Tips for boosting Spanish A-level grade

[Urbangiraffe74]

My DS is half way through his Spanish A-level. This used to be his strongest subject and he got a 9 at GCSE and he was doing well at the start of the year and he is still workong really hard but now is predicted a grade that is 2 grades below the minimum he would need to achieve in his finals next year in order to qualify for the university he is aiming for (to study a different subject).

Did your child achieve an uplift between grade predictions and final exams? What tactics where most beneficial in helping them achieve this?
I'm particularly interested in what support structures we can put around him. E.g. was it tutoring that was the game changer? Watching Spanish films? Did you find a Spanish comic book or something like that? (he's really not a reader, unfortunately)

I’m not a good example as I’m a fluent speaker and held my poor child hostage for nights on end practicing 🙄
that said … reading , watching Netflix in Spanish with the subtitles on ( bedt to rewatch films and TV series that he likes and knows Casa de Papel ? )
also strongly advise getting onto YouTube and watching tutorials etc endlessly …
good luck ..

MFL is my subject tho not really Spanish (French and German) but I guess the same factors would apply.

If he got a grade 9 GCSE his grammar and vocab must have been pretty sound at the start of the A level course and you say @Urbangiraffe74 he was doing well.

Has something changed? What does his teacher say? Where is he failing, can they or he say? At this stage though it's unlikely to be about the written analysis of book and film as they are probably not far along with that. Is he finding the extra topic complexity a challenge? The higher level of language? If the issue can be articulated that might help. What is he working at and what does he need?

Unfortunately IMHO watching Spanish films, so often recommended on MN, will not move his A level grade up by two. Nor reading Spanish comic books really.

The best thing would be to make sure he is really strong on the topic-related vocab – so start now by revising the topics covered already, one by one – vocab, themes, some useful stats for the speaking exam, and any grammar elements that he is struggling with. Then try practising the. different tasks from the book (even if he has already done them in class – revision is good). WHat kind of marks is he getting?

I do think that A level is a big step up, which is why I would recommend grade 7+, but with a 9 he had a very solid start, so it’s a case of building on that and improving. Plenty of time for that to happen I would say.

Get him to watch stuff he’s already familiar with, but change the language to Spanish. ‘Friends’ was my kids’ go to for language learning. I don’t know if you can do that on TV - we had DVDs.

Ask him to stop treating Spanish as one problem and split it by paper: speaking, listening, reading, writing, grammar and the book/film if relevant. Then ask the teacher where the two-grade gap is really coming from. A tutor helps most if they diagnose weak task types and set short timed practice, not just more general conversation.

MFL teacher here

I can’t stress vocabulary enough. His vocab will be pretty sound if he got a 9 at GCSE but he needs to know the higher tier vocab that his teachers should be giving them

Do loads of past papers

Watching series and reading comics - better than nothing but not that helpful tbh.
Listening to podcasts/speaking with natives where possible and using the language as much as you can is what helps

As I say, people often suggest this. If he is watching TV anyway, then by all means switch to Spanish. Certainly it is not going to do any harm.

But I agree with @Floppyearedlab it won't help all that much either.

By this time next year, he needs to be able to speak for six minutes about Spanish regional identity or political movements in modern-day Spain; translate a passage about the monarchy in Spain into Spanish; summarise in 90 words a passage on immigration in Spanish-speaking countries or the changing world of the family.

He needs to be able to write two 300-word essays in Spanish about the techniques and themes of a Spanish film, and an analysis of a Spanish novel.

I’m honestly not convinced that Friends in Spanish will help that much with that. It's all about the vocab and any grammar, plus techniques for all of the above (summaries are a big thing IME as not something really covered as a skill in GCSE).

We got a tutor. It seems to be working (DC taking exams now...). The tutor is an A level teacher at another school - it is a weekly session and additional homework, entirely focused on DC and their needs.

DC1 was determined to get an A* as she had an offer for joint honours with Spanish and worried that she would be the only one there without one. She really, really grafted at her IRP, extensively covering all the vocab she thought might be related. She gave me the talk in English, and I fired as many questions at her as I could think of, which she then translated back into Spanish.

She also knew her book and film inside out, which is easy enough to do if you can get copies in translation, and again planned a number of essays ideas in English and worked on translating them back to get the right vocab.

I think for non native speakers these are the papers where you can make up the most ground. I don't think her Spanish was improved by either of these things, but her exams scores were, and she did well enough on these papers to compensate for weaknesses in her spoken/understood Spanish IYSWIM.

Best of luck to your DS!

My DD got a 9 last year and has found the transition very tough. We have been having fortnightly f2f tutoring this year. Was so bad in Nov-Jan tried to change subjects but wasn’t allowed. Got her timetable changed to a class with a close friend in and less native speakers. I’m really hoping that by next summer she will feel more confident with the speaking part.

I got an A in Spanish alevel 15years ago.
i did read some harry potter in spanish.

I mainly lost marks on speaking as i cant think quickly enough so had a B on that.
doing spanish verb books. I knew all tenses of all main verbs.
i got that grade while working ft and only 3h a week. I also did spanish gcse in 2h i think in 1 year.
i used to write out chunks of texts so i had the vocab spellings and verbs.

My kid is y9 and should be great at spanish 120 in spag sats. But state schools or ours isnt great at teaching. There arent enough mfl spelling tests shes had maybe 20 words this year and doesnt know even present tense.

i recently didnt find watching tv in spanish very helpful. But could help maybe listening skills

gcse is more lang but alevel has lit too. And is somewhat an essay subject.