To what extent can ‘informed’ class debate increase a student’s confidence in preparation for a transactional writing task?
The English Language 9-1 GCSE is an exam-based course with highly differentiated assessment criteria. Although it is ‘Language’ rather than ‘Literature’ it requires students to analyse fiction and non-fiction literary texts according to their narrative qualities, devices and potential effects. The texts are far from being vehicles for literacy skills. Spelling, punctuation, grammar and syntax are examined in question 5, the question with the highest mark weighting on each paper, but only alongside creative and persuasive ideas and techniques. Spoken Language skills, previously a core element of assessment, are now relegated to a mandatory five-minute talk with no mark weighting at all.
I teach students re-sitting this exam after failing it for the first time at school/college, or students who have only previously completed Level 1 Functional Skills English. Most of the students I teach struggle with basic literacy, do not read outside the classroom and struggle still more with the demands of literary critical analysis and its concomitant terminology.
Recent commentators have called for the scrapping of obligatory English (and Maths) re-sits and have recommended they be replaced by tests of literacy. This includes the ‘Passport in English’ as suggested by the ASCL in its recently released report on the ‘Forgotten Third’ of students that leave school without achieving a pass at GSCE English.
The Passport should be criterion referenced, comprising online assessment, a portfolio of a student’s writing and a significant oracy component. (ASCL, 2019, p7)
I was struck when reading the report by the focus on the importance of ‘oracy’. This has been an area that I have been keen to investigate for some time.