GCSE MFL speaking moderation: transcript

Transcription

1 GCSE MFL speaking moderation: transcript Hello. My name is John Halksworth and I am one of the Principal Moderators for AQA GCSE Speaking. The general principles of marking which I m going to talk about apply to French, German, Spanish, Italian and Urdu. Welcome to online standardising. The purpose of this video is to talk you through some of the aspects of moderation and in particular to give you guidance for your re-marking of the work you receive from the schools in your allocation. There is a lot of information to take in, particularly if you are a new moderator, so please pause the video at anytime. You will need to have in front of you the Notes for Moderators for your language. Remember your Team Leader is your first point of contact should you have any problems during moderation. Your Team Leader s contact details can be found on the Extranet. Before May 7th the schools in your allocation should have done one of two things: if there are fewer than 20 students in the school, you will be sent the work of all students along with the accompanying paper work. If there are 20 or more students in the school, by May 7th you should be sent two copies, one yellow and one pink, of the Centre Mark Forms for both the recorded and the unrecorded tasks. You then request the sample from the school by following the procedure outlined in the Moderators information booklet. It is very important that you check that you have the recordings and all of the paper work that you need as soon as you receive it from the school. You need to contact them as soon as possible to ask for missing items. It is advisable to or phone the exams officer when you make any contact with the school. Firstly, let s summarise what you should receive from each of the schools in your allocation: o a recording of one task per student in the sample. This could be on CD or cassette tape. memory stick, o the Task Sheet or Sheets. There should be one copy of every task used in the sample. o a copy of the unpredictable questions. You only need one copy of all the unpredictable questions used for each task. o the Task Planning Form, if the student has used one. This contains the words that the student has used as a prompt during the task. There should be no more than 40, but I ll say more about that later. o the Candidate Record Form. This will have the breakdown of marks given by the teacher for the recorded and unrecorded tasks. It is only o the recorded task mark which you will be considering. o the Centre Declaration Sheet (one per school). Now we will consider those things that have a direct bearing on your marking of the tasks.

2 When you are about to listen to the recording you should have the following available: a stopwatch / the task sheet / the unpredictable questions for that task / the Task Planning Form (if used) / and the annotation sheets (if one is being used in your language), together with the Notes for Moderators and the assessment criteria. Before you listen to the recording, check the Task Planning Form. It should have no more than 40 whole words in the target language or in English or a combination of the two and it should contain no conjugated verbs, visuals or codes. If that is the case, you can put it to one side and forget about it. If there are more than 40 words in total, you must ignore when awarding a mark the parts of the student s response which use words noted on the Task Planning Form beyond the first 40. If the Task Planning Form contains conjugated verbs, visuals or codes, you must ignore when awarding a mark the parts of the student s response which use the conjugated verbs, visuals or codes. You are now ready to listen to the recording. Start your stopwatch as the teacher starts to ask the first question connected to the first bullet point. For example if the first question is What do you do in your free time?, begin timing as soon as the teacher says What. Ignore any preamble. The timing of the task should be between 4 and 6 minutes. If the task lasts for less than 4 minutes (that is 3 59 or less), the student cannot score full marks for Communication. It would still be possible for a very good student, whose task lasted not too far short of 4 minutes, to score 29 out of 30. If the task goes beyond 6 minutes you must stop marking at that point if the teacher is speaking. If the student is speaking, let him or her finish that sentence and then stop marking. All bullet points in the task (including the unpredictable question) must be covered for students to have access to full marks for Communication. If one or more of the bullet points are not covered, you must use the table in note 2 (coverage of main bullet points) of the Notes for Moderators in order to determine the maximum mark you can give for Communication. For example, let s say that the task contains 5 bullet points plus the unpredictable question and the student is unable to answer the last question. Look at the fourth row up from the bottom of the table and you can see that the maximum mark for Communication is 9. It may be less but it cannot be more. The unpredictable question will usually be the last one asked by the teacher. In order to accomplish the unpredictable question, it must be answered by using a verb. The verb may not be totally accurate and language-specific examples of what is and what is not acceptable can be found in note 3 (the unpredictable question/bullet point) of the Notes for Moderators.

