MFL and native speakers

[IrmaFayLear]

Dd is considering A Level French. Should she?

Because, as I suspected, from the Ofqual website:

we know from anecdotal evidence that there are concerns about the potential impact of native speakers on A level MFL results. In particular, there are concerns that the number of native speakers is increasing and that, as a result, students for whom the MFL is a second language are being disadvantaged.

There were other details about how half of those gaining A* were native speakers, and they were heavily impacting the grade boundaries. This is serious stuff for dd, who is quite ambitious.

Another thing to bear in mind is that without native/second generation speakers taking "their" subject many mfl classes would cease to be viable. Teaching and take up of mfl to gcse and A level is already in decline in secondary schools.

True, take up is in decline.

I wonder if at A level one reason at the very margins for the decline may be that some students/dparents are increasingly aware that they may be disadvantaged as a non-native speaker and therefore they are opting for another subject. I don't think it's as straightforward a reasoning process as 'this happens therefore I won't do mfl' but it is perhaps one more factor that feeds into the overall decision making process (and into any parental input into students' decisions!)

I think English is such a dominant language that for many families with just one MFL-speaking parent, the advantage accruing is smaller than you might think. Receiving instructions from a parent, or chatting in the target language to an indulgent grandparent is miles away from writing in it.

Secondly, children who truly operate in two languages are usually working pretty hard. It's difficult to acquire a large, balanced vocabulary in two languages. Maybe a kid is at an advantage in French, having a French parent at home, but the same kid has a smaller/weirder English vocabulary than 'standard' and so has to work harder in e.g. history.

Finally, a lot depends on the kid! Some soak up languages, while others really have to work on it, even when it's served up on a plate at home.

It's not that I disagree with your worries OP, but I think there are so many other things going on that it's hard to say whether your daughter is truly disadvantaged.

My DD did MFL at Cambridge and was so disheartened in her first year when half the class were native speakers/had at least a parent or grandparent who was fluent, and the others all seemed to have a bill in Provence where they spent all summer every year. We did manage 2 weeks camping in France most year though!

She also said that all those at Private schools had a greater vocabulary than she had mastered with 2 A grade (before A* came in the next year) A levels in French & German.

At the end of year 1 she switched to Linguistics where there was a much more level playing field and she was so much happier- but did miss out on the year abroad die to the swap.

Villa, not Bill in France!

My DD did go to a private school and these schools are now providing many MFL university applicants. The perception of students is definitely part of the problem at university. The non native speakers feel disadvantaged. We didn’t go anywhere to enhance DDs skills but her teachers provided her with reading materials and films to help with language and cultural education. They also had native speakers as language assistants like we used to have at school. I also said my cleaner’s DD gave up her MFL degree and this was due to native speakers but also not having the confidence to persevere.

I’m very much aware that the playing field isn’t level and it’s really not just table chat that happens in native speaker households. There is way more input than that if they are Oxbridge bound. The DC certainly can write in their own language and parents ensure this happens.

It’s also about providing the cultural background to flourish. Not necessarily flashy holidays but being given access to a way of life that enhances understanding of the culture of the counties. My DD found exam questions seemed to be skewed towards this. If you had not been introduced to certain aspects of life, you would be at a disadvantage.

It went even further than that. I remember DD saying in a French paper, there was reference to a Greek God. If you knew your Greek Gods, you could do well, if you didn’t you had to do the other question because you couldn’t guess. 2 people did the Greek God question. What had this got to do with French you might think? Not much but it was a question skewed toward those with a certain education. Many others were easier for people with in depth knowledge of the countries and languages.

Interestingly, though, ds is at Oxbridge and good friends with the MFL crowd at his college. I buttonholed a couple of them and asked if they were native speakers and they said not at all; one had never even been to France.

The ones who are dual nationality are not doing MFL.

I understand about the Greek gods thing. I can never do those sort of questions on University Challenge! I recall that some years ago there was a steward's enquiry about a Maths GCSE paper on which there was a question about cricket which mentioned overs. If you didn't know what an over was let alone how many balls there are in one you were stuffed.

