Standard of French

I did GCSE French in 1989 - second year of GCSEs. It was very much tourist French and very little reciting and memorising of verbs - we did some but not many. There was no reading of books in French.

However, as someone who as never going to go on and study French or other languages further, this was sufficient tbh. Even now, some several years on, I can get by on holiday in France. I can understand enough to tread simple signs. I can order and book things. I can ask and receive directions. I can have a basic "getting to know you" conversation, if they speak slow enough for me. I can go to the doctor or the pharmacy and get what i need, etc.

Is A level not still more about grammar and more technical language skills?

Possibly they do, Tinuviel in both English and MFL. Grammar teaching in primary can be a bit hit and miss here. Some schools do it well others don't. Perhaps the new curriculum and the SPaG test will level that out a bit. Then at least you won't have to teach the English alongside the French or German etc.

I do know of one school who scrapped their KS3 SoW and rewrote it based on progression of grammar rather than topics. They then selected topics they felt went best with each grammar unit. No idea how that worked out for them though. If you can find the right school you might not have to consider leaving.

I went to a Catholic Comprehensive- I think we were just VERY lucky to have excellent teaching staff (the two who taught me are STILL there ), and you weren't encouraged to take up Spanish unless you were doing well in French. You are right that we don't learn much about grammatical structure in English though- by learning it in French and Spanish though, I've got a much better understanding of it than I would have otherwise.

I teach MFL at secondary. The current curriculum is uninspiring, and the methods of delivery are so teacher-intensive. Grammar, dictation and translation are creeping back in slowly but it will take a long time to reverse too many years of the communicative approach.
The GCSE is an abomination. It is a test of memory, not a test of language skills or knowledge. I hate it.
I always loved literature and I am trying to increase the amount of English teaching on my timetable. I am a better grammarian than many of the English dept who have no real grasp of the nuts and bolts of our language.

I was in a state comprehensive (although it started out as a grammar school). This was in the early 1980s and I definitely did past historic at the end of year 11 - mainly so that we would recognise it in literature.

I think we massively under-estimate what kids can understand and am glad that grammar teaching is coming back, both in English and foreign languages but I think that younger teachers find it a challenge to teach as they weren't taught it themselves.

Oddly enough, as home educators we have used some great resources from the US on grammar, so maybe they teach it better over there!

Busted!

I admit it was a private (highly selective) girls' school.

I have taught Secondary French and German for nearly 20 years. I love grammar and love teaching it. However, I wonder if maybe some of you are remembering through rose-tinted spectacles the glory days of being taught the Past Historic in year 9.

Except for during my stint in a private girls' school, many of the classes I've taught simply weren't bright enough to cope with anything but the basics of grammar in another language. And even then they mostly have great difficulty. Many of them have such poor spelling and grammar in their own language that expecting them to be accurate in a foreign language is just unrealistic.

Part of it is that they have practically no understanding of English grammar because, unlike pupils in France, Germany, Italy etc, they are simply not taught the grammar of their own language. This makes it very hard to teach them French or German grammar - they have no basis for comparison, nothing on which to 'hang' their knowledge.

I am so concerned by the standard of French teaching in schools that I send my dcs to French classes .

Bring back tricolore. Today's teaching materials don't touch it.

Oh yes - I remember top set French doing the past historic in what would now be yrs 9 and 10.

Tinuviel I know a year 8 who is currently thrilled to be learning participles concurrently in Latin, Greek and French. Don't give up - find a better school. (She said, airily.)

This is interesting.

I had assumed DS's very rudimentary German homework was a reflection on where the teachers judge his ability to be. It seems that perhaps that's the kind of homework they're all getting?

And this is why I am considering leaving secondary languages teaching - I hate the way we have to do it and even though grammar is coming back, I don't think that younger teachers are confident with how to teach it as they didn't learn it themselves until sixth form.

Controlled assessments are a nightmare and no test of language ability whatsoever.

And yes, I did literature for A level and coped (even though I hated studying literature in any language!) We had to read a simplified version of 'Les Petits Enfants du Siècle' in the summer hols before we started sixth form, so had a quick look at the past historic before we left year 11. Past historic is now taught at degree level!

DS1 who was home educated and learned French the way I would like to teach it is now doing A level and going over grammar that he knew by year 8. Vocab wise he's learning quite a lot; grammar wise he's learned nothing new this term.

Part of the despair, for me, is knowing how beautifully learning the grammar of another language illuminates the - what should I say - the potency, and specificity and point of ones own language.

