GCSE: Getting our students ready for the Speaking and Writing Exams.

I have not written anything here for quite a while, simply because I have not had the time after starting a new job, mentoring trainee teachers and changing the SoWs of the whole department from KS3! 

However, as I have started planning my strategy to support my students in the final weeks/lessons before their GCSE exams, I thought I would share some strategies that are working well for us. Just to remind you my context, a teach in a non-grammar school in Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire. 

I have inherited a lovely Y11 mixed ability group, where half of the students will sit the Foundation Paper and half the Higher Paper.  My students need lots of support. So these are some of the strategies I have adopted with them since September and am focussing on up to the oral/written exams.  

We use AQA but the approach described below can be applied to any board.  In our case, we will finish teaching the syllabus next week, just before the Easter break. This means that we will have three weeks, 3 lessons a week, to focus A LOT on the Speaking exam and indirectly the Writing paper, after the holidays. 

Time-Writing Tasks

These have taken place since September. The idea is that I choose a past paper writing question, on topics covered in Y10. I always choose Q2 from the Higher AQA Paper, requiring 150 words, even for my Foundation students. I have high expectations and this allows me to motivate some of the students to believe in themselves, get better and maybe trying the Higher Paper after all! 

If too challenging, students can write 90/100 words.  In a lesson, I give them the exam question, we translate the bullet points. We discuss ideas on content snd model together an answer based on their knowledge. Then for h/w, using our model answer and their notes, they prepare the writing task and next lesson, in exam conditions and during 30 minutes, they write down their task. 

We do this every two weeks and it is invaluable to make sure writing skills get practised periodically. 

The 5 Magical Powers

To be successful in the previous task and to do really well in the oral exam, especially the General Conversation, students need to fulfil certain criteria.  This is what I call the 5 Magical Powers:

• Use of different tenses (at least three)
• Giving opinions 
• Giving Reasons
• Talking about someone else, in its simple form, the use of reported speech mi madre/amigo dice/dijo que..
• High Impact expressions

We embed these Magical Powers in our SoW as from Y7! In fact our mark scheme at KS3 is based on how well these powers have been achieved in a written/oral task. Click here for a Blogpost on this. Looking at the new GCSE, still these criteria are present so something that is not going away!  

To help students to use the Magical Powers, we created the following document, with examples of the Powers to practise as from Y10. This document has been printed in A3, laminated and displayed in the students' desk.  Click here for a copy.  Students also have their own laminated copy for their bedrooms! 

I have talked extensively about the Powers before, but one of the elements I developed recently is the use of LINKS or NUGGETS.  

What are the NUGGETS?

My Y11 students were really struggling with verb endings so I thought of using LINKS or NUGGETS, basically expressions acting as shortcuts,  which can be used for different tenses, without having to conjugate a verb.  I still expect most of my students to use verb endings but, if they struggle, in a moment of panic, the nuggets work wonders. Similarly, those students who can conjugate well and easily can alternate traditional conjugation with the NUGGETS, as these are also examples of High Impact expressions (a Magical Power), widening their use of vocabulary!

How do they work? If students do not remember the endings for the present tense, especially for irregular verbs, they may use Suelo/Suele/ Me gusta/ Podemos/Se puede. In the Preterite, Decidí/empecé a, in the Imperfect, Solía, in the future Voy a and in the Conditional Me gustaría. The NUGGETS or LINKS are very popular because once you use them, you just need to use the Infinitive after them!!

They also help weaker students to understand that an infinitive can never be used without the support of a NUGGET or LINK.  When we practise sentences, for example, we always do it using a verb ending but also a LINK/NUGGET if it is possible.  This has helped my students a LOT to avoid grammatical mistakes regarding verb endings. 

The nuggets or links work so well that these are introduced as from KS3, so they become a second nature for students when they reach KS4.

