Spanish GCSEs - Is DS for real? - Oral exam

[Buck3t]

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?

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.

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!

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!

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 25℅ of the final grade. Hth

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 :)

Thanks all. Have sent email to school as well.

clary thanks for that I will speak to DS.

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

New gcse is much more strenuous!!