Spanish Writing AQA GCSE

[YesYesKitten]

DD was saying that her revision for her Spanish writing exam is pretty much what she revised for her speaking exam.

Is that correct? Her learning difference means she finds MFL revision difficult so I'm not sure if this is a way of her reducing the time she needs to spend on it.

Well the skills used in the speaking exam will also be used in the writing exam – as in, if she has mastery of tenses and a solid knowledge of a good range of Spanish vocab and structures, then that will stand her in good stead for the writing exam.

Is that what she means? What did she revise for her speaking exam? Is this foundation or higher? (I ask this as the F writing exam is fairly different from the H paper).

The three overall themes are the same throughout the course so she needs to be able to speak and write about all three fluently (as you cannot know what will come up). The speaking assessment will examine her on all three themes; the writing exam will offer choices so to some extent it may be possible to avoid a theme (but there is no choice for the translation into Spanish). But for the speaking assessment she will have chosen one theme for the first part of the general conversation and may have practised a series of questions ahead of the exam with the teacher will probably; there is no way of knowing which topics will come up in the writing paper.

Thanks @clary , yes, she's doing Higher.

For her mocks, she thoroughly rehearsed 5x double sided pages of questions and answers for Speaking. I think there will be 3 more pages by the Summer.

OK well anything like that will for sure help with all her exams. Do you know if the speaking revision covers all three themes (broadly: family/hobbies/tech; home/holidays/environment; school/uni/work)? If so then even better – lots of decent vocab and phrases will be in there. It’s unlikely that she will be able to reproduce the speaking test answers exactly in the writing exam, but as long as she is able to pick out, for example, opinion phrases plus reasons, time phrases, conjunctions, then that will be good.

I would also suggest she checks verbs and tenses are secure – past, present and future inc irregulars and a range of people (I, he and she, we as a minimum); it’s also worth looking at the vocab lists (on the AQA website) for the different themes.

I also recommend practising translations into Spanish as this is a key task and one that cannot be adapted (in your written tasks, you can say what you do know if you can’t recall the word – as in, can’t remember what swimming is so I’ll say I played tennis – but you obvs cannot do that in the translation.

Thanks again @clary . The full vocabulary list is quite overwhelming. I bought the CGP vocab book as it has a great layout, separating Higher only words, but she says there are just so many words she does not know.

Any ideas for how to make that list more manageable? She just scraped a 7 overall in all 4 Spanish exams in Y10 but even just looking to make that more secure seems daunting.

She's more of a hard science kinda gal.

If she is keener on science then a grade 6/7 is great and all she will ever need tbh. In fact she won't need it (as in no uni requires an MFL) - but what I mean is, unless she is applying to Oxford or looking at vet med, a 6 is fine. And a 7 will tick the Oxford/vet med box.

Still tho – on the vocab – on the AQA website it's sorted into some key words (time phrases, opinions, key verbs) then listed by the 12 sub-themes. So what you could do (if you really wanted) is print out one of those lists and tick off all you know; then set yourself to learn (say) 10 of the unknown words each week (or five each day, or whatever seems reasonable).

I should stress that there is no need for a candidate to know every word on the vocab list. It's not intended for that really. Completely possible to gain a 9 at GCSE without knowing the word for (glances at random) pamphlet (el folleto, fact fans). So she shouldn't worry about not knowing words. If there are words you don't know in the translation, the best thing is, if translating to English, work out what kind of word it is (adjective, noun) and see what would make sense; if translating to Spanish, say something similar or write round it if possible – sometimes those answers are also acceptable.

Btw you mention Higher only words – you do realise that for Higher paper all or any of the words may come up? The Higher only words are only relevant if you are taking Foundation – as in, you don't need to learn them.

One of the best things to do is practice papers. There are only so many actual past papers but papers from other boards are good for practice as well (as long as she realises the structure of the actual exam may be different. And there are loads of practice writing questions online. Her teacher should be happy to mark anything she does. I know I would be (if I were her teacher I mean!).

Thanks so much for explaining all this @clary , yes, I realised the bit about Higher words but there's loads of Foundation words she doesn't know.

But as you say, it's not necessary to know them all so we'll make some in-roads between now and Summer.

Ah sorry I thought you would understand the H/F thing so I hope that didn't sound patronising!

Yes I think any inroads are good. It's tricky to see which are the most common words IYSWIM (bc those ones, if not known, are stuck on to come up!) – I could tell you in German and French but Spanish is not really my strongest language. But if she thinks "oooh I have seen that word in class but I can't recall it" then that's a good one to add to the "must-learn" list.

Not patronising at all @clary , really appreciate you making sure.

P.S not Ox /vet / med but DD has a specific competitive course and uni in mind. I did think about her dropping the language but she's spent so much time on the oral and we're nearly there now...