The Ofqual regulations about exam content are pretty tight. One exam board was fine hundreds of thousands because the German paper asked students to write the letter of the correct answer on a line (instruction was in German) but several students wrote the actual words and failed to score. Huge rumpus.

The exam questions must not require expert knowledge of another subject- big fines follow if that gets through. A GCSE question on osmosis used a carrot in the question rather than the potato used in textbook. Board was fined and students awarded additional points because the use of carrot was potentially confusing.

Well I do accept DDs question was at university level but if still came out of the blue and if you didn’t know the characteristics of the Gods for absolute certain, you were risking oblivion! I hadn’t even heard of them and they were fairly obscure to mere mortals! Yes, DD had attended the lectures so hadn’t missed any relevant discussion!!

The Ofqual Report has numerous flaws. It made quite disturbing reading in many ways. They didn’t have an understood mechanism for nailing who was a native speaker and teachers couldn’t identify the students with certainty so the whole project was questionable in terms of its use. It also had dreadful response rates.

It’s interesting to know how the Oxford students define native speaker because it means different things to different people. Ofqual did find a definition they wanted to run with and I tended to agree with it - interestingly it was along the lines I outlined earlier. It’s clearly difficult to research if the respondents don’t understand this though.

I do actually think Oxford make an attempt to look at students for their potential because they have more information than other universities and interview. As they are still competitive for places, they do see a wide variety of applicants and make choices accordingly because they are not seeing dwindling applicant numbers. Other universities are closing down subjects and are in a very different situation.

There are numerous DC who have not travelled widely on MFL courses but the issue is, are the exams going to favour DC who have all the advantages outlined in the Ofqual report? Ofqual only looked at school exams, at university it’s definitely biased towards native speakers and those with strong cultural links. Even after a year abroad it’s impossible to make up for this.

BTW, I notice that a highly selective sixth form that wants six GCSEs at grade 8/9 for entry are saying "It does not include a foreign language that is a candidate’s home language or native tongue. " Clearly the sixth form feel they can identify.
Not sure if they would count one where a parent speaks it as a native, but it is not the "home language" - arguably while still and advantage, if the home tongue is English (ie the method of communication between the parents and children), that would not be included, in this definition.

Forgive my ignorance but are there that many native speakers for MFL's to actually have an impact across the board? Outside of London I didn't think there are many French/Spanish/German students. I would have thought languages such as Bengali, Polish, Mandarin would be most 'at risk', but these surely are not the ones that Ofqual is referring to?

I think Ofqual said it estimated around 7% of French A level entrants, 17% of German, were native speakers, and I can't remember about Spanish. That is with all the caveats about the impossibility of defining it/getting the info, so who knows?

I don't know that they would have to be students resident in the UK though, they just have to be taking the A level. Do many overseas students take A levels? (Perhaps not - sounds as though it would be a lot of work to do German A level as well as Abitur, for example, and it seems unlikely the schools there would teach it).

At university they may also not be from UK of course?

DS is doing Spanish A level and might carry on to uni.

He didn't have the chance to do German at his school but I guess having me as a mum would have given him a massive advantage although I am not a native speaker, I am fluent and we go there a lot. He did a history trip to Berlin and was the only one who knew some German, mainly through osmosis through being going there so much.

But as others have said, it would be the same if you did Maths and your dad was a Maths teacher or you did biology and your mum was a biology researcher at the local university.

I think the Ofqual report was very fair, really, and acknowledged up front that it is hugely difficult to quantify the problem, and they carried out the research as a response to grumblings and anecdotal evidence.

Most schools did not want to admit that some of their results may be off the back of students with an already huge advantage, and likewise a student with the surname, say, Smith is not going to volunteer the fact that their mother's maiden name is Schmidt.

