FAQ for preparing GCSE and A-Levels Spanish

Last week I was asked what logistical questions students taking tests for Spanish always ask?

These are my answers for the faq asked by students taking Higher tier papers.

1. ASSESSMENT CRITERIA. Understand assessment criteria for reaching best results. For instance, the information a student generates must be relevant to the topic or task they are performing in Spanish. Students tend to provide information that is not relevant. The reason for this is that students feel they need to keep talking/writing: more words more marks. The criteria for assessment makes it clear: more irrelevant information lower marks.

2. TIME RESTRICTIONS: Understanding that you do have time to perform the task. Because students feel under pressure there is no detailed planning when writing a piece of work. Therefore, the language usually is very poor in the first paragraphs. This doesnt give a good impression to the examiner. I encourage to use mind maps to explore accurate vocabulary before approaching the first paragraph, Also decide in adnvance the text structure will help students to better perform the task.

3. EXTRA WORK:. Undertake work that isnt stricktly focused on exam preparation. When tutoring there should be a good level of nurturing before focusing on test taking as such. However, students tend to undermind this process and want to get on with practising the test. As a result the learning becomes functional and less expressive. I use technology to motivate students to undertake extra-work. For instance there is a website called Bombay TV where students can make subtitles for short films. This is a sample of work from a GCSE student that gained A* in her controlled assessment in November 2013. She could understand the language in the film, therefore she undertook this task as translation work. Her psedonym is Marina.

4. MISTAKES: Relax about making mistakes. Students that gain A* do make mistakes. In fact risk taking and fluency is rewarded for the test. In my lessons I only correct students speech when the mistake is meaningful to marks. If communications is not affected there is usually no impact on marks.