated time, may prove a little bit too much for some, because SEN and lower attainer students tend to need more time to think due to processing difficulties. This new variable may lead to anxiety and underperforming.
Under this new guidance, I could ask students 6 questions, not 12, where answers may be well extended, as described by AQA, and students may use a good variety of vocabulary, however, automatically, students won’t qualify for the top marks in AO1, as only 6 questions were asked.
I was always confident I could get the most out of my students, but specially foundation tier, by asking skilful questions, getting them at ease and promote extended answers, by asking follow up questions such as: why? And what is your opinion on that? If extended answers are not naturally delivered by the pupils. Up to now, it was the whole performance in the general conversation that counted, independently on the number of questions asked.
There was a choice: some students would benefit from fewer questions, because they needed extra time to process information, and others from more questions to get a particular grade. That choice is not available anymore, as all students will need to ask a set number of questions to reach a certain mark.
This may have deep consequences on our less able students who need more time to process/produce information. This may, paradoxically lead to more rote learning as students will feel they need to be fast giving their answers and what’s the best way to do so? By learning model answers!! Although I understand the rationale behind AQA's announcement, moving away from-time only based conversations to a specific number of questions + time conversations may not be the best way to avoid rote learning and make GCSE languages accessible to all.
The extended element. The rule of three
Using more than one tense
Giving opinions
Giving reasons
Talking about someone else or using reported speech
Using high impact expressions
Every single topic we teach, aims to cover the 5 Magic Powers in the productive skills. The rule of 3 is tightly linked to this: every question must have reference to at least 3 Magic Powers:
¿te gusta el fútbol? Me gusta el fútbol (opinión) porque me ayuda a relajarme (reason + high impact expression) . Antes solía jugar al fútbol también (two tenses used + high impact expression used with solía). That is a well extended answer by AQA definition for Higher tier and I know that many of my Foundation students can produce something like this too.
Students have many ways to use the Magic Powers, which are transferable to any topic/theme avoiding having to learn answers to questions by heart. We use this 5 Magic Powers Poster for students to stick in their bedrooms and are constantly referred to in lessons, especially, to coach students on using clever ways to avoid conjugating a verb if they forget the endings: using suelo/ solía/ me gustaría/ decidí/ empecé a/ voy a/ + infinitive.
Follow up Questions Structures
We created an oral booklet, a copy of which can be found here. In the booklet there are potential questions per topic BUT in lessons, we don’t only practise these questions, we also extensively practise the FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS STRUCTURES. This is a nice FIPPLITY activity to go with it.
The Follow up Questions Structures are meant to move students from learning answers by heart. They are a set of questions that can be applied to any topic and when used in lessons, especially with MWBs to start with, together with the 5 Magic Powers, not only they help students to achieve fluency in oral and written skills but they are also an excellent tool for retrieval practice. The structures are:
¿Te gusta el fútbol/ tu colegio/tu ciudad/tu amigo etc… as many possibilities as you want for any topic it can include a noun or an Infinitive ver vídeos de TikTok
¿Antes te gustaba…..?
¿Te gustaría….?
¿Qué opinas de…?
¿Cómo es….?
¿Cómo era..?
¿Cómo sería…?
¿Qué haces….?
¿Qué hiciste…..el año pasado/ayer?
¿Qué te gustaría hacer para….?
¿Cuál es tu……favorito/a?
¿Quién es tu…..favorito/a?
Once you combine the follow up questions structures along all 9 topics, you can ask 100s of questions and impossible to learn by heart each combination, but using the structures is an incredibly powerful tool, if practised enough alongside the 5 Magic Powers, to answer any unprepared question and extend answers, especially for lower strainer students, which contributes to experiencing success.
By using these tools, I am confident that our students will be able to cope, in theory, with 12-17 unprepared oral questions, hence this post! However, I also believe that moving from time to number of questions based conversations may, paradoxically lead to rote learning if this aspect of the exam is not tackled efficiently and students feel under pressure to answer a specific number of questions.