French for Communication, 1979-1990

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French for Communication, 1979-1990 Dunning, Roy. Multilingual Matters 1853592234 9781853592232 9780585148892 English French philology--Study and teaching--Great Britain, French language--Study and teaching--English speakers. 1994 PC2068.G7D86 1994eb 448/.007041 French philology--Study and teaching--Great Britain, French language--Study and teaching--English speakers.

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French for Communication 1979-1990 Roy Dunning MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon • Philadelphia • Adelaide

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dunning, Roy, 1927French for Communication, 1979-1990/Roy Dunning p. cm. Includes bibliographical references 1. French philologyStudy and teachingGreat Britain. 2. French languageStudy and teachingEnglish speakers. I. Title PC2068.G7D88 1994 448'007041-dc20 93-29930 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-224-2 (hbk) ISBN 1-85359-223-4 (pbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, Avon BS21 7SJ. USA: 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007, USA. Australia: P.O. Box 6025, 83 Gilles Street, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia. Copyright © 1994 Roy Dunning All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in Great Britain by WBC Ltd, Bridgend.

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Contents Introduction

v

1 My Apprenticeship

1

2 Thoughts About Language

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3 Graded Objectives and Language Learning

24

4 Beginnings of French for Communication

35

5 Language Learning and the 16+

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6 Interpreting

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7 Interacting

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8 Composing

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9 Moderation

112

10 Retrospect

121

11 Prospect

133

Bibliography

146

Appendix 1

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Appendix 2

175

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Introduction The main focus of this book is the work done by Leicestershire modern language teachers to establish the three Levels of the graded objectives project (known initially as the 'East Midlands Graded Assessment Feasibility Study') and the MEG Mode 3 GCSE (originally called 'French for Communication'). It also deals with some aspects of language learning and assessment, communicative competence and performance. The book is not intended to be a precise history: it is more an attempt to give some idea of the process of curriculum change in which wethe teachers and the researcherswere engaged. I have not written a complete account of the history of the various stages through which both the three Levels and the Mode 3 GCSE progressed on their way to their present shapes. I have preferred to concentrate on those aspects of language assessment in which our work is radically different from other schemes. I have included some examples of students' language performance to indicate the value of what has been done in the classroom. The examples quoted come from the more able end of the spectrum in order to give some idea of the abilities developed by the syllabus. I have also sketched an outline of the theoretical background to my own views about language. I have found it helpful to try to look, doubtless selectively, into how I came to think what I think about language learning. This may seem self-indulgent. I hope it may be seen in the sense in which I intend it: an attempt to give the reader some idea of the theoretical and practical roots on which the book is based. I owe a debt to the following colleagues who kindly looked at the first draft of the manuscript and made helpful comments on it: Bernadette Challinor, Pam Haezewindt, Bernard Kavanagh, Nicki Little, Sam Muir, Duncan Sidwell, Pauline Sidwell, David Smith and Lynne Upton. They are of course not responsible for any infelicities or errors in the text. I am also grateful to the Modern Languages Departments of the following Leicestershire schools who took on the additional burden, at a busy time of the year, of responding to the questionnaire on which Chapter 10 is based: Babington Community College, Bushloe High School, Gartree High

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School, Guthlaxton College, Hind Leys Community College, Sir Jonathan North Community College, Soar Valley College, Welland Park College. I would like to thank Leicestershire County Council Education Department and the East Midlands Examination Board for permission to include extracts from Levels One, Two and Three of French for Communication and from MEG Mode 3 French 1990. Further information about Levels One, Two and Three can be obtained from The Director of Education, Education Department, County Hall, Glenfield, Leicester LE3 8RF. Further information about the MEG Mode 3 examination in French can be obtained from The Secretary, East Midland Regional Examinations Board, Robins Wood House, Robins Wood Road, Aspley, Nottingham NG8 3NR.

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1 My Apprenticeship Experiences of Language Learning My grammar schooling, coinciding with the outbreak of the war and the subsequent evacuation of the school from Acton to Weymouth in 1939, was hardly auspicious. German was our first language, taught by an elderly gentleman (who, I later learned to my great surprise, had been a leading light in the reform movement for modern languages in the 1920s) from Deutsches Leben Part One. The lessons consisted of his reading out the text and our writing the exercises. No explanations that I recall and, certainly, no talkExercise A, the one with the questions in German, was always skipped. I can remember doing exercises on the cases and getting more right than wrong and feeling vaguely that I was missing something. The second language began in the second year, with the school now back in London because of the bombing of Weymouth and divided between Acton and Winchester. I had opted for part-time schooling in Acton rather than another evacuation. French began some six weeks later for me than for the rest of the class, because my mother had thought I should do mechanics, as a more suitable subject for a working class lad than French. And it took nearly half a term for me to discover that working class or not, mechanics was not for me. French was taught by the Geography master. The lesson techniques were as invariable as in German: teacher reading, class writing, no talk. I recall the large houses, the cooks and the maids and a silly girl who, unable to tell a pear from an apple, kept repeating 'petite poire' instead of 'petite pomme' and whose mouth therefore got larger and larger (so the teacher must have pronounced at least that bit). There was also a boy falsely accused of stealing a stamp album . . . The third year was the biggest disaster. Staff shortages because of the divided school and the needs of the services, tipped the balance in favour of the temporary and unstable: out went teachers, in came refugees. I had four French teachers and nine German teachers that year, each less competent than the last. Lessons, not just French and German, were occasions to upset the nervous who had no idea how to control adolescent boys, let alone

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teach them. Of course, we wrote exercises. I remember claiming to a new teacher to be 40 exercises ahead of the rest in German, a claim never checked. The fourth year reunited the school and introduced some stability. French was taught by a fierce young woman, who also had a sense of fun. She read plays to us in French. Our contribution? Not a lot. The German was taught by the history teacher whose classes were in riot most of the time. The fifth year brought us under the guidance of the Head of Department, whose bullying control was legendary and whose methodology was limited to making us chant the sentences we translated from Wanstall's Tests in German/French composition and grammar. The first time that I was asked a question in either language after four years of German and three of French was in the practice on the day of the orals. The teacher asked me: 'Comment vous appelez-vous?' I had no idea what he was on about. Everybody failed the orals (except Pierre Mesgard, I recall). Several of us got distinctions in both languages, though... It was undoubtedly perceived success in languages which pushed me into continuing in the Sixth: I certainly had not had an inspiring time in class. I had already decided in the fourth year that I was going to be a teacher but I had not thought at all about what I might teach: I suppose that, at that time in my life, school teachers represented the only working role models I had. Unfortunately, I can't say I admired any of them much! Sixth form German improved because it was taught by an Austrian refugee who insisted that her English was not good enough for her to avoid German in class. Consequently, we had all our lessons in German and were expected and encouraged to talk. French was a continuation of the dull fifth year course with literature thrown in. For some reason we had to divide poems into three parts. I never learned why. Not a word of French. So, when I went up to UCL to read German with French subsidiary, my German was fluent and confident, if rather literary, but my French was very hesitant and unsure. University German was mainly about Goethe. Indeed, I recall Professor Willoughby saying in a lecture that the main reason for studying German was Goethe . . . All tutorials and seminars were in English; most of the lectures were in English, too. I recall, too, a student being informed by one of the staff that if he wanted to learn German he should have gone to a technical college... PGCE at the London Institute was not particularly helpful. The 60 or so Modern Language students were united in their contempt for the so-called theory presented in lecturesphilosophy, history, psychology (nearly all

