AIBU to think if you want more people to study languages, why make it so difficult to be successful in the exams?

[annoyedandfrustratedagain]

Yet again the top end of my GCSE languages groups, with the exception of the very able, have achieved on average a grade or two lower in their languages GCSE than they have in other subjects.

We live in a country which is not known for being the most enthusiastic at learning foreign languages and I'm starting to wonder whether this is because it is so difficult to get the top grades at GCSE and A Level.

In my experience, for a lot of kids by the time they get into Y10, any love of language learning is quashed by constant pressure to achieve on the exams and some of the content we have to cover is completely irrelevant to today's teenagers.

I love languages, they fascinate me and the thrill of being able to speak to someone in their own language still gets me when I go abroad today. But how can I convince my students that learning a language is worthwhile when a. realistically when you go abroad, most people can speak some English anyway (and want to at every available opportunity) and b. they exam boards make it so hard for you to get a decent grade?

AIBU to think that if the government/exam boards want more youngsters to study a foreign language, instead of making the exams harder (which they are doing year on year), they should make them easier for the kids to be successful in? The content and grammar they have to be able to use after a few lessons per week for 5 years amazes me! I wish I could just teach languages for the love of language learning, not to be constantly jumping through ever changing hoops, predetermined by someone else as to what a successful linguist looks like. Rant over, sorry I'm just so disappointed for my students

I see no reason for making it easier on anyone to learn it. It's not a hobby, it's a subject at school and it should be considered a necessity in the current world.
Pupils should be encouraged to learn maths, IT etc. - it doesn't mean we should offer them a light version to keep them happy and interested. It's about how languages are taught not about making the exams easy.

'It should be considered a necessity in the current world'.

That's just it, it isn't considered a necessity by most in this country so how do we qork with that?

*work, not qork

I'd say pp have put the finger on it: the big problem is not that MFL are badly taught in this country, or that expectations are too high, or that marking is too high: the big problem is that pupils don't take it seriously. It doesn't help that parents and teachers collude in suggesting that learning languages is only for specially gifted people and that grammar is an evil invention to make it more difficult and "clever".

Coming from a different European country, I have been shocked to see how very low expectations are, not least as regards grammar. Grammar is simply a short and efficient way of describing a language, so that you can then make it do what you want it to.

And this idea that other countries learn languages from a younger age is not true for most of Europe. In Sweden, where I grew up, we did our first foreign language (English) from the age of 10/11, roughly half of the cohort then started a second foreign language at 13/14, and those who went to traditional Sixth Form (A-level equivalent) took up either a third or a second MFL at that point. The expectation was that we would be able to express ourselves in conversation and read simple newspaper texts etc even in our third foreign language, let alone in our first. We never had the advantage of being taught by native speakers and there was virtually no chance of hearing e.g. French or Spanish on television. We were expected to learn grammar in the same way that UK children are expected to learn maths or science: it didn't have to be fun, it didn't have to be easy.

Scandinavian children today do not start English in nursery school either: they start halfway through junior school, just as we did.

My children who went to school in the UK have never been tested on holding even a simple conversation in their only MFL: the oral test consisted in answering questions on a pre-written essay which the teacher had read. Hardly very useful for real life, where you can't hand the doctor or waiter or prospective business partner a form and say "ask me questions on this only". Dd got an A for her oral: she can't do the simplest thing in French. However hard I have tried, and despite them being bilingual, they have assimilated the attitude of their peers that they simply shouldn't have to work that hard at languages.

That is so depressing cory the new GCSE is going to be a lot harder and go back to the old style of being able to hold conversations etc.

But what I don't understand is that this "everyone does less well at languages" should show in the statistics clearly.
Because the grade boundaries are basically done by percentage. So top 5% get A next 8.7% get B etc. If the percentage for each grade boundary was much lower then I'm sure there would be huge comments raised.

The memorising languages are silly though Dd1 did French last year (in year 9 for some reason) and got a B, not being gifted in languages she was rather pleased. But all the exams seemed to be along the lines of.

1. Get given all the questions in French
2. Come home put questions into google translate.
3. Answer questions in English
4. Put answer back into google translate
5. Get teacher to check answers
6. Memorise
7. Regurgitate with no knowledge of what you're saying in the exam.

Hence no knowledge of actually constructing a sentence and very little vocab.

