"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?

was this pre-2017 @Maglia ? If so it was the CA as noted. If it was the 2018-2025 spec then that's still a depressing and poor way to teach MFL tbh.

It's a bit like learning a literal five-page essay, points, quotes and all, for every possible topic in Macbeth. I mean no one does that (I hope)? They learn about the themes, learn the structure of the text, the characters, who does what and why, some useful quotes and how they show the point they are making, then adapt all that to the question on the character of Lady M, or the theme of death, or the supernatural, or power.

Yes agree, learning phrases is brilliant. And how to use them – if I know how to say xxx is my favourite, I can apply it to lots of situations.

ETA I meant to say well done to your DC. It wasn't easy to get an A star even with the controlled assessment!

One of my dc did this for English lit.

he wasn’t going to pass English and wanted to do a levels in chem bio maths and further maths.

i got him a tutor and he memorised three essays for each book/play they did. He passed and did a levels and went to uni.

That feels like a valid means to a challenging end though @Octavia64. I guess they were essays that could flex a bit – I mean something on power could work for kingship and also character of Macbeth, certainly if aiming for a grade 4/5/6. It must have been a lot of learning for him though. And I am sure you agree it wouldn't be a great way to teach a whole class

That's exactly what my kids were told to do for GCSE, 5, 3 and 1 years ago (write out answers and memorise them). And as a language teacher I can confirm this does not mean you have can actually speak the language in a real conversation. Although the exam marks are split evenly between reading writing speaking listening they spend far too much time on reading and writing and too little on speaking. I teach adults (not for exams) and basically take the view that the most important thing is speaking and understanding spoken language. How often will you need to write anything in a foreign country? Reading, ok a bit but reading is generally the easiest skill, most people have a higher level at reading than any of the other three because with most languages there are words that look similar enough to guess.

Recently, she is still a teen. What you say about a toolkit makes sense but it chimes much better with how I was taught than what she took away from the way she was taught. Maybe it works better for others. I can remember being quietly panicked that she couldn't conjugate être in Y11 but maybe I was asking the wrong question.

I don't mean to castigate rote learning. It's an important part of passing exams, especially in these days of not much coursework. But if it's not made transferable then it's such a wasted opportunity.

I don’t think it’s desperately important myself to be able to conjugate être to take GCSE French. How often will you use vous êtes in the exam? Or ever actually (there's a reason why it’s almost regular!). You'll hear it in the role play I suppose, but you are expecting the question there.

What's important is knowing that there are different forms of a verb (as in English, but more haha) and how to say I am and he/she/one is and we are and they are. And why he works and they work sound exactly the same but are written differently. That way you can extend according to the ability of a student (a weaker candidate can probably get away with I and he or she pretty much). It's about the ability to manipulate the language and go from Que fais-tu? to Je fais (or even Je joue).

Anyway. Hopefully @Epictantrum's Dc will move on to some more useful and generally applicable learning in the rest of year 10 and 11.

Fair enough. Perhaps I should have said I was surprised she couldn't spell "elle est" off the top of her head by Y11.

Yes I hope the curriculum changes help your child, OP.

Yeh that's not OK at all.

I would expect someone gaining a 9 to be able to do that! God it's depressing isn't it. Sorry I didn't mean to say that verb understanding was not important. It is, it really is. Just when I was at school we learned them by rote and I am not sure that that was super helpful. But knowing the basic forms in a decent range of tenses is key surely. I really don't get how you would write a grade-9-level 160 word essay without using a bit of third person as well.

It is a really good way to learn a language because, if the sentences are written correctly, they will be full of idioms that are not directly translatable into English but can be used in various other situations. Learning by heart also gives you a chance to perfect your pronunciation and learn the rhythm of the language.

I can't agree that it's a good way to learn a language. (I also don't think it's a very practical way to pass the GCSE in its current form.)

People have posted about how their DC did this for various earlier iterations of the GCSE (when it made more sense) and that they literally learned the texts by heart without any ability to manipulate the language to be able to say something else.

If what you have learned is “je suis allée en France pour voir Paris” but then you later find yourself wanting to say “He went to Italy to visit Rome”, then without the knowledge that it is “il est allé” you’ll be stuck and your learned essay won't help at all.

I think you can perfect your pronunciation of French (an important element now as there is a read-aloud task where that is all that is being assessed) in many other ways – speaking in class as partner work or with the teacher; listening to your teacher and native speakers speak; learning the phonic sounds that differ from English; learning the rules about which elements you say and don’t say.

Again, if you have perfected your lovely drafted piece of French, but the read-aloud task uses different words, what will you do? You need the tools to be able to complete the tasks, not some specific tasks already done.

It's how it used to be done. Grandparents say they never got to speak in class! Yet they actually know more than the teenagers in the family. If you learn the basics well, you can adapt it. I suppose it depends on the person; if you learn rote style, and don't think about it, that's one thing. If you learn some basic sentences and think how to adapt them, that's fine.

