MFL GCSE: Say what you know how to say!

I'm sure everyone who has taught a language GCSE has experienced the frustration of students trying to say something they aren't sure about and making mistakes. Even worse, we know they know lots of vocab, and could have said something else very well! Under the pressure of the exam situation, students seem to forget all the lovely structures and vocab they know, and struggle to know what to say to answer the questions - that has been my experience anyway!

I've been trying to tackle this in lessons, and help students feel more confident that they do actually have lots of options they can say. I don't want to give them too much help (and we do a lot of structured/scaffolded production already), so I have tested using just images, for example this slide:


I start with listening as modelling; students write what I said and in which order. I always do this with mini whiteboards so I can easily assess how students are doing, and adjust my examples accordingly. 

I can also draw attention to other aspects of the vocab too, such as different forms of the verb - students divide boards into 2, with one side past tenses and the other present tense, and they have to write the activity in the correct column. This also works well with talking about myself and talking about others, or positive opinions and negative opinions.

Afterwards, we practice productive skills. Typically, I ask questions to target the topic or tense I want to focus on, ie. 'qu'est-ce que tu fais avec tes amis?' or 'qu'est-ce que tu as fait pendant tes vacances?'. Students write an answer on their mini whiteboards, allowing them to think about what they want to say (using the images) in the correct tense. I show the class several of their boards - we can translate them, improve them, and correct any misconceptions together. 

When students are confident with the above, they can speak spontaneously in pairs on the topic, only looking at images on the board to remind them about what they know how to say. Give thinking time first - this is really important as students should start to plan their answer in their head. Give 30 seconds per partner to speak, and repeat with 45 seconds, 60 seconds, etc.

My students found this helpful because they got lots of relevant practice and feedback, and they could see how much they already knew how to say.

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