I disagree that most foreign people speak English! Maybe if you only go to resorts that is the case, but even in the Netherlands where English is widely spoken, it is frequent to come across people especially of the older generation who really don't speak any English at all. (Including many of my family members). In France they will often refuse to deal with you at all if you try to speak English, or you will get a very bad service. In Spain outside tourist areas they won't speak that much either. In Poland most don't speak much English.

I think 5 years should be plenty of time to learn a language to a good standard, but I don't think the problem is poor teaching. It's partly down to a general attitude that languages are only for the super clever/pointless as everyone speaks English/English people are too good to speak other peoples' languages. My university won't fund foreign language courses although they will pay for any other training you need for your job.

And partly down to the fact that there's so little exposure. It's mad that there are hundreds of TV channels available on Freeview and the only foreign language one is Al Jazeera. Why aren't there French, German and Spanish channels? Then people could learn in an easier and more rewarding way.

agree with Shanghai Diva - I took Oxford board o levels in 1982, similar content to my daughters A2 in 2003/4.
The standards are laughable now, I saw exam papers from 2003. My daughter took o level Spanish, Italian and German GCSEs in various years in 1 YEAR and the german was completed at uni in one TERM. There is no way that could have happened at o level in the early 80's.
I am not criticising your teaching but something is badly wrong with language teaching now if your students can't reach the top grades with the papers that I have seen.
We showed my daughters (very young) A2 teacher our own o level papers and she was astonished at what was expected.
We have dumbed down

Higher listening grade boundaries were surprisingly high, given how difficult the kids said the exam was. However, for I think the first time ever, I'm pleased with the writing results, bit confused thinking of the very different content of two full marks candidates in particular, but happy the predictions match the actual result. I'm cracking the champers and raising a glass to the students who have improved on last year's results in every category compared to similar schools taking French (in my school!)

Things must have changed a bit since the 90s. I remember you could get an A in modern languages GCSE if you managed to gain a B in all the separate elements (reading, writing etc). Several of my friends got an A and they could barely string a sentence together in French!! It's not the exams that need to be easier, it's the level of language ability that needs to improve.
I was lucky - had a brilliant teachers for French and German - but I know other teachers who were pretty awful.
Agree with pps that we don't start learning languages early enough and there just isn't enough emphasis on the need to learn other languages because English is the language that many others around the world are trying to learn.
Parents also play a huge part in a child's desire/ability to learn a language - probably more so than the teacher. It's no surprise I loved languages. My (British) parents speak several languages, they encouraged me and I spent time on various foreign exchanges as a teenager. Conversely, friends of mine with little interest in foreign languages had parents who weren't interested either. It's a vicious cycle...

I'm surprised to year language gcses are hard.

When I did mine (over 10 years ago) it was very very easy. By all accounts gcses have got easier since then, perhaps with the exception of the past few years. I think it's a good idea some effort has been made to tackle grade inflation.

that's the thing: they are not hard. not harder than maths or science.
they just need good preparation and adequate work put in.

My French Oral exam, many years ago, required having an unprepared conversation with the examiner. It was fairly basic 'what did you do in the holidays?', but I needed to understand her and answer in reasonable French, without having any idea in advance what would be talked about.

That was O Level, meant to say that in my post.

When I was at school (GCSE 1990) it was a given that to get an A you needed to stay for 2 weeks in France/Spain/Germany to speak nothing but that language. It was a boarding school so could make such rules.

And indeed, after a fortnight getting an earful from my exchange partner's mother who never stopped talking once (mostly about her terrible football hooligan son, who taught me some amazing German swearing), I could use the language reasonably well.

For A-level, our teacher informed us there was no syllabus, just become fluent in the language. By the end of my next exchange I was pretty fluent except for regional slang and names of pastries.

I've found that while many Europeans initially sound fluent in english because they know common phrases and colloquialisms, as soon as you get beyond that, A-level is a much better grounding than many of them have, especially outside a tourist resort. The only lack I felt last week in Germany was the exact level of insult to use when someone pushes in front when Lidl opens a new checkout!

I can't believe the difficulty in getting French/German/Spanish etc TV here - Sky said I could only get it with 700 other channels I dont want for £93 a month! Apparently you can get your own dish and use Freesat but that's pretty geeky for your average household.

I definitely agree that we don't take learning other languages seriously or rather place no importance in learning them here.

Other than singing french songs in a choir in primary school, I don't remember being exposed to learning a language until high school and I wasn't mentally prepared for it at all and essentially refused to learn.