Embedding the General Conversation in all lessons

This is the core! We have a bank of questions, many taken from the Photocards, which students have been working on since the beginning of the year. Ideally, should start doing this in Y10: every time a topic is covered, students write model answers to some model questions for the given topic and practise them in lessons with lots of games throughout the two year course! 

I make it clear they must not learn them by heart but it is good practice to have an idea of what can be said for each topic, transfer the answers to flashcards and do active learning/ testing as from Y10. We make sure these general conversation questions are embedded in our Scheme Work and all our lessons aim to reach fluency/communication having these as our final goal!

I like this approach as we don’t only tackle the oral aspect, but also the writing tasks, basically productive skills. 

My current cohort of students need lots of support to help them practise the General Conversation, so we practise the questions with MWBs.

I use the following Flippity Ramdomiser Task where a question for each theme appears. Click here for the example. Students then, answer in their MWBs the question referring to their Nominated Theme, to start with, to the best of their ability.  At a second stage I will ask them to choose a question from a non-nominated theme. 

To promote spontaneity, when practising these questions, you can ask students to answer the question using a specific structure. Check this other Flippity activity which we carry out once students are more confident with their answers

Preparing a Revision Schedule

It does not matter where I have taught, students find revising for their language GCSE very tricky!  So, years ago, I started preparing a revision schedule using Padlet. In fact, I have polished this practice over the years and now I create a revision schedule for their Mocks, another one for the Oral practice, to be carried out as from Easter, and once the oral is out of the way, I will prepare another one for the Reading, Listening and Writing exams.  This is our oral revision Padlet.  Our students and their parents were really grateful for this as I showed the schedule to them last week during Parents' Evening!

Practising the Role-Play

Students can find this section of the exam very challenging as the prompts found in those Roleplays can be particularly odd. 

What works here is practice, practice, practice, so students can get as close to the 15 points as possible by being accurate and being concise! This is hard to understand as we always encourage them to extend answers! Well for the Roleplay, No! 

I always make a selection of past Roleplays and to start with (mid Y10 and beginning of Y11) I spend time going over the bullet points, analysing them and explaining what is “a detail”, which can be any piece of information! 

Example: ¿Qué hiciste el día de la excursión? 2 detalles: fui a un museo (detail 1) but instead of saying another activity, which requires conjugating a verb, hence risking making a mistake, students can just say por la tarde/con mi clase/ por la mañana/ con mi profesor (detail 2). It will score the same as saying: y vi muchos cuadros! 

I always start practising the Roleplays together as a class, with MWBs, so I can check for understanding and spot errors that we can comment on. This can take up to one lesson! 

At a second stage, after lots of modelling, students can move to practise the Roleplays in pairs. For this we have an oral booklet, click here, with Roleplays, Photocards (from specimen and past papers materials) and examples of general conversation questions. On the booklet, I include the Teacher’s sections, so students can practise easily in pairs or on their own, testing themselves! 

I also spend time practising how to ask questions. This is key! What’s the easiest way to ask a question in French, German, Spanish that would fit nearly any topic/situation? For me is, what do you think of? In both ways: the polite and familiar forms. Also, do you like…? Finally, depending on the Roleplay,  the question is there? is very useful! 

In my experience with these three questions students can answer the Roleplay well! What about having some starter, retrieval practice quick fire task  focussed on asking questions? This should be second nature! As the exam approaches, have a roleplay as a starter activity, to be carried out using MWBs

Practising the Photo Card 

I use a similar approach for this component to that used with the Roleplay but emphasising the idea that, in this section, they need to extend answers by giving reasons and providing examples using a different tense. 

We do this via MWBs with the whole class. We focus a lot on the first question: what is there in the photo? And use the PALM acronym (describing people, action, location, mood). Then, to stretch students we talk about imagining a little story using the structure: Creo que acaban de + infinitive (I think they have just….) or Creo que están a punto de + infinitive ( I think they are about to).

As with the Roleplay, having our oral booklet with all the Photocards and the teacher’s input is key! Once we do lots of modelling together with MWBs, students can then practise in pairs or individually with these. 

