"Learning" French by memorising sentences.

[Epictantrum]

My DD is in year 10 and is studying French. The plan seems to be for them just to memorise pre-written answers to questions, rather than actually trying to learnthe language. I guess this might be the best way to pass the exam, but it seems a shame, and I don't think she will know any French at all by the end of it.
Is this how it done nowadays?

HI @Epictantrum MFL is my subject and no this is not how it should be done.

Inevitably with some students the teacher may assess that one way to ensure some responses is to give them set phrases to learn (such as I like xxx because it is yyy, at a very basic level). But depending on the board the students are doing (do you know? most likely AQA but not necessarily) they may not even know any of the topics that will come up.

What I mean by that is that before the new spec (newly examined this year) in AQA students could pick a first topic for the speaking exam – and then tbf most teachers would ask a set series of questions that had been pre-learned, especially if a student was struggling (not saying that your DC is btw). The exam board says every year that teachers and students should not do this btw.

Anyway the new spec, certs for AQA (there is a choice with Pearson Edexcel), doesn't allow any choice so none of the speaking exam topics is known in advance (I mean the topics will be the ones studied, but you can't pick!). So unless you learn a series of Q&A for every topic and sub topic I don't personally think this is very helpful. Quite a lot of the questions are laid down for the examiner and cannot be changed anyway so the examiner (teacher) cannot just ask questions they know the student has learned answers to.

The learning of answers is only ever any use for speaking btw – your DC will be learning vocab and grammatical structures, practising the various tasks and doing past papers for the other three skills.

Apols for the essay!

No, you’re not going to learn French like that, maybe as an absolute beginner in Y7, to get used to the sounds and learn some vocab. But you’re not going to pass GCSE french like that.

Agree with previous poster, it sounds like your DD has misunderstood how something was explained to her because learning fixed sentences isn’t going to help with anything other than potentially the speaking part of the exam.

I disagree completely. I struggled with languages at school. I never understood when they were talking about grammar etc. I was in the bottom set for French. When I got to the 4th year (I think they call it Year 10 now) along came the fabulous Miss Batts. Her approach was exactly as you describe. She had a series of pictures and a set of 20 questions on each. We learned the questions and answers by heart. After a year something in my head clicked and I was off. Scored something like 98% in my CSE (it was too late in the day to move to O level).

Personally I think it is a more natural way to learn as it is closer to the way children learn to speak.

It has its place in language learning, just like learning to recite conjugations or inflections have their places, but these strategies alone will never teach you to speak a new language. Knowing some things by rote gives you a resource from which to pick words and phrases, as well as a sort of lexicon to refer back to when you come across a similar word, phrase or construction.

This how I prepared for my German oral GCSE back in the 90s, so I don't think this is just a "nowadays" thing.

I certainly agree that it is valid (as I said) to learn set phrases, and to rehearse answers to questions – I like xxx because yyy could be an answer to a question about subjects at school, sports, hobbies, friends and family, travel destinations.

But to learn 20 questions and answers as prep (and your only prep accrding to @Epictantrum but I agree that has to be a misunderstanding) for the current GCSE spec is not really going to work.

I agree tho that 20 years ago learning a passage or a series of answers by rote was very much the way that controlled assessment was carried out. Some of us don’t think that was a great way to learn to speak French haha but it helped students pass the exam. It's been very different tho since CA was done away with in 2018 exams.

Thanks everyone. I'm hoping there is some other learning going on as well. I'm struggling to help DD with how to memorise several paragraphs of texts whilst feeling it is a complete waste of time.

What kinds of things is she being asked to memorise? Whole paragraphs about what?

You don't need paragraphs of answers for the speaking exam really, so is this intended for the writing paper I wonder? That's wild – at H tier you do two essays, on quite specific topics. Impossible to memorise paragraphs of text that would fit to all the possible essays.

Is it more phrases that can be adapted perhaps @Epictantrum? <clutches at straws>? What board is this btw – is it definitely GCSE not IGCSE?

I think it's quite normal to be taught this way. Our children had a tutor to practise conversation.

Pourquoi?

Les Anglais sont très stupides pour les langues étrangères. Je ne comprends pas pourquoi ils essaient.

Un GCSE en français = nul

rien

Quelle impolitesse.

It’s whole paragraphs with multiple sentences, about holidays at the moment. Apart from anything else, it’s over a year until GCSEs (it’s AQA) so she’ll never retain it.

That is exactly how my 3 dcs prepped for gcse. They all got 9s. Seemed bonkers to me but clearly worked for the system them are in.

This so so depressing. It's no way to learn a language. It's not even a good way to get a good GCSE grade tbh.

@Neolara can you say what year that was? Learning whole passages by rote and gaining a top grade suggests controlled assessment ie 2017 or earlier; but that would be a letter grade not a number.

Was it this year? if not tbh the exams have changed and as I say there is even less scope for learning a series of set answers.