3 And now we ll consider the assessment criteria. Marks are awarded under 4 categories: Communication, Range and Accuracy, Pronunciation and Intonation and Interaction and Fluency. You will become accustomed to the interpretation of the criteria as you listen to and read the commentaries for the tests used in the online standardisation. However, for now I ll summarise the different bands in each category. Firstly, Communication. It is worth a maximum of 10 marks. We have already mentioned two things which may have an effect on Communication, those being short tasks and the noncoverage of bullet points. In order to score 9 or 10 marks for Communication, students will speak confidently, which means they will extend the answers to the questions they are asked. You may listen to students who are able to give replies of around one minute to the 4 or 5 questions they are asked. This is great, but other students may still score in this band if they are asked the occasional supplementary question. They will be able to give and explain a minimum of two ideas/points of views/opinions. An example of giving an explanation could be: I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. My doctor says it is good for my health. An explanation can also be a justification: I like watching documentaries, because they are very educational. For a mark of 7 or 8, students may lack some of the confidence needed for the top band or they may not develop their answers so often, but they will still do so regularly. They must have given at least two opinions. There is a good amount of information. In the 5 to 6 mark band, students are still able to develop their answers sometimes. A typical performance in this band may be inconsistent, where the student is able to start well and give quite detailed answers but then with later questions is only able to give minimal replies. They still need to be able to give at least two opinions. For a mark of 3 or 4, there may be more occasions where the student either can t answer at all or is able only to give quite short answers. However, some of the responses are developed, even if that development is very basic. For example the question is How do you keep fit? and the reply is I go to the gym on Thursdays with my friends. This is pretty straightforward but it is going beyond the minimal response. Again, two opinions are needed or the maximum mark is 2. For a mark of 1 or 2 there is likely to be a lot of silence so that little relevant information is communicated. Very few responses are developed, but there should still be some, if only at a very simple level. For a mark of 0 the student will have given no development whatsoever. The Communication mark may be affected by very poor pronunciation or widespread serious inaccuracy. If what is said is incomprehensible, it does not communicate. The next category is Range and Accuracy, which is also worth a maximum 10 marks. It covers both aspects of language and so at times you may find that you have to arrive at a compromise between the two.

4 In order to get 7 marks or more, students must use at least two tenses successfully. There only needs to be one example of each during the entire task, but you will find that more able students can produce more than that. For a mark of 9 or 10 there is a wide range of vocabulary, so that students aren t repeating the same words throughout. This variety will also benefit the complexity of the language used because they will be using different constructions. Errors will appear in more complex structures, or there will be some very minor errors, for example with gender. For a mark of 7 or 8, as well as using at least two tenses, students will have a range of vocabulary, although there may be a few favourite words that become conspicuous. The message is clear, despite some inaccuracies. In the 5 to 6 band, the language used will be more accurate than inaccurate. This can very often be the main thing that distinguishes between a mark of 4 or 5. You will hear more repetition of the same words in the 5 to 6 band and sentences will be simple for the most part. However, there will be evidence of some correct sentences and structures. For a mark of 3 or 4 the language will be very limited and it will either be more inaccurate than accurate or really basic and yet still having lots of errors. A mark of 1 or 2 for Range and Accuracy may be determined by a low mark for Communication in that the student has said so little that we have hardly any evidence to go on. However, there will still be the occasional simple phrase. A mark of zero can only be given if you have already given zero for Communication. The third category is Pronunciation and Intonation. It is worth a maximum of 5 marks. The language-specific examples in the Notes for Moderators will be of most help here but a few general comments may be useful. For 5 marks there will be consistently good accent and intonation. For our purposes accent and pronunciation are the same thing. We are not looking for native-speaker standard. For 4 marks pronunciation and intonation are generally good. There may be a particular sound that causes problems or occasionally the student may have learned something by heart that doesn t sound convincing from the point of view of intonation. For 3 marks there will be a few sounds which cause problems despite the pronunciation being good otherwise. Intonation may be strange in pre-learnt answers. For 1 and 2 marks, there may be a lack of evidence because the student has said relatively little. For 2 marks you can just understand what is said but you need to concentrate very hard. For 1 mark, very little is said or comprehension is made difficult because of poor pronunciation.

5 You can only give zero if the Communication mark is zero. The final category is Interaction and Fluency. It is worth a maximum of 5 marks. Don t worry about the interaction, because we have already seen in the criteria for Communication that, provided there is a conversation, interaction is taking place. So focus on the fluency rather than the interaction. For 5 marks, students show initiative. In other words they are able to extend their answers well. They can speak at a reasonable speed and fluently, but not in the way a native speaker would. For 4 marks students answer without hesitation, which means that the teacher asks a question and the reply begins almost immediately. There may, however, be some searching for words within the response. There is still some flow to the language. For 3 marks the student can still respond to most questions quite quickly but the conversation may have a more stop-start feel to it because the student has to think more or is only able to give quite short replies and so lacks initiative. For 2 marks there will be more hesitation and the flow will not be there. the student may be finding it hard to give answers to several questions and many replies may be short. For 1 mark there will be little reaction, in other words little is said. It will sound like an uncomfortable experience for both the student and the teacher. You can only give a mark of zero if the Communication mark is zero. So a mark of zero for Communication means a mark of zero for everything else. The Communication mark limits the mark you can give in the other categories, which can only be one band higher. So, if the Communication mark is 5, it is possible to go as high as 8 for Range and Accuracy, 4 for Pronunciation and Intonation and 4 for Interaction and Fluency. Please see the guidance on limiting marks at the end of the Notes for Moderators. And that s all. If you haven t exactly enjoyed the video, I hope you have found it useful and that it has made you feel more confident about the job ahead.