Tip: have a look at the questions used for the photocard by your exam board and include these questions, or similar ones, as part of your oral General Conversation model questions. These questions keep appearing in a similar format year after year, and by including them in your bank, students will be familiar with the questions even if they are surprise ones! 

Good luck to all Y11s!

SOS: maximising skills for the GCSE exam!

Just before our Xmas break and before I got Covid from one of my lovely daughters, we conducted our Oral Mock exams for MFL. After Xmas we will carry out the other papers: listening, reading and writing. It was a strange feeling as last time we did these oral exams was back in 2019! 

In this post, I want to concentrate on a straight-forward line of action, which I have followed in the past, when Mock results for some sets/students were at least one grade below Baseline Grades, based on Midyis predictions. In fact, although a SOS guideline, these are strategies we apply to all our Y11 lessons as from September, for a matter of fact! 

Maximising Listening

This is the skill our students tended to underperform in the trial and in the real GCSE exams, the Cinderella skill, like Gianfranco Conti calls it! We started tackling the listening skill at KS3 and I wrote extensively about it in this blog. However, these are the strategies you can adopt at GCSE:

• Dedicate a lesson every two weeks, exclusively to practise listening skills. We have three lessons per week so, one of those 6 lessons, in a fortnight, is exclusively a listening lesson.
• Look up random vocabulary in transcripts and reading past papers, which has appeared in previous years and you know you have not taught and create Quizlet courses. This is one of mine, I have two of these courses. Students learn this vocabulary over several homework tasks. It is amazing to see how some of the most random vocabulary keeps appearing in exams, year after year like: ancianos, sopa de marisco, productos lácteos or me enteré/me decepcionó in AQA!
• Use Exampro activities for AQA, if you have the subscription, on a given theme/topic, so you concentrate on specific vocabulary at a time. If you don't have a subscription to this site, I would recommend you do so! It is affordable and invaluable in preparing students for exam style questions!
• When practising listening, for example via Exampro tasks, do it as a way to learn the language not to test it! For this, we always start by giving students the transcripts first, looking up vocabulary, doing translation activities, filling in the gaps, ideally in previous lessons, or as homework tasks. During our listening lesson, we always listen to the audio while reading the transcript and then complete the task. We may do only 2/3 tasks this way and then we attempt them again without the transcript. On a second listening lesson, we will do them again, interleaved with previous topic tasks, without transcript. 
• Students do add, any unknown vocabulary appearing in the transcript to their own random Quizlet courses: the more vocabulary they know, the better they will be at recognising it in a listening but also reading task!

Keep doing this routine every two weeks and during your normal lessons, emphasise listening tasks via Dictation, Battleships, Rock Climbing, Faulty Echo etc.. as explained in my previous listening blog. Over time, start mixing up topics and themes and set up listening tasks for homework too.  

Maximising Reading 

Students tend to do better in this skill. Learning random vocabulary, as done per listening, and all topic vocabulary is key for success! 

I normally tackle this skill via homework tasks, as I personally like using lesson time for oral/listening activities mainly. Exampro proves invaluable here too!

The key for success for this skill is to treat it, like the listening component, as an opportunity to learn the language!  So, students are encouraged to add any unknown vocabulary to their Random Vocabulary Quizlet, when carrying out the activities. In fact doing this is part of the homework task!

It is important that students don't see this practice as a test/assessment but as a learning opportunity!  Going through the reading tasks/answers with students and stop, to model, as a whole class, the thinking process to tackle those tricky questions, it is vital and super important. 

Don't just ask students to complete a task: reflect on the process of how students came to a particular answer and why it was not another. The exam is full of "catchy" bits, so training students to recognise these and look up for intensifiers, synonyms, negative words etc.. in a text are crucial skills!

Tackling Writing

To get better at this, students need models of what a good writing task looks like and must know the structures/vocabulary/grammar extremely well! This is why using Sentence Builders throughout the GCSE course, not just at KS3, is so important: as these provide a wonderful framework to work with and manipulate the language as needed. 