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about intelligence testing) and health education (which was about keeping windows open, plus a laugh at the Kinsey Report). Sociology had not been invented as an education subject then. And we did not get much purchase on the method seminars. Topics tended to be tossed around between the Head of Department, the other lecturers and those of the students who felt like participating. Most did not. My Teaching Practice at Greenford County School was better. One teacher actually spoke French or German most of the time and expected the children to do the same. The others worked their way through the textbooks with doggedness or wit, according to their personalities. When I left the London Institute of Education, I knew that I was going to teach my pupils to speak German and French, but I had no clear idea of how I might do it. My year at the Institute had provided me with no principles on which to base my lesson preparation or language practice. The Teacher Apprentice My appointment at Hackney Downs School in 1952 to teach German and French found me full of enthusiasm and not a little overawed by my situation. I was the only German specialist in a modern languages department which never met except at lunch. The function of the Head of Department was to buy the books, set the exams and allocate teachers to classes. As the youngest I always took the bottom set in French. So long as your discipline and exam results were good, your standing on the staff was high. Method was never discussed. My German syllabus, handwritten for me by my predecessor, consisted of a list of grammatical topics strung out over four years. A French syllabus I never saw: I just had to get to page such and such by the end of the year in each book. For the first two years of teaching I struggled with the textbooks on offer. First the German, then the French course books (after some negotiation) disappeared from my lessons. Try as I might, I could never find a way of making textbooks which were impenetrable to me accessible to students. It is, of course, true that textbooks have changed considerably in the last 40 years, reflecting the fluctuating fashions of the times. But all share the same assumption: that they can construct the framework for appropriate language learning for all pupils. What they actually do, is relieve the teachers of the responsibility of providing learning activities for the pupils they teach by appearing to know better how learning takes place. Since textbook writers cannot know the learning characteristics of the pupils who will use their course, they cannot respond flexibly to their actual

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abilities, interests and needs. All they can do, is present activities in a sequence and hope to persuade teachers that just those activities in just that sequence will enable the pupils to meet the demands of the examination at the end of the course. Of course, teachers can use coursebooks in a variety of ways, picking and mixing at will, but anyone who bases language learning on a coursebook follows the agenda which is hidden from view: that someone else knows best. The subtle ways in which the four modes of languagelistening, speaking, reading and writinginterweave in the language learning process cannot be an issue for a course book: language learning is an interactive process between people, teacher and taught. All the textbook can do is cover some of what may be learned. Textbooks deal with surface phenomenaparadigms, structures and texts. Learning means internalising strategies which work. Pupils need to perceive that language is an ordered system the principles of which can be grasped and used to understand and also make new language. This does not mean that they have to be given rules, simply that they have to be encouraged to develop ideas about the way language works. Of course, working hypotheses will be in a continuous process of rejection and reformulation, as is evident from the unstable nature of pupils' learning. Textbooks can too easily become the shabby substitute for a dynamic process in which the separate and unconnected activities of listening, speaking, reading and writing follow one another instead of being meaningfully integrated so as to promote the learning of the language and its use in discourse. As a young teacher I was very concerned to get my pupils to speak. My colleagues inserted their oral work into a sequence of exercises following the layout of the course book in use. Starting every lesson orally, as I did, gave the lessons a momentum which carried me beyond what the course book prescribed. I tried at first to base my oral work on the chapters in the course book, but soon found that I tended to shoot off at a tangent from whatever was supposed to be the theme. Attempting to return to the book after my excursions presented the pupils with problems we could not solve. After a great deal of experimenting, my lessons focused on the creation of grammatical sets or patterns, derived from data which came from: (a) the pupils themselvestheir names, ages, physical characteristics, families and interests; (b) objects, pictures, drawings or mime; (c) recordings (usually BBC broadcasts but sometimes from itinerant native speakers); (d) printed textsusually selected from class readers.

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The system I evolvedand that in a classroom in which coloured chalk was high techwas an oral dialogue with the class in the learning of vocabulary and structures. Some vocabulary came from pictures, some from objects, some from mime; the grammar came from me. I wrote extensively on the board: the class was expected to cotton on. We talked (at first, in English, later in German or French) about grammar: I wrote up examples of what we had been doing, they tried to work out rules. They also read German or French readers and summarised in English for the others. Some read a great deal; others, the minimum. As I had no book to work from, I thought out, in advance of each new phase of teaching, the language I wanted my pupils to learn in speech and writing. This meant a laborious listing for myself of precisely the sentences I intended to focus on. If the class were to learn how to describe the routine of their day, for example, a sequence including the following would obviously be needed, 'je me lève à 7h30, je prends le petit déjeuner dans la cuisine, je quitte la maison vers 8h, je vais au collège en vélo etc.' The procedure would be to present all the new forms necessary in data about a selection of boys and girls whose sequence of activities during the day was capable of comparison and contrast. They would all get up, leave, get to school etc., but their times of leaving and arriving would be different; some would have breakfast, some, not; this one would walk to school, that one go by bike; and so on. All the data would be displayed togetherin the old days before the invention of the OHP, I wrote everything on the board in abbreviated form. The presentation of the data in that way allowed me to use the third person which the class could share with me. Any statement I made, any question I asked, used the verb form needed for the pupils' response. The fact that the data concerned several persons meant that the forms could be used many times over in order to make meaningful statements or ask meaningful questions without the need for the listen and repeat mode of many coursebooks. The statements covering the dataPierre prend le petit déjeuner dans la cuisine, Marie prend le petit déjeuner dans la salle à manger etc.could then be followed by questions from me and eventually questions from the pupils to me and to each other. My questions could move from simple to complexfrom questions requiring a short answer, like 'Qui prend le petit déjeuner dans la cuisine?' to more complex questions, like 'Est-ce que Pierre et Marie se lèvent à 7h30?', expecting two contrasting sentences, 'Non, il se lève à 7h30, mais elle se lève à 7h20'. The pupils would ask questions of each other following a pattern written on the board by me.

