Grey coat hospital school Language apptitude test

[Lallamaquellama]

Hello,new on the chat , my daughter speaks 4 languages,I talk to her in Spanish,my husband in Italian,she is in a bilingual school English,French ,so French and English languag e since reception. We had applied for Apptitude test and went for exam last Friday and it was a Martian dialogue, though she was not prepared at all,nor she had a mock test to follow. And she is 11 years old already as she is the eldest one for year 6 in her school....she didn't pass the exam, heart breaking as she wanted to continue with modern languages, so honestly not sure how it works that banding test as I believe speaking fluently 4 languages she has the apptitude anyway..but she didn't pass the exam, as we still hopes we will go for banding test..any insights Mums ? I will really appreciate your thoughts and recommendations

Sometimes those MFL tests (though I've never seen a greycoat one and note your saying that there was a 'Martian' element) have a section on what basically amounts to English vocabulary, so I could easily imagine a child who grew up in a multilingual household might be at a disadvantage, if breadth in terms of other languages meant sacrificing depth in English.

The test is also, at the risk of stating the obvious, about reading/writing/occasionally listening, maybe your daughter has particularly good speaking skills which wouldn't be directly tested here.

Not sure what to suggest going forwards, other than that the greycoats 'catchment' is actually quite wide provided you can prove regular church attendance.

No advice, I think a fair number of the schools that do language aptitude use ‘Martian’ tasks, I gather it aims to put kids on a level playing field as no-one will already speak Martian! But sounds super tricky without a practice paper. Hope you and she find a school she loves whether it’s this one or a different one!

These kind of language tests aren't about prior knowledge but quick thinking, applying logic, recognising patterns. They are couched as language test but they actually cover a broader spectrum of "intelligence".

Please also remember competition is very stiff - there must have been around 400 girls who tried out for just 15 places.