Views & Opinion
English language: Time to prepare for the new exams
E
nglish Language is one of the first subjects to be changed as part of the government’s GCSE reform. New-style GCSE and A level courses in English Language will be taught from September 2015 and first examined in June 2017. Helen Cunningham, publishing director at Cambridge University Press, outlines the changes and the support on offer for teaching and learning these new qualifications. As English exams enter a new educational chapter next year, teachers and students are going to need additional support and resources specifically designed for the new, more challenging, courses.
At GCSE level, there are changes to the qualification itself, to the examinations and to the content. • The current three GCSE qualifications will be reduced to two – English Language and English Literature, with ‘English’ being scrapped
• Grades G to A* will be replaced by 1 to 9 • There will be no tiering of exam papers • Assessment will be 100% exam-based, with no controlled assessment and no coursework
• A student’s best result in English (Language or Literature) will be double weighted for Progress 8 (the new school performance measure) and Attainment 8 (a school’s average grade across the same eight subjects) and will also count in the English Baccalaureate measure.
On top of this, the key changes for the English Language GCSE are that:
• 20 per cent of the marks will be awarded for accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG)
• Students must respond to 19th, 20th and 21st Century texts in every exam
• Students must compare at least two unseen texts.
Additionally there is a requirement that students demonstrate more diverse and challenging writing skills, such as narration and argument. However the new English Language GCSE will not contain any linguistic content.
What does this mean in the classroom? The new exams have many implications for teachers, not least that they will need to adjust their teaching styles to fit the new linear courses. Predicting and understanding the new 1-9 grades may be tricky, certainly in the first years of the reformed exams, as will tracking students’ progress without the benefit of modular results along the way.
The new, higher weighting for SPaG may well impact on students’ grades and some students are likely to need support with the extended writing element now required.
So it will be important that teachers work with a variety of reading and writing assignments, with SPaG fully integrated throughout. Additionally it will be important to use engaging high quality texts from the 19th, 20th and 21st Century, covering a range of genres and periods specifically selected to help students prepare for the more challenging historical texts.
A levels
September 2015 also sees first teaching of the new A Levels in English Language and English Literature and Language. There are fewer changes here to the subject content, but teachers will need to prepare students for new assessment
Comment by
Helen Cunningham, Publishing Director, Cambridge University Press
requirements, such as independent investigations of language use.
Students coming to A Level English Language from the 2015 GCSE are also likely to be challenged by the linguistic content because they will no longer have covered this area in their GCSE. For the combined English Language and Literature paper, content has been revised to improve the balance and coverage of the two disciplines and how they relate to each other. Teachers will need to be prepared to deliver more technical content, such as language levels (e.g. phonetics, phonology and prosodics).
Support
New challenges require new resources and support, so there’s going to be a real need for teaching and learning material designed to guide teachers and link progression clearly to the new mark schemes.
Cambridge University Press is supporting the exam reforms with a range of free resources for teachers and students, all specifically designed around the new examinations. These free teacher resources offer expert support for course planning, teaching and assessment, along with significant opportunity for online assessment and progress tracking.
uFree print and interactive digital samples for GCSE English Language, A Level English Language, English Language and Literature are available from
www.cambridge.org/ukschools
uAlso check out the Cambridge School Shakespeare site;
www.cambridgeschoolshakespeare.com
Preparing for Employment: How Technology Can Promote Opportunities
L
ast month, Matthew Hancock, Minister for Skills and Enterprise, discussed Britain’s current skills crisis at a conference focused on equipping the country with the skills it needs to be successful.
For those about to join the line as the next generation of workers, now is the time to begin brushing up on skills needed for the workplace. Simultaneously, university guidance counsellors and lecturers can aid graduates as they transition into future employees by teaching the skills employers are currently seeking. As Matthew Hancock discussed, the use of technology can be extremely beneficial not only to learn but as a means to learn.
Getting ready for the workplace With little time to spare, university guidance counsellors and lectures can use technology such as visual communication software tools to create digestible content for graduates to use in preparation for employment.
By capturing the activity on a presenter’s computer screen and then adding both annotations and audio narrative, lecturers and guidance counsellors can provide content that helps to explain the skills graduates need to learn in order to meet the criteria for a specific job role, prepare for a first interview and even offer mock tests, in a more palatable way.
For instance, guidance counsellors can produce video tutorials on how to improve ‘soft skills,’ that could otherwise be difficult to verbally explain, with visual demonstrations such as becoming an effective team player or improving planning and organising skills. Soft skills such as these, according to Kent University, feature high on the wish list for today’s employers. Lectures and guidance counsellors can also partner with employers to create short presentations on the specific job role criteria that they are looking for.
The responsibility of the U.K.’s next generation of employees cannot rest solely on educators.
16
www.education-today.co.uk
Comment by Ryan Eash,
Education Evangelist, TechSmith
Graduates should consider looking to visual communication software tools to help share knowledge with their peers on interview best practices and resources. Creating a competitive edge
Visual communication tools also offer graduates a competitive edge. Fierce competition in today’s job market has spawned a mass of graduates who are finding creative ways in which to present their C.V.s as a way to be ‘seen’ before they meet their future employer. The rise of video C.V.s has taken off in the last 18 months, due to higher quality recording technology and apps and super-fast broadband.
Visual communication software can aid lecturers and guidance counsellors in preparing graduates so that they put their best foot forward straight into employment after university, with skills that employers are seeking beyond the lecture room. By doing so, we can help to solve the current skills crisis for both employers and graduates.
October 2014
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108