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All the new forms would be written on the board which became a dictionary and a grammar of what was going to be needed for writing later on. Contrasting singular and plural forms, those that sounded (prend/prennent) and those that did not (se lève/ se lèvent) would be written, pronounced and spelt by the pupils. The writing done by the pupils required them to use the forms written on the board in composing questions and answers. My favourite procedure was to ask a question like, 'A quelle heure se lèvent Pierre et Marie?' A pupil would write both the question and the answer on the board, the remainder of the class would write their version down in their exercise books. I would wander around, helping here and there. Once the pupil at the board had completed, the class could be involved in any correction: 'La question, elle est juste?' 'Et la réponse?' Individual words could be highlighted and the sentences corrected. A quick 'Levez la main, si vous l'avez juste', plus my own observations enabled me to decide what to focus on for the next question. If the main problem had been in contrasting singular and plural verb forms, the next question would require that distinction to be made. The technique enabled grammar to be elaborated as a system perceived by the pupils. I found it invaluable for enabling the class to use the board data and its previous oral experience to make up its own rules for the composition of sentences. When I began the system anew in each succeeding first year, some pupils would always think they were expected to copy down whatever the pupil at the board had written. It did not usually take long for them to realise that they were expected to compose on their own. How well they were able to do it, depended on the extent to which they grasped the systematic relationships I had tried to establish between the talking, reading and writing they did in class. Nowhere in the procedure did I find space for choral repetition or copying from the board. I had early abandoned both practices as too mechanical for my taste. I expected the pupils to listen and associate sounds with meanings that we could share and to connect those sounds with the forms I wrote up for them to attend to by reading aloud and spelling before making use of them in speech or writing. The beginning with data about fictional people meant that the introduction of the pupils' own real experiencesand minecould take place in a context in which all the supporting formsadverbial phrases of time and placewere already available for use. Even some of the new verb forms were available, at least as sounds, je prends/il prend; others presented contrasts, of course, needing careful pronunciation and spelling. The concentration on a meaningful activity, like telling the story of one's regular

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daily routine, inevitably called on a variety of forms from different verb groups. The practice of the usable paradigm of any one form did not present any great problem: it was simply a matter of focusing on different pronouns in the talk: 'Alors, racontez ma routine' or 'Parlez-moi de Pierre et Marie'. In the fullness of time the French department invested in some new books to replace Horsley and Bonne and we acquired an experimental interest in G. Fleming's M. Carré cartoons (and its whirring technology in a blacked out room). Tape-recorders were bought but not much used. That apart, the great audiovisual revolution was allowed to pass by on the other side. I used my tape-recorder to record BBC German broadcasts which I used to create text for my fourth year German classes. I remember being visited by the producer of the programme who was horrified at what I was doing: I was taking the programmes far too seriously, they were for a quick listening to as a relief from academic work, not for the summarising and storytelling I was using them for. The storytelling, which began in my German teaching and was reinforced by my reading about the technique of Nacherzählung in German schools, began as an attempt to get summaries of oral texts and developed into something in its own right. I found it very difficult to do, but felt sure that it was important: without it I could not see how to get my classes beyond speaking single sentences. I knew I wanted more than answers to questions and had always despised the invariant full sentence answer which seemed very stilted and unnatural, anyway. What I wanted was coherent, extended text. But I didn't know how to get it. I had developed my linguistic range by taking a French degree in the evenings at Birkbeck College and was now heavily engaged in preparing my PhD in applied linguistics. I had also become Head of Modern Languages. At about that time, I had become a member of what I used to call Mrs Hodgson's Friday Evening Meetings at the London Institute of Education where she was Head of the Modern Languages Department. There were two groups, one for French and one for German. Most of the teachers were ex-students of Mrs Hodgson's, who, teaching in London grammar schools, were looking for some alternative to the textbook and written exercise domination of language teaching. The teachers met once or twice a term at the Institute to discuss methodology in language teaching. The groups had produced two sets of duplicated materials 'La famille Lebrun' and 'Die Familie Schmidt' which provided a useful basis for orally based teaching without textbooks in the first two or three years of the secondary school.

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Most of our time was spent in the discussion of textsusually of the anecdotal varietywhich could be used in class from the third year onwards. We discussed the meaningful presentation of the new vocabulary, but concentrated principally on the kinds of questions which would yield the language practice we sought. Inevitably, sycophancy was ever-present: some teachers would wait for the oracular pronouncement before committing themselves; others would take it upon themselves to pre-empt the oracle; but, generally speaking, the meetings constituted the only opportunity most of us had for discussing and developing a rigorous approach to orally based language teaching. I rapidly formed the view that Mrs Hodgson was a teacher from whom I could learn a great deal. Around this time the tide towards comprehensive schools was in full flood and the status of Hackney Downs School was in the balance. Surprising as it might seem, the majority of the Heads of Department favoured the comprehensive alternative. We accepted the proposal to go comprehensive, as we said, 'on the understanding that we could become as good a comprehensive school as we had been a grammar school'. We were allowed to develop on our own site. My developing interest in linguistics and the prospect of change in the status of the school meant that my department had to consider the whole basis on which modern languages had been taught. We were no longer able to think of teaching a privileged minority (the top 20% or so of the population) but would be required to consider modern language teaching for all. The option taken by many of our colleagues in the comprehensives at that time, that modern languages had to be streamed and made available to only the minority who could profit from them, was not one which we morally or educationally were prepared to consider. Somehow, language learning had to be made available to a wider population. My need to develop new ways of language teaching in our emergent comprehensive school, coupled with the plunge into sociolinguistics, had helped to create an intellectual tension for me within the London Institute groups. They tended to regard grammar as the prime mover in language learninga perspective which, although I appreciated its value, seemed to me too narrow to be the sole criterion. Grammar was obviously important, but how could it ever be more important than meaning? I found myself distanced in my practice from some of the group in my increasing experimentation with pairwork in class, albeit of a fairly primitive kind, restricted as it was to students asking questions of each other. This technique did not receive Institute approval: students talking to each