Children should be exposed to languages at an early age and not to muddy the waters the Schools/Council's should pick a language and stick to it for the early yrs/primary in order to kids kids be open to learning more languages in high school etc.

I am learning a language independently purely out of interest and I'm probably not at a great educational level, but I do think it's important to be able to communicate in at least one other language.

It is hard to find good language learning resources at home and no Spanish t.v/subtitles or radio is just rubbish.

Has anyone yet mentioned bilingual or near-native speakers and how they skew results?

I got a mediocre o level in french but, because we were taught properly, can still get by in the language. My children got good gcse's in the subject and haven't the faintest idea of how to string a sentence together. They weren't taught grammar, and when they took their orals they memorised the answers for a list of questions they were given in advance. Foreign language teaching in the UK is a scandal.

Ex MFL teacher here. Whilst it is true that in Germany they start languages sooner, ime they did one hour a week English aged 8 and 9, the English at that point was your very basic vocab, games and songs.
The biggest fundamental difference is at Gymnasium, when aged 10, the textbooks are more advanced than anything used in the UK. The children are expected to know how to learn, have a course on learning how to learn and the vocab lists received each week and grammar points are a huge learning curve and more advanced than anything I ever saw in 13 years of teaching.
So, instead of learning vocab by topic or having a chapter based on a topic or role play situation or grammar point, the books are text oriented (massive huge chunks of text) and the vocab is fairly random.
Teaching is to the textbook, to get a 3 (C) you need to be hitting 75%, it's a totally different ballgame here. In French they have covered all tenses within the first two years at secondary including pluperfect.
For years before living here I believed it was just down to starting far earlier and due to media (TV, songs, cinema) also being in English but it's actually more down to the content/type of teaching. There is no gentle easing in, it's taken as given they learn off by heart, the curriculum is text and grammar driven. As a result they are doing things at 12/13 that sixteen year olds would be expected to do in the UK and their Schulabschluss is AS level standard.
It is impressive, terrifying, depressing and soul-destroying in equal measure.
Impressive because of the levels they reach earlier.
Terrifying because of the inordinate pressure on pupils to perform/achieve.
Depressing because if you are not a "natural" you're an E/F because of the marking system.
Soul-destroying because it is so "dry", no time for fun/cross curricular/cultural/going at a reasonable pace so you can and do fall behind quickly.
Speaking as a mum of a teen here(!) but I was shocked by the difference in approach.

Somebody did further down Rose but it's a very important point. We are getting more and more native speakers taking these exams and of course that will skew the results.

I did well - full UMS in Spanish and two under in French, but we had native speaking teachers and were encouraged to chat in that language if we met them in the corridors etc. Most of our MFL lessons (excepting grammar) were taught entirely in the language, so we had much more immersion. Mind you, I only started Spanish in year 9, so had to get going fast!

At A level we'd have conversation classes, and we're told to watch films and read in the language - we were expected to be getting close to fluent.

Some people hated it, but it worked well for me (although it does mean I speak Spanish with an Ecuadorean accent!).

I realised I did not give you an example: so a German student learning English as a second language does, for example, the legend of Robin Hood, a study of the aboriginal situation in "rabbit proof fence" and smuggling stories set in Cornwall....Can you imagine doing that in French/German at key stage 3? (Tricolore, route nationale, metro etc were always basic and topic based in comparison).

Anyway, I almost forgot, , , for you OP, it sucks when your kids don't get their estimated grades even if you have been obliged to inflate them/do potentials which are based on other data rather than your own subject/pressure for increased positive residuals et cetera.
Have a good weekend x

carefreeee in France, particularly Paris, they usually can speak English but choose not to . Whereas in Germany they will apologise for their English before doing the Simpsons episode whereby their English turns out to be more elegant than yours!

I got an A in GCSE French a few years ago and I found it really easy.

Actually speaking French to French people in France however, is an entirely different kettle of fish. If anything, what I learnt at school was shockingly basic.

I have to agree that the curriculum here is not very inspiring. How many bloody times can you talk about what you do, did and will be doing at the weekend?
I read my first English "novel", a simple but gripping detective story about somebody getting shot with an icicle, in my second year of learning English. Heavily text based is absolutely right. This approach allows you to cover so many interesting topics, though!
In 6th form alone we read 3 novels and a play, plus an enormous amount of newspaper reports and secondary literature. My 6th form lessons here are a very watered down version of this.