I despair at the teaching of French, which both my DCs took to GCSE level. Back in the 70s when I took mine, I reached a reasonable level of conversational and written French, all based on a solid grounding of grammar. DS managed to scrape a C grade using Google translate and apparently very little knowledge of verbs/grammar. I loved languages and was very motivated to learn. DS hated it!

I suspect A level is better, though am not familiar with the syllabus TBH.

I know many students find the jump impossible and some schools run extra sessions to cover the things that the teachers think ought to be covered in GCSE.

"But surely the French/german they need is " holiday" anyway? "

I've used my O level French endlessly over two different careers - being able to read and make sense of French texts at the very least is enormously helpful given that we're members of a political entity which IME operates very largely on a day to day basis in French . . . Sure, you'll get a paper / briefing doc or whatever translated into English, but you often get several days head start if you can read the original french version.

Both DH & I have drummed it into dd, if there is one school subject where she must work hard and learn everything she can, even if it seems boring to start with, it's MFL.

clary
I am baffled by your post. Children learning English do not learn "I go / you go / he goes" etc. because conjugation in English is incredibly simple. But children in France do indeed spend hours and hours learning regular and irregular verbs very carefully because that's the only way to get it. But you want English children to pick up in two hours a week by osmosis what monolingual French kids need to be taught explicitly and practise, practise, practise?

"Love the aspiration up the thread for 16 year olds to be reading novels in French (or other MFL) but really when was that ever the case here?"

One of the oral options for my French O level was to discuss a French book we'd read (okay, I did Le Petit Prince so only marginally a novel, but still...)

We read "real" French novels in the lower sixth. I'm the old end of the year so was 17, but many of my peers were 16. So the answer to "when was that the case" is "1986, right before they brought in GCSEs."

It's a completely standard expectation today that Dutch 16 year olds will be reading novels in English - and French. The standard of written English of the Dutch 18 year old who told me that is sufficiently good that I hadn't realised he wasn't a native English speaker.

DD did French A level last year. They read one book, and could avoid having to answer any questions on it in the exam provided they were prepared to answer the film question no matter how awful it was.

(Oh god, Camus. Couldn't even get through it in English. And Prevert poems. Brrr.)

Is that same approach followed at A Level, Word, i.e. controlled assessments and pre prepared orals? How much does literature count for these days?

Genuinely interested. I used to love German.

I thought that might be the case, kesstrel, based on what I know DD did for GSCE and what I did for A Level.

We did Le Petit Prince for A Level, in common with every other French A Level student that year, but also L'Etranger by Camus, a book called Les Clos Du Roi which was about peasant farming and things like dry stone walling, and a play called Le Roi Se Meurt.

For German, we did Irrungen, Wirrungen, Bahnwater Thiel, Die Caucasishe Krederkreis and Die Physiker. Apologies for spelling, it has been a long time!

I cannot imagine DD being able to read the equivalent of any of those books, with the exception of Le Petit Prince, when she had done her Spanish GCSE.

The current piece meal approach to MFL coupled with controlled assessments and pre-prepared orals mean many students have little grasp of the language.

MFL teachers generally hate it and feel it undervalues their subjects.

Pupils learning 'topics' and phrases within those topics doesn't help anyone grasp the fundamental underpinning of the language.

Yes, there is a big jump between GCSE and A level, and students on average do significantly less well at A level than in other subjects, so the numbers willing to take A level languages are declining.

I do remember reading novels in A Level French and Spanish: Zola and Camus featured, and Gabriel García Márquez. So maybe not Proust (because it would have taken too long), but they weren't exactly lightweight. And we had to discuss (and quote from the texts) some quite sophisticated concepts like existentialism. My daughter got an A* at French GSCE, but I really don't think she would have been equipped for that kind of stuff at A Level, so I can only assume we were taught to a higher standard. There was equal weighting given to speaking and listening when I did GSCE as to reading and writing, iirc, and it feel I can still get by in practical situations while abroad now, twenty-odd years later, so the teaching then must have been pretty effective.

Thinking about it - I distinctly remember Heinrich Böll and Günther Grass from my German O'Level syllabus. Can't recall the French O 'Level but we read Racine, Molière, Alain-Fournier and the inescapable Camus for A'Level ...

Long ago.

Is there a big jump between GCSE and A Level these days? I did A Level French and German many, many years ago and we read 4 books for the literature part. It doesn't sound as though today's candidates would be ready for that.

My speaking skills were appalling though, even though I could read and write reasonably well.