Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Original poster

Spanish GCSEs - Is DS for real? - Oral exam

33 replies

Buck3t · 19/04/2017 20:52

I'm not sure if my son is being untruthful, not listening when he should be (more likely) or if it's wholly true.

He doesn't appear to be practising speaking in spanish. I asked him if there isn't an oral part to the exam. He said no.

I do remember that I asked a couple of years ago about vocabulary testing - I remembered vocab books (even found my old french ones) and the teacher said they don't do it that way anymore. I thought fine, I'm 20+ years older, things change, so fair enough. However, now he's saying there's no oral element to the exam.

Now before I come across as one of those weird parents to his spanish teacher (why do I care what they think of me exactly?), I thought I'd ask here first. So tell me what do you know? Can you pass a GCSE without being able to pronounce 'Monopatin' correctly?

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
clary · 21/04/2017 11:14

New gcse is much more strenuous!!

Doilooklikeatourist · 21/04/2017 07:20

A friends DD is taking A level Spanish ,
She pronounces chorizo == korizo
So I'm not sure how strenuous the exams are 😀
That's after at least 3 years of Spanish lessons

Original poster
Buck3t · 21/04/2017 07:15

Thanks all. Have sent email to school as well.

clary thanks for that I will speak to DS.

OP posts:
clary · 20/04/2017 21:53

Sorry OP I was posing from my phone before and I am not very dextrous so I tend to sound a bit curt!

But hopefully my post will have answered some of your questions. Re-reading your OP, does your son mean there is no oral element to his year 10 mock (which may/is upcoming??) - this may be correct but I would say surprising. Or does he mean the year 11 GCSE? (In which case he is wrong!)

Any more questions please ask :)

clary · 20/04/2017 19:34

I teach AQA MFL, yes there is a speaking exam.

My year 10s did a speaking mock just before we broke up as part of the year 10 mocks.

He will have a 12 min (foundation) o 15min(higher) exam next may/June . Photo card, role play and general chat. I am sure they are practising now! It's worth 25â„… of the final grade. Hth

bojorojo · 20/04/2017 10:07

I just let the school prepare my children for MFL exams. They got A*s and I trusted the school. No panic yet in y10! You have time to find out what he has to do next year!

TeenAndTween · 20/04/2017 09:21

Buck I would be amazed if there is no oral element in the new exam, does your DS know what board he is doing - you could check the spec online, otherwise ask the teacher.

Sorry for sounding surprised at your lack of knowledge, I wrongly assumed your son was in y11. I think it is good you are taking an interest and checking now, because if your DS has got the wrong end of the stick you can sort it out now before he continues to think that speaking the language isn't important!

cocobatter · 20/04/2017 09:18

When I took Spanish GCSE (10 years ago though) we had 100 questions on various topics, which we were told the answers to. Our only job was to memorise all 100 answers (!) and then we were randomly tested on 5-8 ish of them for the exam.

Bit of a joke tbh. I still couldn't 'speak' Spanish at the end of it despite getting an A.

Ontopofthesunset · 20/04/2017 09:13

The IGCSE has what drummersum describes - an oral rather like the exams we might have taken at O level. There is a short presentation/talk that the child has to learn, then some questions on that. There's also a role play and general conversation. With the IGCSE at my son's school the teachers conduct and assess it, but it is recorded and sent off to be moderated; I don't know if moderators listen at random to a few children from each school to check the marking is robust.

UsedToBeAPaxmanFan · 20/04/2017 07:10

My ds is 18 now so did GCSEs a while ago. I know he did a speaking assessment but I didn't have a clue what it consisted of. I don't speak Spanish so wouldn't have known if he was right/wrong even if I did listen to it.

I also didn't know when his Controlled Aassessments were in science etc. Why would I? It's a bit harsh for criticising the OP for not knowing. I had faith that the school knew what they were doing and that he should listen to them. Obviously if he has asked for help in revising stuff we'd have got involved but he just got on with it.

Original poster
Buck3t · 20/04/2017 07:02

Tween I was talking about final exams. There seems to be no oral practicing and I was concerned and DS informed me no oral exam.

I am checking with the school also.

OP posts:
TeenAndTween · 19/04/2017 22:13

OK, not y11. All change for current y10. What exam are you talking about in your OP - end y10 internal of final GCSE exams?

Original poster
Buck3t · 19/04/2017 22:04

leccybill - so like the old days then! Starting to make sense.

OP posts:
leccybill · 19/04/2017 22:01

If he's Y10, there's no controlled assessment anymore, just final exams at the end of Y11. There should be lots of mocks/practice for them though.

And there def is a speaking exam! With a role play, and general conversation.

70ontheinside · 19/04/2017 22:01

We're with edexcel, but they are fairly similar to AQA.
Things like "picture descriptions" and "role plays" should ring (alarm!) bells with your son by now. My Y10s are fairly oblivious, but they might have noticed by now that we seem to be doing an awful lot of picture description tasks...

Original poster
Buck3t · 19/04/2017 22:01

drummersmum you are scaring me. DS isn't doing IGCSE.

OP posts:
drummersmum · 19/04/2017 21:59

DS in y10 is taking IGCSE this year. I don't know if it's different from GCSE but he has his spoken exam in a few days and it requires quite a lot of preparation: prepared presentation on a photo, plus 3 min of questions on the photo and the topic related to the photo, and then 6 more minutes of questions on two different topics chosen by examiner among five topics.

AChickenCalledKorma · 19/04/2017 21:58

DD1 is in year 10 and doing German on the new specification. She has definitely been told there will be a speaking exam.

Original poster
Buck3t · 19/04/2017 21:56

It's AQA, so I'll do that. Thanks again.

OP posts:
Original poster
Buck3t · 19/04/2017 21:56

Thanks Rosie lots of information coming forth. Should use this page more often.

OP posts:
70ontheinside · 19/04/2017 21:56

If you know which exam board your school have chosen you can look up exam formats there. Exam boards could be AQA, Edexcel, WJEC, OCR or a few others.

Original poster
Buck3t · 19/04/2017 21:55

70ontheinside Firstly, I think you've stolen my real name. Secondly, I think I will contact the teacher, as I am unable to get information from him (think blood from a stone).

OP posts:
Rosieposy4 · 19/04/2017 21:53

Year 10s will not be doing ISAs or Ca in science.

Original poster
Buck3t · 19/04/2017 21:52

Many thanks toffee. Going to find that curriculum booklet and see if there is any information in there.

OP posts:
70ontheinside · 19/04/2017 21:52

So your son is in Y10 now, which means he will be taking new specification GCSEs next year?

It depends on how the school structure their schemes of work, bit there will definitely be a speaking exam at the end of Y11. It would be mad not to practice these speaking exams beforehand. We have one after every unit, and will do one in the upcoming Y10 mocks.

Maybe you should have a word with the teacher to clarify.