Oh I'm sure she did have it written in her paragraphs but pulling bits out of context is easier for some than for others, perhaps.

It is amazing how much rote learning a brain can manage. I had a colleague who told me he'd learned the whole Quran in Arabic. He doesn't speak or understand Arabic but he'd been drilled to recite it from a young age. It's an astonishing feat.

But I imagine no one goes into MFL teaching wanting to teach that way.

A good tip. Make a recording of the written answers - perhaps a native speaker or uni student could do this for you-and get your child to listen to short sections on the bus in the car etc. It will stick if you do it often enough.

It’s the way the exam is structured that’s the issue. There’s set responses to garner the maximum number of points. I happen to speak several other languages fluently (mixed family so more than one mother tongue), so I took GCSEs in these languages. The teachers for both languages were English so my language level was actually far better than theirs, and I was still made to memorise set stock answers as otherwise they didn’t anticipate I’d get the grades.

In the UK school system there’s no requirement for a language teacher to have that language as their native language or even to be truly fluent in that language, and it’s the same for examiners. How are any students supposed to learn a language well if they’re being taught by someone who isn’t truly a speaker of that language either….

🙄

I agree @HesterLeggatt that it's important to tick certain boxes in your answers – that's true of any GCSE actually. This is why it's a good idea even for a native speaker to get some input from a teacher with experience of the exam. I've said this before on these boards but as a speaking examiner I have more than once come across YP who clearly have not done this and have as a result not done as well as they might. It’s more of an issue at A level but I have seen GCSE candidates who have answered my questions as if it's a real convo.

Where did you go on holiday? If I ask a colleague that they will say "oh I went to Wales. It was good." But in the GCSE exam, for a top mark, I need them to tell me what they thought of it and why, what they did, what their children thought of it, where they might go next year…

In the UK school system there’s no requirement for a language teacher to have that language as their native language or even to be truly fluent in that language, and it’s the same for examiners.

I infer you think this is a bad thing. I hear you, as in native speaker ability is a great resource for sure. But having known lots of MFL teachers (obviously) I would say that the best were not native speakers or totally fluent. Not to say that a native speaker cannot be a good teacher – of course they can. But I wonder if there is sometimes to great a reliance on that and not enough on teaching skills and exam knowledge? Maybe. or maybe just I know some really really good teachers – who just don't happen to be native speakers.

In any case it's really not practical – there are not enough native speakers who want to teach (clearly); plus schools usually need an MFL teacher to offer more than one language. The (for example) German-native German teacher I knew found it a huge huge struggle to get to a standard in French where they could actually teach it (as they needed to).

One issue is that examiners like certain phrases and structures which maybe don't flow naturally for native speakers and you have to include them to get high marks. I used to give my students a list of things they had to include and the answers may have sounded contrived but it worked.

yes I agree with everyone saying it is contrived. It is. There has to be a mark scheme and while I imagine you could get a 9 without using the specific phrase "après avoir xyz" (or whatever) you do need to (for example) use a certain level of complex language in your answers for the top mark.

But as I say, that's true of all GCSEs. Biology is surely notorious for this - you have to use certain words or answer in a certain way? Eng lit – you need to use quotes to prove your point – it's all artificial. Is that how you would discuss a book with a friend? no for sure it isn't. But there has to be a structure and a way of assessing the level achieved.

ETA just to be clear, I am not condoning this "learn several paragraphs" method of teaching MFL or of revising for exams.

Exactly and this is why some "bilinguals" do not do well- think of teenagers mumbling in English etc and giving monosyllabic responses. Also the topics discussed in the exam are not things that really interest the average 16 year-old and at A level many bilinguals do not have the subject knowledge or vocabulary to discuss things like windfarms or genetics in their home language because at home in the family they have a different type of chat. Oh and bilinguals also make mistakes -sometimes quite bad ones !!!!

yes absolutely this.

To be fair, if I had to now take a speaking exam equivalent to the German AQA A level in English (my native tongue obvs) then I don't know how well I would do. Would I have the facts and figures at my fingertips to be able to discuss the rise of the Reform party in great depth and detail? Would I know how many single-parent or blended families there are in the UK and what specific issues it has caused? Would I be able to talk at length about modernist architecture in the UK? Probably not tbh.

Yes it's an advantage but as I say, I can think of YP who have come a total cropper in their A level exam bc they had clearly done no prep. One spoke about a picture relating to French music as if it was a GCSE picture chat, with no evidence of knowledge or reading up on Francophone music. You can be well or ill-prepared as a native speaker just as much as a non-native.

<gets off hobby horse>

When I did French O level, back in the dark ages, there was a part of the oral exam called 100 questions. It was divided into 10 or so sub sections with questions on eg Family, School, Hobbies, Holodays etc. You prepared and learned the answers and the Oral examiner could ask you about any of them.
I actually found it a surprisingly effective way to pick up a lot of language and used a lot of the material while on French exchanges.