1. Developing listening & reading skills at KS4
Kirsten Ross
SLE, Carlton le Willows Academy

2. How will students be assessed?
AQA
Edexcel
Listening
Reading
different types of spoken language
25% of GCSE
questions in English, to be answered in English or non-verbally
questions in TL, to be answered in TL or non-verbally
different types of written language
translation from TL into English
As you can see, essentially the same requirements for both exam boards.

3. Listening
Different types of spoken language, using familiar language across range of contemporary & cultural themes
In Section A, range of question types in English, requiring non-verbal responses or responses in English
In Section B, range of question types in French, requiring non-verbal responses or responses in French.
Students must satisfactorily communicate understanding, even though response may contain some errors in quality of language used
Items will include authentic sources, suitably adapted and abridged
Required to deduce meaning from more abstract material, including short narratives
Answering questions, extracting information and evaluating and drawing conclusions

4. Reading
Different types of written language, including relevant personal communication, public information & factual and literary texts
In Section A, range of question types in English, requiring non-verbal responses or responses in English
In Section B, range of question types in French, requiring non-verbal responses or responses in French
In Section C, translation from French into English
Students must satisfactorily communicate understanding, even though response may contain some errors in quality of language used
Authentic sources, suitably adapted and abridged. Literary texts will include a mix of contemporary and historical sources
Required to deduce meaning from variety of written texts, including some unfamiliar language & short narratives
Scan for particular information, organise & present relevant details. Draw inferences & recognise implicit meaning

5. So, we need: Different types of text (spoken & written)
Questions in both English and TL
Different types of question
To develop and practise comprehension skills
To develop and practise common sense!
To develop and practise translation skills (both into and out of the TL, due to the writing paper)
Practise verbs (especially for Higher papers)
Coursebooks, e.g. Kerboodle, are great for different types of listening and reading texts. Others can be found online or on exemplar GCSE papers.
When focusing on questions in TL, there should also be a focus on how to adapt the original TL text from 1st to 3rd person.
Common sense is something that is lacking generally, so nag the students to use their brains!
Translation can be tricky, especially into the TL. I’ve told my GCSE groups that they must take highlighters into the exam and annotate the text to be translated.
Grammar is vital for the new GCSE. Although errors are allowed, verbs can be only an asset!

6. A few ideas…

7. Listening-specific

8. General ideas for listening…
Mix and match half sentences whilst listening
Summarise the main points of a text
Order the text before you hear it
Spot errors in the transcript
Do listening gap-fills but into the opposite language
Highlight key words in the question
Get exam groups to identify exam traps in listening and reading past papers
Work in pairs & listen for alternate questions, then share before listening a second time
Give answers first & ask pupils to anticipate what language they will hear
Predict answers

9. Listening Bingo 1 24
-16 22 11
-12 5
-13 30 6 23 12 -9 17
-21
-28 15 26 3 19 1
-30 18 4 10 20
-25 8 -3 27 7 2
-29 14 29 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Students have a copy each of this grid. Before listening to/reading a text, they write words/phrases they think will come up and write these in random places on the grid. If these words do come up, they can tick them. Then the teacher reveals what each square is worth (they only get points for the ones that did come up). 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

10. Transcription
An underused (by me anyway!) and valuable skill, practising students’ listening skills and focusing them on accuracy. I have these on display in my classroom and as individual cards for students.

11. Transcription pairwork
Pairwork – partner A has one text and partner B has a different one. Simply take it in turns to read your text to your partner and they write down what they hear! Then compare your answer to the original and discuss errors.

12. Reading-specific

13. General ideas for reading…
Highlight key words in the question
Get exam groups to identify exam traps in listening and reading past papers.
Instead of labelling a picture, label a text
Text on the left, some vocab on the right and the possibility to fold the vocab under for differentiation/challenge
After reading a text, give students sentences in the TL to finish
When doing a reading task, give the whole class one question at a time and give them a time limit to complete it
Give tasks points, challenging pupils
Have gap-fill parallel texts
RAG language in a text
Get exam groups to identify exam traps in listening and reading past papers

14. Place reading text here
Reading Challenge
Place reading text here
-12
Type word worth -12 points 10
Type word worth 10 points 7
Type word worth 7 points
Have a reading text in the yellow box. In 2 teams, pupils choose a word to find in the text. The pupils don’t know what each word is worth, but you may decide to give a higher score to more difficult words. Simply type the word in English that you want them to find in the text into the boxes. In presentation mode, all they will see are these words. Click on the word they have chosen when they have correctly identified it in the text and their score will be revealed. The winning team is the team with the highest score once all words have been found in the text.
Type word worth 20 points 20
Type word worth -17 points
-17 -9
Type word worth -9 point
Type word to wipeout the score X
-18
Type word worth -18 points 13
Type word worth 13 points 1
Type word worth 1 points -3
Type word worth -3 points 16
Type word worth 16 points

15. Have your own prepared headline here.
Reading text here. ?
Have your own prepared headline here.
Read the text and reveal your headline… Click on the question mark to reveal your headline. Like a summary of a text.