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other would inevitably lead to the making of mistakes, which if uncorrected might prove fatal . . . My pairwork took a sudden turn for something more extensive with a fifth year class I had in French. My French Assistant, Michel Duco, had asked if he might bring a friend into school to see what we were doing. His friend was an Assistant in a school where French was not used in class by the teachers. I agreed, on condition that the two of them produced a tape-recorded interview I could use in class. My Assistant interviewed his friend, both of them speaking, of course, very carefully in full sentences... I played the tape to the class and we put all the data about Michel's friend on the boardwhere he lived in France, what college he went to, what jobs his parents did, what he was doing in England, and so on. Once all the information was there, I asked the class to produce the questions which would elicit the data. The questions they proposed went up on the board and I replayed the tape for them to get the questions which had actually been used. We then grouped all the alternative forms for the same meaning on the board for later use. At that point I got them to role play the interview, one in each pair noting down the details of his 'autobiography'name, age, family background, school etc.; and the other, the categories to be investigatedname, age, family details etc. They then started the interviews. At that point I was interrupted by the arrival of a student sent by a colleague teaching the fourth form class for which I was responsible. The lesson was being disrupted: would I deal with the troublemakers? On my way back to my classwhich had entailed leaving one building and going into anotherI was appalled at the noise coming from my fifth years. I opened the door and went in, ready to read the riot act. My arrival went unnoticed: the class were totally absorbed in asking and getting responses to their questions. After they had done their role play, they did the interview for real: asking each other questions and noting replies on the same range of topics for themselves and their partners. They then gave reports on what they had learned or asked for reports from others on what they had learned about a particular member of the class. As I moved round, I began to see that they needed language to stop each other, to ask for repetitions or clarifications or spellings or to ask for reasons or consequences for what had been done. In a word, we began to explore the propositional content of language in its dialogic form. The pairwork I introduced had to be stimulated in some way. I started off fairly mechanically with an outline on the board for each student to use. After some experiments I devised symbols to stand for the questions to be

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asked and the answers to be givenI got the idea of the symbols from the adverts for Bravington rings in the London Underground where drawings replaced nouns in sentences. I had previously used this technique in my version of Cloze texts. The pairwork begun in the fifth year was then extended throughout the school. I tried it out cautiously in each class. I developed it into the small group work I had been experimenting with in the Sixth year. The work on texts for use in the Sixth form culminated eventually in the publication of 'La prise de la parole' (Dunning & Sudre, 1972). I continued my storytelling activities in both my German and French classes, but had divided them into those stories which were purely oral in the sense that they did not derive from a printed textand those which had a parallel existence in print. The first allowed me to vary short anecdotes and longer narrations. The second, to present the alternative language forms appropriate to the two styles to the pupils. I received some confirmation of the value of the storytelling activity from a former pupil who took up a post as PE teacher in the school. He had done German in the Sixth form before going on to Training College. One day, in the staff room, he asked me if I still told the Walpurgisnacht story to the fourth years. I had forgotten the story, so I asked him to tell me it. He was able to recount most of the story in German after an interval of some four or five years. The experience of teaching text in Years 4 and 5 found expression in the chapter on 'Teaching a French Text' (Hornsey, 1975). The chapter sets out in rather schematic form what was my main teaching preoccupation in the fourth and fifth years: the use of narrative text (usually newspaper faits divers) as the basis for the language work on themes and discourses. The work involved the students in handling the semantic fields, the structural bases and the discourses to be developed for each of the texts. The students were therefore involved in dialogue (class and role play), narrative and propositional discourse in talking and writing. The first year sixth form work was based on journalistic and literary texts which provided opportunities to introduce the students to various aspects of French lifeeducational problems, personal relationships and violence, including racism. The texts were handled so as to enable the students: (a) to role play the protagonists in an imaginative way; (b) to develop their capacity to tell the narrative of the events depicted; and, (c) to argue the case on behalf of or against any of the protagonists in the texts.

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That is to say, the three elements of language work I have referred to earlier were developed in class: play, narrative and propositional discourse. When I left Hackney Downs School for the School of Education in the University of Leicester, many of what were to become the dialogic and narrative features of 'French For Communication' were already embedded in my own preferred teaching style. If I were to try to characterise that style, I would call it a structured open-endedness: an attempt to enable my students to get where they wanted to be by reflecting on their own experience. I saw my role as guiding by questions, rather than telling. I realise, of course, self-regarding narcissism apart, not to mention the distortions of a nostalgia for a past that never was, that my style did not suit everybody. The fifth former who shouted angrily: 'You never tell nobody nothing, do you?' was surely not alone in his frustration. And many PGCE students have told me how unnerving the process had been for them. When I arrived in Leicester in 1972, I soon found out that language learning had a high profile in the LEA. The advisory service was highly competent. Teachers regularly accompanied their classes to the three LEA centres in France. In-service meetings were frequent, well-attended and productive. It was very easy for me to establish an excellent working relationship with both the advisers and the teachers which rapidly opened avenues for my students in the schools, both as PGCE students and later as teachers.

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2 Thoughts About Language It has always been a source of regret to me that writing about foreign language learning and teaching in Britain shows little evidence of the background of theory on which teachers of English can call. As I have always thought that learning a foreign language ought to take place in the context of what we know about the mother tongue, it is from writers who have had important insights into language that I have had the most help in formulating my ideas. I have sketched some of those ideas in the paragraphs that follow. Vygotsky In outlining his differences with Piaget on the role of language in early child development, Vygotsky shows that, although thinking can take place outside of language, there comes a point in the development of the child where s/he has to use language in order to plan, evaluate, remember and reason. Vygotsky regards these higher order thinking processes as culturally specific, occurring in the interaction of the child with other children and adults. Language is used not simply to reflect or represent concepts already formed non-verbally but actually to structure and direct the processes of thinking and concept formation themselves. He also comments at length on the function of play in human development. Play (which accompanies talk in young children) at once expresses a desire to control and manipulate the physical world (including the children themselves) and also, more importantly in Vygotsky's view, shows the children struggling through their experience of their social relationships to understand and control the world and themselves through language. Vygotsky is less interested as a psychologist in the transfer of information from one person to another, but rather in the ways in which individuals maintain and enhance their individuality in social contact. His views on the self-regulatory function of inner speech, the internalising of verbal thinking, include a central role for both reading and writing facilitating abstract thinking.

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James Britton James Britton and the Writing Research team (1968/70) blend Vygotsky and Sapir to provide their functional model for writing abilities in English. Taking Sapir's view that 'ordinary speech is expressive' they make talk central to the learning process. They develop the theme in their research that what children write in their early years should be a form of written down speech and that what they read should be generally expressive. The integrated development of talking, reading and writing, in which the learners shuttle between speech, writing and print resources, affords access to the major categories of the model: the transactional, the expressive and the poetic. What Vygotsky and Britton have to offer may seem a far cry from the problems of the second language learner, but I think that these two elementsthe role of language in conceptual thinking and the role of play (which includes play with language as well as play through language)are vital to our concerns and are neglected at our peril. What they seem to me to say, is that the higher psychological capacities not only take place in language but that the struggle for conceptualisation is partly language and partly thought: that the struggle cannot be joined in thought without engaging language and that language cannot be used without engaging thought. The importance of play may seem to be very different, but, because it is in the power of the children (and, indeed, is the power of the children), it enables them to play out in fantasy the roles which they will need to play in real life. I think we need to incorporate those fundamentals into foreign language learning at all levels, if we can. I doubt whether many practitioners could state clearly what assumptions about language or learning underlie their practice. Yet it seems to me that, however difficult such a task might prove, it would help us greatly if we had a coherent practice and a comprehensive theory to underpin it; and, that if that should prove impossible, it would improve matters if we tried to think more theoretically about what most teachers see as only practical concerns. Noam Chomsky Transformational grammar might seem to have little to offer to modern language teachers. Indeed, Chomsky expressed his doubts that his Syntactic Structures were relevant to teachers at all. Given that Chomsky regards linguistics as a branch of psychology and seeks to formulate rules governing a speaker's innate competencehe has no interest in what actual language users do in real life with their languageit might appear

