GCSE German coursework mark puzzle

GnomedePlume - when my daughter was in that position last year - that one remarks means all remarks - I was told they'd be unlikely to get agreement as every child has to agree to the remark and sign to say they accept a fall or rise in grade. Anyone with a score they are happy with it wouldn't sign, so they wouldn't be able to even do it.

I didn't take it any further but it seemed unfair!

Re: writing, edexcel French : I also thought it was a controlled assessment in school so would be marked by the teacher but I actually asked them face-to-face and was told that no they do them in controlled conditions but they are marked by the exam markers at Edexcel. Hence the schools reluctance to give me any grade at all.

Still waiting to hear from school on DS1s French.
He was given 100% and A* on a CA by the teacher. The rest of the class redid the paper but he did not as he could not have improved on it.
When he got his results it showed 72% and a B. He got A* on everything else but that brought it down to a B.
I thought the teacher marked CAs and exam board just moderated?

My daughters Edexcel writing was controlled assessment in school and sent off to be marked. The teacher did mark it herself for, I presume, some idea of how good it was and internal statistics but no grade was ever issued. We were, however, told it 'ought to be of a C Grade standard'. She actually got a B for it. (Although a C grade overall when it was all added together with the exam and speaking marks).

good luck!

ah - as such a small group they were all requested. I see. Hmmm in that case I wonder if there is only 1 German teacher at the school and therefore no moderation?

And yes they would all have been re-marked as they would all have been treated as the official sample for moderation.

gnome the sample is nothing to do with special measures - if there's fewer than 20 pupils sitting a language then they automatically all get requested. Hope you get the answers you're looking for - and yes, Dutch is v similar grammatically to German and I'd imagine your dd's accent was also brilliant as well with her background. The mystery deepens... Keep us updated and let us know if you need more info.

Gnome it is very strange that the whole cohort of speaking was submitted. Usually about 20% of pupils are called for. It may be that the board were unhappy with the first sample and then called them all in but I haven't ever heard of that before with Edexcel. Our marks were adjusted last year but they didn't ask for any more samples. I wonder if your DD has got that wrong...the teacher may have said that they get sent off without really clarifying that it is in fact a sample.

it is actually very difficult to mark the speaking. At times the criteria can seem quite vague and it can be quite subjective. Hence the need to moderate as a department.

I doubt it is administartive as these days it is all MP3 files & the students names etc are on the recording - but you never know.

Our results were brought down last year, we asked for a remark & they were brought back up again - apparently it was an administrative error...who knows!

What chocolate has said makes a lot of sense. It is probably either the whole cohort having their marks adjusted (although that adjustment is massive, I've never heard of people dropping more than 1, maybe 2 grades on a component which was adjusted), or the accuracy was not good enough. Like I said before, even a spelling error or a missing umlaut can make all the difference if it involves the verb as it will mean that whole chunks of speaking are disregarded as not having a clear message.

Plus, a massive amount of emphasis is put on the exam question - did she answer every question exactly without going off on a tangent? Did the teacher ask every question which was written on the task sheet they submitted? Were the questions asked relevant to the task title? They are harsh on that, e.g. If the title is "school and education" then talking about work experience or hobbies etc will gain no credit even though they could be to do with school...

Was the recording long enough, did she speak for more than 4 minutes? More able students often tend to speak faster and therefore run the risk of not delivering a long enough piece and dropping marks.

Sorry for the essay but there are so many factors to consider - some of them down to the student, some are teacher error but it's useful to know what the common issues are when trying to investigate crazy results.

I teach French & we use the Edexcel board. The grade boundaries for the Listening paper this year have all been raised so that a lot of my pupils who I thought would score say a 'C' have come out with a D or even an E in some cases.

yes the speaking will have been moderated and a sample sent off. Hers may not have been sent off but if the board think that the sample have been marked too generously then they'll bring the whole cohort down. Maybe that is the case - the marking was over generous and although your daughter's was good the whole lot have been brought down. Do you know if hers was submitted? If so possibly the examiner felt that she didn't develop her answers fully and that her accuracy wasn't tight enough, whilst the teacher, knew what your daughter was trying to do & knowing how hard she had worked was too lenient over grammatical errors.....

The school will have to ask the Head for permission to have re-mark and I think they'll have to pay. Best write to the school to get clear info on what her speaking had been marked at. The staff will then need the time (once the new term starts) to see if the whole cohort have been affected and to see if a re-mark is possible. This will take a few weeks.

Good luck - for what it is worth I don't think an A instead of an A* would affect uni applications but I understand your concerns.

Do you know what exam board she was doing? I know that the OCR French boundaries have changed from 2011-2012 by as much as 5 marks. Could this be what's happened with your daughter? The German and Spanish boundaries have also changed in OCR but by very little - still odd though given that there is a mark scheme to follow and the same / very similar pieces of writing / speaking can be produced year on year. This effectively means the same piece of writing produced in 2011 would be graded differently if produced in 2012 .

In my dept we have found some strange marking this year and I will be asking the HM to fund a remark of the writing in German.

She's done well to pull it up to grade A overall though - reading + listening = 40%, speaking + writing = 60%. She really must have aced the receptive exams.

Hi gnome, I teach French and German. We have found that with the coursework, the biggest thing affecting marks is correct verb conjugation, i.e. the French/German equivalent of saying "I went" rather than "I goed" or "I going".

We have found that firstly the pupils who wrote simple but very accurate pieces tended to get higher marks. There has also been a tendency for examiners to ignore whole sentences which don't have a clear meaning, so there have been cases where pupils have written a 20 word sentence which is complicated and advanced, but because their verb at the start of the sentence was not quite right, the other (perfect, A* quality) 19 words have been given no credit whatsoever because the overall message of the sentence was unclear.

This does seem really harsh but when you think about it, verbs are linked with tenses and timeframes so even a little slip can really skew the meaning of a sentence/paragraph/whole essay. I think that this is the first year that scripts for writing will not be returned but it may be worth asking the school if they kept a copy of the scripts/recordings. If you needed someone to look over them, I'd be happy to do so.