That’s exactly the flaw with the Ofqual report. They couldn’t get to the bottom of it! No one wants to admit good results are down to unfair advantage. So the schools didn’t take the research very seriously. One suspects the anecdotes are not wrong. The LEAP-Q view of a native speaker which impacts on results seemed sensible. Also 76 % of schools are now saying that MFLs are too difficult and put students off! The pupils perceive they will not do well so avoid MFLs.

It was also odd that German got a real boost with higher grades being taken by native speakers. I think, “fairweathercyclist” you would have put a lot more effort in had your DS been able to take German. You would not have seen it quite so casually. You go to Germany a lot and presumably you would have looked at what he was learning and helped. My DD speaks French and Italian and she would try and teach any DC she might have - it’s what parents do! If they then go on to A level, it’s making a real difference having that level of immersion. MFL lessons are not as numerous in a school week as maths lessons so home help is more pronounced. Being able to read and discuss books, watch and discuss films and practice vocabulary and speech is very very useful.

I think schools recruiting for 6th form can spot Chinese young people with Mandarin GCSE and don’t want this counted in the admission GCSEs. However they may well still offer the A level to these students and definitely to ones where the MFL is the language spoken at home but it’s effectively hidden! I know people who speak the MFL at home and English in school. The DC went to Oxford to do MFL. Everyone knows this is going on, but because it’s difficult to identify, and leads to good results, it’s not seen as a problem by schools. Why would you not want potential Oxford MFL students in your grammar school?

In DD's French class of 22 half had a parent who spoke French (Moroccan, Tunisian, Canadian, Swiss etc) but they would not show up on government statistics because the parent was born here, two other to my knowledge had French Canadian grandparents. One girl was Moroccan.

But would the school want any of them to take harder or different exams? Probably not.

but 'just' speaking doesn't help with grammar, formal use of language, vocabulary...

Speaking doesn’t help with vocabulary? Since when? It’s how young children learn to speak a language isn’t it?

Of course a very limited vocabulary wouldn’t be an advantage but many DC are getting way more than that from parents and grandparents. There is travel, immersion in the language, reading and all sorts of other advantages that are evident and it was found to be a help to students but a smaller of students than was thought. However as they couldn’t decide what a native speaker was, and schools barely cooperated, it was difficult to know many students benefit from this input.

I have a dc doing French A level - Year 12. We did consider the native speaker aspect but ds really enjoys French - it's not easy but it's his favourite A Level and probably the one he works hardest at. He started his GCSE with a predicted grade 5 and he got a grade 9. Can you imagine the sense of achievement he felt? There is so much more to education than getting an A or a 9 - finding something hard but having the grit and the commitment to see it through and achieve what you wanted. He might not get an A in his A level, he doesn't want to study French at Uni - he wants to learn French to live there so I think either a sandwich course with a year in France or a joint degree - for him no doubt he will need to do a Masters in something more vocational. Being an MFL teacher - not for him!

I know this is a zombie but thread but stumbled accross it on a search. I believe also the minority languages such as Polish etc are truely advantaged. We have a huge Polish community in DCs school, Polish is spoken at home, summers, Easter & Christmas all spent in Poland. They are hugely immersed in the culture & many go to Polish school in my town on weekends to sing Polish songs, history, geography & basically continue to keep up their culture.
On top of that they all have perfect English, very driven parents & are excelling in school. With Ryanair & their cheap flights the families often pop back to Poland for a weekend..
I remember when dc3 was studying ww2 history a Polish mum with twins took her dc to Krackow the following weekend just to visit all the ww2 sites..
Even though this thread is 3 years old I do agree that the minority language speakers such as the Polish are at a massive advantage

@Dinaprettyballerina
and so are Dc with French/fluent grandparents! It’s quite obvious it makes a difference to all MFLs. Learning from very young, knowing the idiosyncrasies of a country snd it’s customs is invaluable. Shame school didn’t do a study trip for all.

I agree, there is huge advantages & the hidden advantages of being immersed in a different culture is invaluable.

Yeah, like native english speakers studying english language in england.