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perverse to see relevance in his theories for foreign language learners. But the most important insight that I think Chomsky has to offer is that human beings construct (for him: are born with) rules for understanding and producing grammatical structures, such that they can understand and produce in their own language sentences they have never heard or produced before. The fact that Chomsky restricts his attention to the rules governing only the production of sentences in an ideal speaker/listener context and therefore has nothing to say about what real people say to each other in the real world, does not devalue his offering: that it is a natural activity of the human mind to seek and find regularities in language. This is the sense in which he describes human beings as using language creatively. I take Chomsky's contribution as a metaphor for the relationship between teacher and taught: the function of the teacher is to enable the learners to structure their own learning in a productively systematic way. I think that teachers should be less concerned with telling students about the systems that exist in language and more concerned with enabling the learners to appreciate that there are systems and helping them to systematise the data for themselves. Michael Halliday If language teachers start from the point of view that languaging (to use Peter Doughty's term) is about creating meaning, then valuable insights for language teachers are provided by Halliday's view of language as systems for expressing meaning potential. Like Chomsky, he does not observe users using language but prefers to idealise his data so as to express more comprehensively the systems that he sees users using. Text (spoken or written language, not just sentences) created by users has, for Halliday, three aspects: the ideational, interpersonal and textual. The ideational carries the conceptual content, the interpersonal expresses the relationships between the speaker and others, and the textual enables those conceptual and interpersonal meanings to be expressed. What Halliday systematises is the fact that human beings relate to each other meaningfully by selecting socially and culturally arrived at expressions of possible meanings. The relevance for modern language teachers is the description of language in use as having these three aspects: concepts, relations and forms. Whereas Vygotsky starts from the viewpoint of the child as user, Halliday starts from the viewpoint of the language as use. Meaning is primary for both.

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Frank Smith The concept of text in its written forms has to be incorporated into language teaching at the separate levels of learning and use. I adopt the thrust of the argument about reading and writing presented by Frank Smith (1973, 1982). Smith sees reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game in which the readers bring their knowledge of the world to the text and attempt to interpret the black marks on the white paper in terms of what they know. In this construct, reading is a process beset with uncertainty in which the readers make predictions about what might be present in the text and confirm by reading whether their predictions are correct or not. I find this view immensely valuable for reading in a foreign language since it stresses the vital role to be played by previous experience of whatever subject matter is mediated by the text. Writing is a reflex of the reading process: the reader becomes the author. Smith divides the process into 'composition'ideas, words and grammarand 'transcription'physical effort of writing, spellings, capitals, punctuation, paragraphs and legibility. He uses these two expressions to separate out the 'author' from the 'secretary' so as to indicate that the two may often interfere with each other in a way that can only be resolved by rewriting and editing. Of course, in the native language, writing is not speech written down. But, if we adopt Professor Abercrombie's dictum that we are teaching 'spoken prose', then it will be clear that the relations between talking and writing are much closer in foreign language learning than for the native language. Writing gives the students access to their own ways of thinking about language as well as opportunities to think with another language. Writing presents opportunities for students to observe what they think as they write it. It is an invaluable part of the language learning process, if used properly. Both reading and writing need to be part of the language learning process from the beginning. In learning they function differently from their interrelationship in use. Students ought to have the opportunity of trying out the forms they are learning as meanings which can be expressed in speech and in writing. Their competence is likely to be enhanced, if their grasp of language is forged in the four modes from the beginning and if their practice of language is integrated in them throughout the course. I think that there is support for that view from researchers into early language development in children. Writing about the differentiation between speech and writing, Katharine Perera (1986) analysed samples of children's speech and writing and found a low frequency of the colloquial-

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isms of speech in their writing. She concluded that the children were aware of the appropriateness of certain forms to one mode rather than the other. As there was no reason to prohibit those forms on the grounds of their incompetence to express what the children wished to say, she assumes that they were not used because the children had learned from their own reading and from the stories read to them, that they were not a normal feature of the written repertory. She goes on further to draw implications from her research which are of equal importance to modern language teachers. Teachers need to see through 'poorly written, poorly punctuated and atrociously spelt' work instances of construction which 'show a sensitivity to discourse structure', evidence that something is being learnt. Since that sensitivity can only come from experience of discourse, writing one-sentence answers to questions will not help their development. Moreover, since children do not typically use written constructions in their speech, 'it follows that they need to learn them by reading extensively'. Addressing the issue of speech and writing at the same conference, Wells & Chang (1986) make a plea for the extensive use of sustained speech by pupils: . . . the advantage of oral monologue.. .is that it provides an opportunity to develop some of the skills of composingplanning, selecting, marshalling and organising ideasthat are so necessary for writing, and that it does so in a medium in which pupils feel more at ease and in which they are more likely to be successful. The Communicative Movement It has become well accepted by modern language teachers that language, native or foreign, is about communication. Moreover, we have been told many times that communication between interlocutors involves a meaning gap: that unless there is a cognitive distance between the speakers, that is, unless one of them knows and says something that the other does not know, but is interested in, then no communication takes place. In this view, communication occurs around information known to one but not the other. Teachers have been persuaded that students should learn to use language communicatively. Unfortunately, the thrust towards purposeful language learning, towards using the foreign language for communicative purposes, has largely ignored the fact that language has that other function, the conceptual, which is more important because of its organising role in thought.

