French GCSE

[Kez100]

My DD year 10 has just had results of a speaking exam which is grade D and 2 marks off a C. She worked very hard for this assessment but she feels she definitely did it better when she was revising but she does get very nervous (I'm sure many do).

Question is - she says she can do it again with a different topic (or something) later in the year but she doesn't want to (due to having prepared perfectly this time but nerves taking over which she currently thinks will just happen again) and she wants to concentrate on the other areas.

Obviously we will discuss this with her teacher at some point but any advice people have on here will be greatly received.

Her end of year 11 GCSE target for French is C.

I think a lot of students improve immeasurably in self confidence and subject knowledge between years 10 and 11, not just in languages but in all areas. At my daughter's (selective) school it's routine to do several attempts at speaking and practical exams until you get a result that truly reflects your ability, so it's entirely normal to do it a number of times, and it seems the year 10 results are almost regarded as practice runs (unless they happen to be really good, of course). My daughter's speaking results went up from B/low A to A* between years 10 and 11, although to be fair she did do a French exchange in between.
I suppose it also depends how good your daughter's written/reading/listening French is, as the end grade will be determined by her overall skill level in all four areas. As a C is so much more highly regarded than a D, I would have thought it would be worth her having another go at the speaking exam, unless she is so much stronger in the other tasks that she is sure of a C overall anyway. But I'm not a teacher, just a parent with a year 11 DD who's very keen on languages, so maybe someone else can give you more informed advice - hope this helps a bit.
It's so hard to juggle all the subjects - I think GCSEs are horrible!

• ps - also - isn't it normal teen reaction to say she doesn't want to do it again because she's disappointed and lost confidence about it? - again, when she's a few months older she may be better able to handle the pressure, it certainly made a big difference to my daughter. If your DD is young in the school year and still only 14, that's probably even more true!

Yes, I do agree that the saying she doesn't want to do
it again will have purely been a reaction to her result. She didn't even say that with determination, so I know I'd be able to convince her to do it again easily.

She is young. Just coming up 15.

Thank you for your comments. I don't know how strong her other work is predicted to be. She is getting C and Ds now in tests on the two papers which she is due to sit at the end of year 11. Also, in year 11, she gets 3 hours French a week whereas it is has been 2 in year 10.

I have had this problem with DS. I'm not sure how it works but he also was disappointed with his first speaking test, he got a B. It seems to be a test of memory as much as of language because he was given the question in advance and learned his answer off by heart. He lost marks by failing to use all the tenses.
Second time around the process was the same although obviously a different question and he got an A*.
Maybe she could view the first one as a practice and learn from her mistakes?

Year 10 is far too early to be doing final speaking exams in my opinion (MFL teacher). I would forget all about it now, and deal with the issue when the class teacher brings it up again.

Usually in my classes a student will go up by more than a whole grade between year 10 and 11.

If she does decide not to resit, you need to look at the other three skill areas and her likely grades (taking into account nerves in written exams etc.) to figure out how this high D might affect her overall grade.

Don't stress for now though, deal with it next year when she's had a lot more exposure to the language.

Thank you! I will leave it now and wait for the course to progress.

cat64 my DS sounds the same as yours. he has a photographic memory.
My French O level was in 1974 and I brushed up a bit to try and answer some of his questions and I reckon his grasp of French grammar is poor.
Some of the written tests are controlled assessments where they are given the question a few days before to research but you can't take notes in to the exam. DS just memorised his entire answer.
It seems that you can do well in a French GCSE if either you understand French or you have a good memory.

LLBB

Interesting you say about yr10 being too early. My daughter's school do 2 GCSE's in Yr9, so my daughter has just done her GCSE after 3 years of learning French. I personally think yr9 is way too early, but we didn;t know this when we chose the school.

It sounds as though her school does the same as mine, which is a number of controlled speaking assessments throughout the course ie when a particular module is finished. The first ones are invariably low compared to target grade but do get much better so she should definitely keep practising and have a really good go each opportunity she gets. One of the issues some of my pupils had was that, although they knew what they wanted to say and had done a lot of prep they hadn't said it aloud with an audience (mum/dad/friend) and a recorder so found the whole experience off-putting when faced with a real person listening and the recording equipment on the day.

Thanks for all the comments. I did meet her teacher the other day, quite by coincidence, and she said what you did Penguin. She knows that she knew it all but the shyness came through and she needed to use more tenses (I know she used three so presumably she should be looking at the conditional etc) . She thinks it will be her hardest task because she is shy. She was very pleased she had put the work in because not everyone had. As you say, there are more opportunities in the future, by which time she will hopefully be better at French too.