Blimey : MFL A levels have changed

[Piggywaspushed]

Disclaimer : went to school in Scotland in the late Middle Ages.

I studied French and German as CSYS level (kind of like A2) and got As so considered myself good. But what my DS is doing now is really turning him off. we did three lit texts in French and German (this may have been more than we needed knowing my school!) and some history (German was east Germany and education , I remember; French I think was the resistance) But all our teaching was basically in English, certainly all our discussion of texts and I SWEAR we wrote essays in English!

DS can't even seem to learn grammar in peace now without it being related to some 'ishoo' and even his homework is set in detailed Spanish.

I know this is all very worthy - but it's no wonder kids talk about the gulf between GCSE and A level in MFL!

DS already dropped French after one week. He can't drop Spanish, not least because he got near as dammit full marks at GCSE. You wouldn't know it, though. He is really struggling, hates it and is now being supervised in free periods to force him to work... there is no shame emoji so I went for blushing...

The teaching isn't great either, which does not help. Boys definitely respond negatively to weaker teaching much more than girls ime.

Anyone else share my his suffering?

We had a book called Tricolore but before that there was one that sounds like the one you described with old fashioned line drawings and a family who went on constant picnics....

I read about the grade boundaries stuff. I got a bit confused but it seemed to suggest it was actually going to make it harder in many ways for non native speakers,as I thought 'too many' candidates were getting C and above.

Of course anyone can pursue any A level they choose but a fluent speaker doing German A level mustn't face the same demands in their A level surely? It's not anything like equivalent to the English Language A level for example...

I read on a different thread that Oxbridge don't fully count a language A level done by a native speaker ' I suspect that is staff and nonsense though !

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?

Well, quite... that's why I assume it's nonsense...?

It is as shame it's not a level playing field :and I do know it puts students off A level.

Even at my fairly bog standard semi-rural comp, there are 6 students doing Spanish A level, 4 of whom have Spanish parents and one of whom lived in Spain until year 9.

I taught a non native speaker a few years back - I taught him comms in which he got a high B. He had lived in Spain for years previously (he bizarrely actually looked Spanish!) What was interesting is he got an A for Spanish A level ( a year early) and then an A in German - so all that language immersion gave him an all round facility for learning languages.

At English GCSE he got a B!

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?!

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?

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.

We do have some students who deliberately choose a language they don't speak in their options at GCSE : and our depts. tend to encourage that for some breadth.

I think it is an enormous challenge for teachers, especially if they themselves are not native speakers. I have heard that sometimes the less pleasant bilingual students trip them up or judge them somewhat.

I never really thought about this until recently. But I still wouldn't have discouraged DS from doing the A Level as I love languages - and they were his best grades to be practical.

I also don't know how unis would know, unless the application had a language(s) spoken at home box like school application forms?

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!

GU24, we did Pliny's account of Vesuvius as well! Either we were massively overprepared or our teacher hadn't read the syllabus and just covered every book he had in the back room.

Well - my DS is intending to chose Maths, Geography, Economics and Politics as his A levels. I was going to try to persuade him that he might like to do German as he has a A* prediction and wants to do Economics at degree level 9; well this is his current thinking, who knows where he'll be in 2 years time). I thought perhaps having German would be helpful careerwise but seeing all the comments here and realising the difficulty of getting a top grade (which he'll need to read Economics where he wants to) I am going to leave well alone.

I am also aware that Oxbridge will want 3 other A levels if they are aware that one of the parents is a native speaker of the language being studied. I am not sure whether you have to specifically disclose it or whether it is just those students that have a French/Russian/Italian/Chinese sounding surname that face this.

I do know that a friend's half Chinese daughter with an English surname was not allowed to use her Mandarin grade A level and had her offer based on 3 others to read Mandarin as a degree. She is not Oxbridge and I am not certain she was interviewed either.

I've just checked, and two of the sixth forms DD was considering don't do any MFL. WTF? Is that common?

it is becoming more common. It's terrible isn't it? I do think a lot of this thread does illustrate why there isn't the take up : but also MFL recruitment is a nightmare. This is often not discussed because of government priorities with STEM subjects.