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Henry Widdowson The growth of the so-called communicative movement has been accompanied by some distortions in that the communicative function has been promoted at the expense of the conceptual. That is to say, theorists have stressed the use of language to perform prescribed illocutionary acts making promises, requests, giving orders, describing etc.and neglected the conceptual functionusing language to think with. The conceptual function enables individuals to relate to their environment, to think about it, to seek to understand it, to try to bring it under control in some way. The communicative function enables individuals to interact with others in that environment to achieve shared purposes i.e. not only to think but to do, to engage in social as well as in private reflexive activity. Widdowson argues: Our aim must be to develop in learners capacity for using language for both thinking and acting so that they can exploit its meaning potential in discourse. This is not a simple matter of learning how to express a selection of notions or perform a selection of illocutionary acts. It is, more fundamentally, a matter of learning strategies . . . for reconciling conceptual and communicative functions in the discourse process. The linkage thus established between thinking and communicating engages the students in an ongoing process of interacting between the two functions in whatever tasks they use language for, in whatever contexts, in whatever media. Obviously, the demands on teachers who accept that perspective are very great. What the communicative movement has largely concentrated on are the categories of linguistic function or of illocutionary acts, that is to say, on ways of making language work (function) and effects of actual language in use (illocution). Consequently, most writers concentrate on functions to be taught, such as orders, requests, promises etc.; and teachers have been preoccupied with lists of exponents to realise them (they have also been worried about grammar . . .). Council of Europe This latter tendency has unfortunately been accentuated by the use made of the work of the Council of Europe. The vast resources developed as a result of the Unit Credit initiative for adult language learning have been appropriated in synopsis by the writers of graded objectives schemes as examples of the language use to be modelled by the students. The advantages for the scheme/course writer of lists of notions and functions complete with their exemplification are obvious enough: all that is required is

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for a judicious selection to be made and cobbled together for learning purposes. Unfortunately, the exponents listed in, say, Un Niveau Seuil, have been taken over by many graded objectives schemes, not as examples of language systems, but as the language to be learned. The language systems exemplified need to be processed by students in ways which enable them to adduce the rules and govern their own systems of use. Selecting bits of transactional repertories for learning in role plays ignores the ways in which the elements thus highlighted combine differently with other elements for other purposes in other contexts. Since most schemes ignore writing altogether and develop reading and listening mainly in their transactional aspects only, it is unlikely that this can be achieved. An Alternative way Forward I would argue that the development of the conceptual function of language is as important in learning a foreign language as in learning one's own. Unless learning to use the foreign language to express propositions of one's own is part of second language learning, the students run the risk of remaining at the level of communicating with the outside world only as a transactors of simple demands for goods or services. And this development of the conceptual function implies that students should have access to those language forms which enable speakers and writers to articulate the relationship between their thinking and the issues which concern them. The focus on both the conceptual and the communicative in language learning is important in that the first enables individuals to relate to their world (i.e. to think about it); and the second enables them to do something about what they think. They may choose to say or write something, or to say or write nothing, or they may choose to say or write something different from what they actually think: that will be their choice. It is, of course, obvious that the foreign language has ways of meeting all the demands of its own native users. We, as foreign language learners, can make use of the resources that native speakers have at their disposal. But my point is, that language learners have to feel the need to express propositions, to argue for their point of view, to express themselves, and to do this however inadequately, in their own way in the foreign language just as they do in their own. To limit their learning to ways of dealing with selected functions is to follow a totally behaviourist path in which language forms are separated from any personal meaning. I think it unfortunate that teachers have been persuaded to teach language forms rather than encourage appropriately linguistic strategies for the expression of meaning. The listen and repeat systems of the audio-

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linguists are as strongly entrenched now, I would guess, as in the sixties, even if they are no longer systematised as part of the learning package associated with a particular course book. Teachers' attitude to error is a case in point. Instead of seeing deviant grammar, pronunciation and lexical selection as evidence of the students' view of what is possible, most teachers require the correct form to be substituted and repeated, as if that resolves the problem. Learning is not linear, it is recursive and, therefore, fragile and unstable. We have to distinguish learning the patterns of the foreign language from knowing that language is patterned, and discovering and using the patterns for oneself. It is this, I would argue, that is the appropriately linguistic approachone that relates the conceptual to the communicative. My concerns therefore in language learning would have this twin focus on the development of the conceptual and the communicative. That is to say, the students would expect to learn ways of expressing language functions, but they would also expect to do this by using the foreign language for their own purposes and by making use of whatever resources they had to express meanings they wished to share. Interaction It seems to be generally agreed in the field of writers on communicative language teaching (e.g. Johnstone, 1989) that, as communication between people consists of their exchanging meaningfully for some purpose, the participants have to be in a state of readiness to exchange and also to deal with what they don't expect. This implies that communication is not just about meanings being exchanged but being negotiated: it is more complex than a simple input-output model would imply. In this view communication becomes a problem-solving exercise in which the participants use their own resources to achieve their negotiated purposes. This point of view is supported by Morrow (Brumfit & Johnson, 1979) who stresses the interactive nature of the behaviours involved. It is this interaction which gives any exchange its unpredictability: without it communication scarcely takes place. Analysts (e.g. Wells, 1981; Sacks et al., 1974) make clear the complex turn-taking rules for native speakers in interactive discourse and the cooperative principles on which such exchanges are based. They show just how difficult it is to produce in advance a structure to which an exchange will conform.

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Assessment If we look at the problem of assessment, we can argue that the problem faced by any examination is how to assess all the students' levels of competence simultaneously (Wesche, 1981), so as to engage their 'expectancy grammar' (Oller, 1979). This goes beyond grammar in the normal sense of the word to mean the patterning of understanding and production needed in all exchanges. The participants are required to use their knowledge of linguistic patterning of vocabulary and structures, together with their knowledge of the extra-linguistic context to arrive at purposive use. The extralinguistic context has a double face: objectivethe state of events, relationships, feelings etc.; and subjectivethe subjects' view of themselves, their relations with others etc. The information available is always more than can be processed in words: the students' capacity to infer creatively is always at issue. Oller (1979) harnesses the concept of creativity (Chomsky) and the concept of the value of serial ordering (Lashley in Saporta & Bastian, 1961) to his notion of an 'expectancy grammar' to argue for teaching students and assessing their capacity to map the extra-linguistic onto the linguistic. He shows how the capacity to memorise text is highly dependent on the capacity to group the bits of which it is composed and to put them in a sequence: meaningful elements are more easily memorised if they are coherent than if they are not; similarly, grammatical elements are more easily handled if their occurrence can be predicted in an overall coherent grammatical organisation. This expectancy grammar relates to all the processing modes in which the student is engaged: thinking/understanding, listening, talking, reading and writing. Any adequate assessment system would have to take account of the total process in so far as it could. Role of Narrative As I tried to make clear in my first chapter, central to my own language teaching has been a concern for narrative text. Over the years I developed stories as the focal point for language learning by my students: stories which I told, they retold with themselves in observer or protagonist roles, in speech and in writing. Story is central because at its heart is the expression of what individuals experience in life in their relations with themselves, with each other and with the events with which they engage. Narrative plays an enormous part in native language useBarbara Hardy even calls it 'a primary act of mind' (Hardy, 1975). We must surely all be aware that telling the story of what happened is what most conversations are about: in the street, at home, at work, on the busour small

