So DS is in year 9 fast-tracking his French GCSE and is sitting his speaking and writing exams this week. For the speaking he has been given four questions and has practiced his answers until he knows them off by heart, and similar for the writing, they have memorised what they are going to write and just write it in the exam (and are given a list of key words and allowed to have a dictionary)!
Is this really all that it takes to get a language GCSE (he's predicted a B)? I got a B 20+ years ago, and the speaking was having a conversation with the teacher, where you knew you would be asked about family/hobbies etc but you didn't know exactly what would be asked and a conversation would follow on from your answers. And similar with the writing, we didn't know exactly what we would have to write about. It seems to me it is more of a memory test than actually learning the language, and for those wanting to go onto A-level, I imagine leap would be absolutely huge.
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Is it me, or is the French GCSE a complete waste of time?
69 replies
dollybird · 08/12/2015 21:34
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