1. THOMAS CLARKSON Academy   Faculty of Languages & International Studies   New GCSE Parental

2. The New GCSE
First Year 11 exams will be in The new GCSE course is assessed entirely through externally assessed exams at the end of Year 11.

3. Exams
The course will now be entirely assessed through exams at the end of the 2 year course, no Controlled Assessments throughout.
The exams will be weighted as follows:
25% Speaking
25% Listening
25% Reading
25% Writing

4. Curriculum and Exam content
The new GCSE topics will fall under 3 overarching themes as below:
Many of these we cover already but there are small changes to some of the topics to reflect themes and issues in today’s society.

5. Tiered Entry?
Yes, there will still be Higher and Foundation tier but… Students will have to sit either all higher tier exams or all foundation tier exams, they cannot do some of both as in previous years.

6. Listening
Higher and Foundation have different exam durations; the Foundation paper will last 35 minutes and the Higher paper will last 45 minutes.
There will be 2 sections to the exam papers:
Section A – this section will have the questions in English and the students will be expected to answer in English.
Section B – this section will have the questions in either French or Spanish depending on the exam and the students will be expected to answer in the target language.

7. Speaking Conducted by us but all marked by our Exam board (AQA)
The Speaking exam has 3 parts, each part will be based on one of the 3 theme so that all 3 themes are covered in the exam.
Students will have a choice of the theme they cover in the General conversation part but not in the other 2.

8. The Speaking assessment
A semi-structured conversation between you and the teacher based on a role-play situation with 1 surprise question.
You are given a picture and you have to respond to a series of questions about the picture. You will see most of the questions before hand.
General conversation about a “theme” that you have chosen in advance

9. Reading Foundation tier: 45 minutes Higher tier: 1 hour
Bigger variety of reading ability expected.
Normal ‘exam style’ questions
Some in English > English answers
Some in French/Spanish > French/Spanish answers
Response to target language literary texts – not likely to be very contemporary
A translation piece from Target Language to English

10. Writing Foundation tier: 1 hour Higher tier: 1 hour 15 minutes
The exam style for each tier has a slightly different format.

11. Writing - Foundation
A list task – the student will need to produce a list of words based on a theme
Short writing task – the student will need to produce a series of short sentences in response to a series of short tasks
Translation task – the student will need to translate from English into French or Spanish
A structured writing task – there will be a choice of 2 questions in response to which students will be expected to produce a short written piece about 90 words in length.

12. Writing - Higher
A structured writing task – there will be a choice of 2 questions in response to which students will be expected to produce a short written piece about 90 words in length.
An open-ended writing task – Students will be responding to 4 bullet points about a topic producing around 150 words. Again there is a choice of 2 questions.
Translation task – the student will need to translate from English into French or Spanish

13. What are we doing? New style curriculum
New resources and GCSE textbook (just been released this year)
Students will have access to a VLE for the new textbook as they do with the current one
Staff training has taken place to prepare for new exams and curriculum.

14. What can you do?
Encourage your child to get creative with their language learning at home.
Watch DVDs in the target language with English subtitles
Watch foreign TV shows
Encourage them to listen to Spanish or French music or covers of songs (Youtube: Kevin Karla y La Banda / Sara’h)
Read bi-lingual books or familiar books in Spanish or French
We have also suggested a long list of websites or apps students can use to help them with their language learning throughout the next 2 years.

15. Thank you!
We hope you found this informative and helpful.