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talk is composed of storytelling. Yet, curiously, this fact has either escaped the notice of the compilers of the National Criteria or they decided it was not suitable at GCSE. The value of narrative in language learning lies not only in its expressive function. It bridges naturally the gap between speech and print: narratives can be told or read. The formal differences between an apparently casual oral story-telling and the differently disciplined structure of its printed version can provide an introduction to some of the register varieties in language. From a purely grammatical point of view also narrative has a powerful role to play in relating the past. If students are bound by the conventions of ongoing transactions the language they use will be limited to the present tense as the main vehicle of communication. If they are deprived in their classroom language work of the constant opposition between, say, present and past tenses I fail to see how they can ever learn how the tense system operates meaningfully. The meaning of 'je me lève tous les jours à 7 heures' is dependent on 'hier je me suis levé à 7 heures' and 'mais, quand j'habitais à X, je me levais à 6h30'. I would argue that, however difficult it may be to do in class, the constant articulation of these meaningfully distinct ways of handling the notion of time and our relationships to it is crucial to any grasp of the tense system and what it does in the language. Linked with the role of the tense system is the whole question of the displacement of the subject with respect to the text produced. Narrative essentially displaces the subject from the context-bound present in which all references are grounded in the here and now, to other times and places. The subject is obliged to see and represent him or herself as an active participant at an earlier time and, probably, in a different place. Consequently, any interaction with an interlocutor may require discourse within different time zoneshow things were then, how they are now, what the consequences will be for the future, etc. Above all, the narrator is obliged to create enough coherence, with or without interaction with the audience, for the whole message to get across. It is the necessity to create a coherent whole which provides the enterprise with its linguistic justification, in my view. Only when the students are obliged to express the outlines of some event, with some characterisation, some evidence of sequence and cause and effect, is there any real evidence of what they have grasped of the strategies of the language which enable those relationships to be expressed. In order to acquire those competencies students have to have experience of those language forms which enable the meanings to be expressed. That is to say, students have to have experience of narrative text

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and learn to express itand other, similar textsboth in speech and in writing. Language Roles for the 16+ When we discussed the outlines for the future 16+ in Leicestershire, we were agreed that an adequate role for spoken language had to be included in it. We were also agreed that oral examining would have to take up a much larger part of the total examination, if 25% of the marks were to be allocated to it. Rolewhat the user is using language forrather than function the way the language is being usedwas the necessary focus for our assessments. We thought this would help students to develop flexible strategies for using their language resources for different purposes. The three oral roles we had selected for the 16+Interviewer/ee, Negotiator and Reportermake use of language in different but not discrete ways. Declarative and interrogative sentence structures are obviously basic language tools in any interaction and will occur in all roles in any setting. As the language strategy changes, so too does the kind of language being used. Interviewer/Interviewee The Interviewer role has to do with seeking information from a partner. This implies checking that the information given has been understood by the seeker and asking for further information or explanation. Although the information will be sought by questions, other language forms, such as comments, politeness and hesitation formulae are also likely to occur. The type of questions used will therefore vary from open to closed and will include appropriate strategies for following up information which needs elucidation or extension. The Interviewee role provides the information asked for by the Interviewer. Although the principal sentence form used will be declarative, questions are not ruled outrequests for clarification, for example. Since the initiative rests with the questioner whose questions provide the sentence structure for any response, the Interviewee may make use of both the short and full forms in reply. Comments, hesitations and politeness formulae will also occur. Negotiator The Negotiator role implies an exchange in which the outcome is an agreement. We decided to limit the exchange to a transaction of goods and services in appropriate settings. Consequently, the language use implied

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questions about availability, requests for services, goods or explanations, descriptions, expressions of preference, acceptance and rejection. As the Negotiator is unaware of the constraints of the transaction, the language use also includes strategies for dealing with the unpredicted e.g. requests for further information, consideration of options and making of decisions or compromises of decisions. Reporter The role of Reporter requires elicitation and notetaking strategies combined with the ability to express the linkage between people and events in a coherent way for the audience. Language use will therefore be narrative and descriptive, requiring cohesive devices to link sentences in sequence and refer appropriately to people, places and events in an orderly manner. Correspondent The writing role of Correspondent picks up the elicitation and notetaking strategies required for the Reporter and relates them to argumentative discourse: the highlighting of points of view, their defence and criticism, the advancement of the students' own views with the reasoning behind them. The opening towards anecdote in the role helps to link narrative and argument together in one text. The cohesive devices used by the students to refer to speakers and their points of view have to be brought into their writing: they are not present in the texts.

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3 Graded Objectives and Language Learning East Midland Graded Assessment Feasibility Study Some time in 1978 the local CSE board, the East Midland Regional Examination board (EMREB), had set up a working party of modern language teachers dissatisfied with current methods of assessment and their backwash effect on modern language teaching in schools. The Working Party had had various meetings and had looked sympathetically at various reports of graded test schemes. I had not been involved in any of these preparatory meetings, nor had I had any connection with EMREB. I was therefore quite surprised to be invited to a meeting at the Board's offices to look at a scheme of work put forward by a group of teachers as part of their graded test scheme for the less able. At the time I was on nodding terms with the work of the Council of Europe but had not taken much interest in it. I had seen some of the graded test schemes in use in various parts of the country but had not been much impressed by the quality of the thinking behind them. Before going to the meeting, I think I could characterise my mental set as favouring the sociolinguistic framework offered by notional syllabusesmy own linguistic orientation and experiments in schools assured thatbut I was totally opposed to any reduction of language learning to phrase-book French on the pretext that it was suitable for the so-called less able. Graded Objectives I would have to confess that I was divided in my mind about graded objectives. I favoured an approach which might make language learning more relevant to a wider population, but could see no reason to hive off the less able: if learning by objectives was valuable, it had to be valuable for everybody. I could see no merit in a proposal which enabled teachers to have separate programmes for the less and the more able. That seemed to meparticularly since the graded objectives schemes were largely oral -

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to perpetuate the role of spoken language as an easy option for the less academic. I also doubted whether objectives could be usefully formulated beyond a fairly low level of language use. The presentation confirmed my worst fears. The teachers described their tests as fitting into the dead spots of the year where the pupils' interest in the textbook was flagging. The tests were designed to enable the teacher to divert attention from the book; to concentrate for a few weeks on the preparation for the tests (for the successful completion of which certificates were available); and to return to the course book. I was unable to see any merit in the proposal, finding the language content meretricious and the assessment procedures primitive. My criticisms of the presentation were not well received by the teachers present. In the subsequent discussion on the way ahead, volunteers were called for to outline a possible notional-functional syllabus, based on the Council of Europe's materials, for a weekend conference at Stoke Rochford. Not surprisingly there were no takers. I had in any case decided that the whole enterprise could be characterised by de Gaulle's dictum on the United Nationsc'est pas un machin qui marche. After the meeting had finished, Roger Long, then Assistant Secretary at EMREB asked me if I would introduce the matter at the conference. I was about to refuse when he said that David Smith, Principal Modern Languages Adviser for Leicestershire (now Chief Inspector for Cheshire) had suggested me as the only person capable of doing the job. Now, it is well known that flattery will get you anywhere... How could I let down a friend and colleague just because I thought the enterprise intellectually shaky? So, I agreed. Some of the Problems I went home, re-read the Council of Europe documents, wrote critical notes on all the graded objectives schemes I could lay my hands on, and set to work to produce the linguistic parameters for a communicative syllabus. I realised that we were going to be concerned with building a concern for process and system into language learning for use. Although I could cheerfully dismiss learned dialogues of the type: Je voudrais un café, s'il vous plait. Oui, monsieur/madame. Voilà. Ça fait 3 francs. I had to admit that the language would be useful, if the children went to France. The problem was going to be, how to isolate the various levels of languagephonological, lexical, grammatical, discursivein such a way that the learners might manipulate them in their own combinations in order