Spanish A level was not guaranteed at DS's school, which is why he actually started elsewhere. Now that they are offering it, we are complaining so the head must just love us! I do feel a bit ungrateful but it's DS's future...

The government thought by making the Ebacc compulsory, the language issue would sort itself but there just aren’t the teachers. They’re now trialling student loan forgiveness for MFL recruits to try to get some more teachers.

It's such a sad thing .

Like Pointythings I did A-levels in Holland many moons ago. I'd like to add that, for English, not only did we do all final exams in the target language (both oral and written) but also we had to read 16 books in English (including Shakespeare and Dickens by the way) that we had to talk about during the oral exam. These books were not prepared in class, each pupil had to make their own list of books they wanted to read and then study them without any help from the teacher. If you did A-levels French and German too, you had to study 12 more books per language. On top of that were 25 books for Dutch. And we did 7 A-levels, not 3!

This thread has got me thinking! DD is year 10 and Spanish is her favourite subject - but it seems like it’s risky as A level. We have no Spanish speaking background.
I did French A level (lit essays in French) and it was my worst grade - but I did enjoy it.

I think it sounds like her GCSE will prepare her better.

Great teaching makes all the difference.

fromwest anecdotally i think you may be right - mfl is 'risky' in that i've heard of people getting unexpectedly low grades or lower grades than in their other subjects, so a 'surprise' iyswim. i stress that is only anecdotal!

on the other hand people do say mfl course offers from universities tend to be lower as they are harder to recruit for (and perhaps because univs have long recognised what we are now discovering - the impact of bilingual speakers on the grade boundaries.)

I have about 500 uni prospectuses in my home at the mo (in the vain attempt to get DS to show a passing interest). I must stress these are not high falutin RG places. The languages offers are no lower than other subjects. The only noticeable lower offers are in the sciences and education!

That's really interesting piggy, I'd heard they were slightly lower but perhaps that means 'lower than law, or medicine', so not really lower generally.
Anecdotally again (so not much use really and quite possibly wrong!) I've heard the univs may be more likely to 'drop' the offer so if you don't get the grades you may still get in. But do not rely on this view unless someone who knows comes along to confirm it!

I think that language teaching is suffering because of the way people try to teach it in primary schools. The government insist on the teaching of French but there isn't the money to get French teachers and children don't find it easy and are put off languages. I think it would be better left until high school (unless specialist teachers can be put in primary schools) where people who really know the language can start teaching; my youngest is far better at Spanish after just 1/2 a term of Spanish teaching than he is at French after apparently having been taught it since he was 6.

That's very interesting fairy - most people say the reason we're so far behind places like Germany is not starting early enough! I am not so sure - as you say it depends on the quality of the teaching.

Interesting question will be how to recruit any mfl teachers at all in future years if so many are deterred from doing the a levels? Action needs to be taken!

I recall my German teacher 20 years ago welcoming us to A-level saying "You'll be expecting a syllabus. I'm not giving it to you; your aim is to become fluent in German. Now we're going to watch the News." She scribbled vocabulary on the board as it came up, and we watched the same show 3 times until we we somewhat less terrified. Any word mentioned in class, we had to write down and would be expected to know forever.
We did 5 books so we could write about four, in English - I think we all avoided Maria Stuart and did Der Besuch der alten Dame, Das Brot der fruhen Jahre, Caucasian chalk circle, and Die Judenbuche. Did have to write essays in German - 500 words a week, and also did translation into German for S-level prep. Teacher left after Christmas of U6 and successor was a useless wimp - 14yos complained about not enough homework - so it was just as well we'd covered everything already. New teacher kept telling us about her divorce and we kept saying can't you at least whinge in German? Which she did, to be fair.

I was just about fluent in standard German by the end, though lacking in colloquialisms.

They don't even have those blue vocab books any more!

In primary schools, the people teaching French are often the usual class teacher, who may not even have GCSE.

Once a fortnight I can hear a course running next door to my office where a lady is instructing teachers how to teach French. It is very very repetitive : 'asseyez vous' over and over again and over and over again.