All our Sentence Builders for GCSE can be found here . Of course, interleaving, retrieval practice and key activities throughout the GCSE course to help students learn these Sentence Builders and transfer them to the Long Term Memory, are essential.  To get ideas on Writing Tasks in general, as from KS3, visit this blogpost. 

• Present students with a model of a writing task. Silvia Bastow has written extensively on how to do this on this Blogpost  as has Sonja Fedrizzi on this other Blogpost. Inspired by these two wonderful educators, this is my model video on how to tackle the 150 word question in AQA:

• Dedicate a lesson every two weeks, to carry out a timed writing task in Y11.  This is the list of Timed writing tasks, which I created based on past papers to train students to carry out the AQA 150 word task.   Every two weeks, students for homework, prepare one of the tasks, taking into account the advice given on the right box:

     During our Writing lesson, they will carry out the task in exam conditions, which will be marked by me, using the AQA Mark Scheme and giving them specific feedback, which they need to tackle on the next task:

This technique, has dramatically improved the writing grades of our students in exams, prior Covid. As a matter of fact, we start using Timed Writings as from October Half-term up to Study leave in May.

• Retrieve, constantly in lessons, those verbs in present/past/future, that students need, together with high impact expressions to get the highest grades in the writing task.
• During lesson time, carry out Translation activities in a game environment! Genially games, as well as Carousel Learning tasks can be great here!

Maximising Speaking

As with the Writing skills, it is important to model how to tackle the different components of the Speaking exam. In the case of AQA, knowing how to do well in the Roleplay and the Photocard is essential, as these two components will provide 50% of the marks for the whole oral and they just require exam technique! To prepare students well for this, we have created this Oral booklet, based on past paper Roleplays and Photocards, as well as, example oral questions. 

• Spend as much lesson time as possible on oral skills. This is the only skill which is very difficult for students to maximise on their own! Similarly, it is the skill that will motivate them the most to study a language at GCSE and beyond!!! If they feel they cannot speak, they will give up on the subject. For that, you can use, some of the activities proposed on this blog, preferably from KS3.
• Using the Oral Booklet, model and practise, first in writing using MWBs, the Roleplay and Photocards. In Y11, these present great starter activities for a lesson! After practising as a whole class with MWBs, Students can practise the tasks, easily, with their partners as the oral booklet has on one side the student card and on the other the teacher's version. 
• To practise the General Conversation part of the exam, 50% of the whole speaking mark, give them model questions which students can start preparing in flashcards, little by little as from Y10, as the course progresses. I make it clear they cannot learn by heart all these questions! but having them in writing, gives them some confidence for their own revision on what a good model answer looks like! 

Make the link between the General Conversation in the Speaking exam and the Writing exam

• Help students practise these questions via home work tasks and connect the oral to the writing: make the next timed writing, as explained above, linked to the same theme/topic as a previous oral homework task. There’s a clear link between both exams and students need to understand such link!

  Students must realise that by revising potential oral questions for the general conversation they are, in fact, learning potential content for the writing tasks. Understanding this link breaks down the gigantic task of tackling four different exams for GCSE. Such concept is also reinforced by using multi skilled activities and the same type tasks to practise different skills, for example Battleships for listening, oral and writing. Students must understand that all skills are interwoven and must be practised interlinked with each other.

• During lessons, dedicate time to practise the general conversation questions in a game format. This is an example with Flippity: students click on the randomiser, play, Piedra, Papel, Tijera and must answer a question as it spins. To make the task more challenging, ask them to include a high impact expression, from the second column, in their answer. 

• Dedicate your lessons two weeks leading to the Mock and real MFL orals to just practise oral skills. 

• As with writing, make sure you retrieve, during your lessons, key verbs in different tenses and high impact expressions.

These techniques have made a big difference for me year after year and have helped my students maximise their grade! I hope it is useful for you. I would be super happy to hear what other techniques you use which are successful for you and your students!