Blimey : MFL A levels have changed

To be fair the problem is probably that the GCSE syllabus went too slowly and used too little target language.

We live in Germany and secondary school modern foreign languages are taught entirely in the target language from the start. If the kids want to ask a question in German they have to open by asking permission to speak German in English or French or whatever the target language is!

My kids are bilingual so at an advantage in compulsory English lessons, but DD is doing French too this year (no prior knowledge) and they are going really, really fast. The lessons are already all in French, and they seem to have covered as much in a couple of months as I did in my entire first year of French lessons at an English school. Tbh DD is loving it so far - however though there are lots of bilingual children in her class (the children who choose multiple modern foreign languages seem often to be the one who have yet another home language - so many speak Italian or Polish at home, German as a community language, English as a first foreign language and are now learning French as their 4th language) only one has an advantage in French, and for that one it's a "minor" language in a multilingual home set up - I think DD said she speaks it with her grandparents!

The jump from GCSE to A level sounds really hard, but it's probably the GCSE that was too much about exam technique and rote learning (I know ours was even in the middle ages ) and not enough about actually learning to communicate in French!

Exposure to fluent French speakers will hopefully raise the quality of his spoken French - better to be pulled up by classmates than down!

It would be helpful if bilingual children could have a form of accreditation for their ability. DS1 has two french friends (who moved to UK as teenagers) doing A level French even though French is their first language for the university points. The good thing for my DS is is now better in French speaking than he ever was in German his GCSE option.

Gosh those are pretty high numbers of 'language spoken at home' students! The figures given in the Ofqual report are also quite high as a percentage of the total - and those are just estimates.

As you say, in the past we were all non bilingual speakers muddling along together! Interesting - I'd been focusing on the impact on the grade boundaries - it hadn't occurred to me to think about how tricky it could make the lessons as well, trying to accommodate both non bilingual and mono lingual students.

I think this must deter non bilingual speakers from taking MFL a levels, and they are not necessarily wrong to be put off by it! Which is a huge shame as MFLs can be really interesting and useful.
Obviously the problem wouldn't arise with Latin or Greek - though it is true that the Greek A level exams seem always to be very late, which is another important disadvantage! Then again, isn't the same true of physics?

Also how would they know? Dd's friend's mother is French, but her father isn't. The name (eg) Smith isn't going to set any alarm bells ringing on the native speaker front! Actually quite a bit of entente cordiale round these parts as many of the dcs' peers have French or German mothers.

Ds was further discouraged from A Level French (apart from having to speak!) by the fact that everyone with a French mother was signed up. Of course that doesn't guarantee that they will be marvellous grammarians etc, but it is more than a head start. Back in my day we were all bumbling along together. My school didn't even do exchange trips! Mind you, I think 9 out of 10 of those serve to permanently harm international relations. Is there a study into how many Brexit voters had been scarred by a French exchange trip?!

Ah, I understood the opposite piggy (I assume you don't mind me calling you that?!)- that they were trying to compensate for the fact that it was harder to get high grades if you were non-native speaker. But unless I've misunderstood something, I don't see how they could ever really compensate fully just by changing the boundaries.

I had heard that some private schools were switching to pre U in MFL because the MFL grades in A level were 'unpredictable' - now I think that may be one of the reasons why. If you're competing with a native speaker (which you are if it's norm referenced) you are not on a level playing field.

I too have heard some universities don't count an A level taken by a native speaker. But then again how do you define native speaker?

Lancelottie - no Tacitus but lots of Pliny too: reams about Vesuvius erupting.

If anyone here took A levels in the mid 80s, do you remember the books we had for "O" Level essays - the set of 6 black & white pictures as a prompt for the 100 word essay. We all practised "Par un beau jour d'ete" as a good start - OK provided no snow or rain of course!

But boldly- we have the Internet now. Surely you can watch or listen to pretty much anything you like?!

It must have depended on the board. French was the hardest A level I did, the other two were sciences. I only really got to grips with it towards the end of the course.

It was the mid-nineties where I had to write lit exams in English!

Wtf! In a mfl a level you were allowed to write essays in English! What's the point, you need to show you are proficient in the mfl not English! I did a level French in the mid nineties and I had to do two topics in the exam, the French Resistance and the Rhone Alpes region. all the work had to be in French.

Interesting that you mention there are bilingual speakers in the class, it must be quite difficult for a teacher to differentiate the work for bilingual speakers and those who have just done the gcse!

Ofqual published some research on the impact of bilingual speakers on the grade boundaries in the summer - i can't remember the details but they had decided to make some adjustments to the boundaries as a result, I think. Actually I don't think you can ever 'fully' adjust - because widening the boundaries affects the bilingual speakers as well as those for whom the mfl is a 'foreign' language.

Impressed with the Old English Piggy!

I did Greek A level, no speaking but I did have to translate English into Ancient Greek, man that was hard, I was so jealous of the Latinists as it had gone from their exam some years before.

Worse, the exam was on the last last day - July 1 in fact - and I was the only student doing it! Funny what you remember :)

Piggy, I am officially jealous! I think it sounds so beautiful when it's spoken. It has a soft, musical quality.

Gosh, that is completely the opposite to me; I wanted to speak to people and did so much better in the orals than in the written parts of A level. I could have gone to any uni on my orals.

I'd also sign up for the 'just read, don't speak' MFL. I also see a new language as a bit like a puzzle to decode - which bits are similar, which are different and why. Linguistics and the history of language fascinates me. I'd be just at home learning Old English, Ancient Greek, Latin etc.

I think language lovers are a bit of a minority in this country. There is a dominant approach of 'it's only worth learning if it's going to be useful'. Having lived in a country where people are routinely bilingual, it fascinates me that no-one wants to learn the other native languages of the British Isles.

We also don't have the wealth of satellite and radio channels to help hone our skills in the target language. Living in Belgium, it was easy to watch tv in other European languages.

The 'just read it don't speak it' was precisely the appeal of A-level Latin, Piggy!
We never even had to write in the language, only translate into English, which is faaaaaar easier.

I agree about the puzzle factor. It was like doing an A-level in crossword solving.