2013-2014 Academic Year and the beauty of Blended Learning

During 2013/14 academic year I have been supporting students with their Spanish GCSE, A-Levels and IB ab initio exams. In addition, I am now accredited as an examiner for DELE levels B1/B2 by Instituto Cervantes to prepare and assess students for their DELE exams.

There are so many differences on the way these exams are set and assessed and the resources available for tutors for preparing that it is imperative for all teachers to get know in great detail what is at stake.

DELE

It seems clear that DELE exams are the hardest for a tutor to help preparing mainly because there are no past papers available. This material is being destroyed after every entry. 

Also, time restrictions, for the speaking test the students have only a few minutes before the exam to prepare the answers for the questions. No material is allowed in the room and students have no access to the questions until the exam starts.

IB ab initio

This is very similar to DELE on terms of materials used for preparation i.e. Difusión. However, there are past papers available for the second year external exams, but no so much consistency on past papers for the internal exams during the first year, as teachers for each school develop these papers in-house and are not allowed to share them with external bodies (i.e. tutors). These internaltests are not always consistent with what has been covered by the teacher in class.

GCSE and A-Levels (AS/A2)

There is plenty of information and resources for preparing GCSE and A-levels Spanish. In my opinion the UK system is by far the easiest to help students preparing. This doesn't mean that the level of competence expected is low. In fact, the level is pretty high. The advantage for the students is that they have the time and resources for preparation. The disadvantage is that they will need fewer skills in learning strategies and intercultural competence to get best marks in compare to the previous systems. This makes an impact in fluency and the level of competence might seem lower than the previous systems.

i.e. GCSE AQA Speaking test: 10 days for preparation where students already have the questions and also they can use any material for preparing the answers i.e. dictionary/notes. 

The challenge for the tutor is fluency. With just one or two questions that the candidate doesn't expect from the examiner, usually there is an impact on the level of fluency as not surprisingly candidates tend to memorise the answers by heart. Poor fluency means lower marks. 

The results for this previous academic year have been higher than expected. Well done everyone!

What's the future for this academic year?

Well,  I always encourage all my new students to try an online session and then decided a plan for the year. I usually get better results from students that take a blended option. Check my post here about using Skype in the language classroom.