16. Reading text here. Headline option A Headline option B
Give the pupils a choice of headline for the text.
Headline option C
Headline option D

17. Dice rolling verbs wohne wohnst wohnt wohnen ich du er / sie / es
wir / Sie
wohnen
ihr
sie
Students work in pairs. Take it in turns to roll the dice. Depending on ability, you could start with the conjugated verbs hidden and then reveal them, or vice versa.

18. Translation-specific

19. General ideas for translation…
Translation can also be a listening task, a bit like transcription but into the opposite language
For translation activities, annotate tenses, translate verbs and highlight 2nd verbs, identify clauses, translate connectives. Break the text down into clauses
In pairs, pupils talk through together the process of answering a question or completing a translation
Give pupils error-filled translation, along with literacy codes. They have to identify and correct the errors
When doing a translation activity, put the text into an online translation engine, both to demonstrate what happens when you don’t think about what the text means and to compare with the text they would write

20. Translation Challenge
Type the gold TL phrase here.
Type the silver TL phrase here.
Type the bronze TL phrase here. 10
Type the gold answer in here. 7
Type the silver answer in here.
Before seeing a text, take phrases from it to be translated. Pupils work on their own and before each slide is shown, decide whether they will do gold, silver or bronze. Marks are awarded for each. You will obviously need to make the phrases progressively more difficult to translate, to be able to award points.
When pupils have translated their chosen phrase, they swap with a partner to have it marked. You show the answers after a given amount of time. Use the green pens to peer mark. Who has the highest score? 3
Type the bronze answer in here.

21. Type a sentence here and come up with three possible…
End Translations
Type a sentence here and come up with three possible…
Vote A
Ending 1
Vote B
Ending 2
Ending 3
Vote C
Using the template, show one sentence at a time on the board. At the end, type in the three boxes, three possible answers but make them obscure. Pupils vote on the ending they want (A, B or C). They then race to translate the sentence on their mini boards.

22. Translate & Score
Write a phrase to translate 37 1
Write a phrase to translate 2
-12
Write a phrase to translate 3 X 4
Write a phrase to translate 4 5 20
Write a phrase to translate
Write a phrase to translate 6 7
-21 7
Write a phrase to translate 1
Write a phrase to translate 8 X
Write a phrase to translate 9 10
Write a phrase to translate
-32
-40 11
Write a phrase to translate 29
Write a phrase to translate 12 14
Write a phrase to translate 13 14 27
Write a phrase to translate 15
-17
Write a phrase to translate
In teams, pupils choose a number. Click on the number and reveal a phrase to translate. Whether they are right or not, click on the translation to reveal a score. If their translation was correct, they get the revealed score (good or bad!). If their translation was incorrect, the other team get that score.
There are 3 wipeouts (clears their score – positive or negative) and a ‘swap score’.
To add your phrases to be translated, select and move the red shapes (the editable translation shapes are underneath). 16
Write a phrase to translate
Swap scores 17
Write a phrase to translate
-30 18 X
Write a phrase to translate 19
-33
Write a phrase to translate 40 20
Write a phrase to translate

23. Step-by-step translation
‘Les petits-frères des Pauvres’ is a charity
‘Les petits-frères des Pauvres’ est une association
which looks after people over 50.
qui s’occupe des gens de plus de 50 ans.
My grandma lives on her own
Ma grand-mère habite seule
and has been using this charity for two years.
et utilise cette association depuis deux ans.
A charity worker visits my grandma every morning
Chaque matin, un bénévole rend visite à ma grand-mère
Literally a step-by-step translation, either as a class or individually. Either way, this allows valuable discussion of the translation nuances. I underline the sections they need to watch out for (tenses, word order, etc). My groups have given very positive feedback about this.
and chats with her.
et discute avec elle.
Sometimes, if she needs them to,
Quelquefois, si elle a besoin,
the charity also does her food shopping.
l’association fait aussi ses courses.

24. More ideas? Working with transcripts…
What have you done to promote listening & reading skills that has been successful? Could you adapt anything you do with KS3, for example? Could you even use things you do with KS3? Can you think of any other ideas, following discussion on your tables? Could we put together checklists for students for tackling these skill areas?