There are nine topics altogether (grouped in three themes): Identity and relationships, Healthy living, Education and work; Free-time activities, Customs, festivals and celebrations, Celebrity culture; Travel and tourism, Media and technology, The environment. So unless your students are planning to learn several paragraphs on each of those nine topics (please say these are self-composed) then they could easily miss out. In any case there will be wasted time – a candidate could have a photo card (the only speaking general discussion) on the second theme and essay tasks in the writing paper on a choice of two from free time, healthy living, celebrity culture and the environment – and then their learned essays on holidays are a total waste of time. What if the translation wants them to say "he went on holiday to Switzerland" when they have learned only "I went on holiday to France"?

It's not a waste of time to learn verbs, useful phrases and vocab, as the first two will be useful in any topic of speaking and writing and the vocab will be needed for all four skills.

Anyway this is the start of year 10. I can guarantee @Neolara and @Epictantrum that while your DC may have or may be learning paragraphs of French, that is just part of their learning. It’s not possible to get a high GCSE grade without doing more than that; a lot more. And tbh focusing on skills in manipulation of the language, the basics of grammar, verbs and tenses and a range of vocab is a much better way to do well.

Mon Dieu!

My dd did German but had to learn some answers to a theoretical holiday. She achieved an 8.

GCSE languages are about learning to pass an exam not speak the language. Just ask any adult who stopped languages at GCSE. They might remember how to ask for a coffee with milk but little else.

That was not this year I assume? As in, she chose the holiday topic for her first general discussion in the speaking exam? For AQA with the new spec that was examined this year you no longer do that, so it is a lottery what topic you will be asked about.

I agree btw that most adults cannot recall their GCSE MFL. But tbh that goes for any subject. GCSEs are a gateway to much else including further study of that subject, if wished. I did chemistry O level (old) but I cannot recall how to draw a blast furnace, as I dropped it after that. No one expects me to tho, but for some reason some people (not you @Snorlaxo obvs) seem to expect that a GCSE in MFL will make you fluent for the rest of your life.

It won't. It's a start. And you need to keep using it. (rant over)

My dc did GCSEs in 2017

they did this. Memorised several paragraphs for each topic.

the process was that they drafted it, teacher corrected, they put in second improved draft and then memorised.

then it was available ready in memory for either speaking or writing.

dc got a 9.

(she also memorised a whole fucking tract of Latin for her Latin exam and got a 9 for that).

That's controlled assessment though. My DD did this too, also sitting GCSEs in 2017. It doesn't happen any more in MFL GCSE. It was done away with from 2018 exams (thank goodness in many ways as it was so abused, inevitably).

The writing and speaking CA were also worth 60% in total. Now all skills are equally rated. Your DC must have got an Astar tho as no numbers for MFL in 2017 exams? DD has a mix of numbers (for eng lit and lang and maths) and letter grades.

You might expect something like that in year 7 or earlier, but not year 10 or 11: by then, they would be forming their own sentences.

But when I was volunteering in a primary school, I saw many of the Ofsted-demanded peculiarities of the way French was taught to them. I think that learning useful phrases would have worked well for them, so they could actually feel that they were speaking French, and I think they should have done more of it. What they often did was learn lists of words, without seeing them in sentences. They also seemed to be taught a lot of technical stuff about French grammar in primary school, turning it into spoonfuls of distilled boredom for them. One year 6 boy saw me in the street, and called out "French is shit!" He was a troublemaker who tried the old trick of asking me "What's the French word for 'seal', as in the animal?". I spelled it for him, and said "you work out how it's pronounced".

(I suppose the same is true about English, lots of technical grammar: I'd never even heard of "fronted adverbials" until I started volunteering in primary.)

There was one really technical exercise which utterly baffled them in year 5: they would hear "Je suis intelligent" and "Je suis amusante", and they were supposed to work out the name of the person saying it, and the names they had to choose from were "Yves" and "Chantelle". The point of the exercise what to hear if the T was sounded at the end of the adjective, and therefore if it was a boy or a girl. But what English year 5 pupil will know instinctively that Yves is a boy's name? The difference in pronunciation could hardly be heard over the cries of "I don't get it!" And what practical use would this really be? I doubt if many year 10 pupils would have succeeded at this exercise without some prompting.

I remember when I learned German in year 10 (starting in year 9), we had to describe youth hostels in detail, and which rooms were on which floor, and I remember thinking "what use will this be on my German exchange next week, when we haven't learned names of food yet?". There were also exercises where we had to form sentences based on diagrams in the book, and these diagrams were so cryptic that even the teacher was baffled.

My older teen was top set in an extremely academic state school that outperforms most private schools in our county. They taught MFL by getting them to write and then parrot 30 paragraphs, not just for speaking but also for the writing. My child came away with an 9, and zero confidence to speak a word outside of her prepared paragraphs. My 30 year old Tricolore GCSE French is rusty, poor, and still way more functional than hers.

I really hope the exam changes are successful in stopping this 30 paragraph business. If they do, hopefully it will revive students' interest and confidence in taking MFL A levels too.

It could have been an a a star. I don’t remember specifically and it sounds like you know what you are talking about.

i’m learning Arabic at the moment and it’s actually quite helpful memorising phrases to use as trying to go word by word slowly is not conducive to actual conversation.