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to achieve their own purposes. In a word: how could we get them to go beyond the data given in order to make their own meanings? And, how could we fit all that into something assessable? Or, more accurately, how could we create a system of assessment which would enable all that to be produced? Since performance, which is all one can assess, falls into the area of sociolinguistics, what would a performance in a school context look like ? And if we could describe one so that it could take place, how, and by what criteria, would we judge it? At that stage, I was only clear about what the Chinese would probably sloganise as the Four Noes: no comprehension, no multiple choice, no English, no tests. Beyond that, I had not got. Stoke Rochford Seminar In addressing the seminar at Stoke Rochford, I stressed that step by step assessment of modern language learning invited us to re-examine what we understood by language learning and, therefore, to reconsider what we meant by language teaching. I could see little point in confirming existing practice; nor did I think teachers should be guided towards an examination with only a description of modes of testing as their guide. The enterprise was essentially one which, whilst aiming at the construction of an assessment syllabus, carried implications for both the teaching syllabus and methodology which would support it. Teachers are not in the main used to assessment syllabuses: they prefer to describe what will be covered during a course, rather than predict what can be achieved by covering it. Teaching syllabuses are more likely to list grammatical items and topics than to specify what the learners have to learn to do with them for a prescribed purpose. If the syllabus refers to the four skills, it will not interrelate them so as to bring out the way they function in tandem in natural language use. I argued that, although most teachers would probably agree that knowing the paradigms does not help in communicating with native speakers the written systems being notoriously irrelevant to the demands of speechthey would all want grammar taught. I felt that there was strong support for a systems based approach to communicative language learning, if for no other reason than the unsatisfactory nature of the alternatives. A syllabus based entirely on unpattemable themes would run the risk of producing a survival compendium, a vade-mecum of handy phrases. Grammar, however, presents this advantage: it can offer the learners the chance to make use of the patterns in order

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to go beyond what they have learned to make something for themselves. Discourse, on the other hand, is much more difficult to invent rules for. I stressed that, in my view, any assessment syllabus should allow teachers to construct their teaching so as to enable the learners to expand what they had learned for themselves: that is to say, that their learning should not be restricted to so-called communicative phrases but should enable them to engage in communication using their own resources. This implied that the intent of the syllabus was communicative, its topics relevant to students and its structure generative. Communication and Assessment The essence of communication is the exchange of meanings between speakers. But before that exchange can take place each speaker has to be able to formulate his or her own thinking on the topics under review. Moreover, they have to be ready to handle the unexpected and react to it appropriately. Speakers talk to each other communicatively when they say things that the others don't know but need to know, or can make use of, but they may also include the (tentative) expression of what they themselves don't know they know. Of course, communication between people also requires the use of the formulae of social exchangeHow are you? I'm fine. And you? Oh, mustn't grumble. Dreadful weather we're having. Yes, terribleand so on. Such language does not convey information, it simply helps us to make or maintain contact with whoever we are talking to. Such language obviously needs to be taught to foreign language learners, too. Any assessment syllabus aiming at communicative use of language therefore implies that the language users would be expected to use their foreign language for purposes which can be defined. Those purposes would have to be defined as the objectives the students would be learning to achieve. They would be expressed in terms of the language functions the students were learning e.g. to ask for information about something, to express an opinion on something, to give a reason for doing something; etc. These purposes would imply specific roles for the students e.g. Interviewer, Negotiator, Correspondent etc. Topics If communication is about exchanging meanings, topics help to define where these meanings are to come from: they help to restrict the field in which the students are going to operate. If the objectives state, for example, that the students are going to learn how to ask for information about something, the choice of school as topic implies that the students will learn how to ask for information about school. The further definition of that topic

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into, say, lessons, timetable, teachers, subjects etc., implies that the students will learn how to ask for information about what lessons someone has, who teaches them, when they take place etc. Obviously, the choice of topic depends on the function being learned, but asking for information about someone's school, is no different from asking for information about their home: the language items used, vocabulary and structures, would be different, but the function of the language, seeking information, would be the same. A communicative assessment syllabus would be assessing the students' ability to perform roles, not to use specific vocabulary and structure. And, as far as the teachers were concerned, any vocabulary and structures relevant to the function would be acceptable: there could be no prescription. Roles Any assessment programme would have to define the roles played by the students. These seemed to amount to three: social, psychological and interactional. I suggested that the social domain in which the students would operate would be as stranger to stranger, friend to friend , peer to peer and young person to adult. As the student remains in the inferior role in any context involving a native foreign language speaker, the psychological roles most useful would be neutral or sympathetic. At the interactional level the student would be functioning perhaps as interviewer/interviewee, negotiator, interpreter, narrator and correspondent in any of the above psychological and social contexts. The purpose of what to many teachers seemed an overelaborate exercise was to introduce as much precision as possible into all the decisions about language learning and assessment which depended on them. Modes The modes in which language operates are not always those in which performance can be assessed. We cannot assess students' ability to process something they hear or read simply by getting them to listen to or read something: listening and reading do not offer evidence of themselves in the way that talking and writing do. Since performance has to be an outcome, it can only be an action, a chunk of speech or writing. Consequently, the assessment of competencies would in fact have to be based on the students' ability to produce spoken or written text. This would not mean that listening to or reading the foreign language would not be involved, but these aspects could only be integrated into the assessment system in a supporting role for talking or writing: they could not figure as assessment modes themselves.

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Most of the teachers were reasonably happy with the theory, but they did not like the implications. They accepted intellectually that competencies in listening and reading have to be inferred and cannot be directly assessed, but were unconvinced that listening and reading comprehension were irrelevant. Their attitude was not unlike their attitude to grammar: listening and reading were essential skills which should be valued for themselves and therefore rewarded in any assessment scheme. The integration I was suggesting amounted to assessing two skills at oncethey were firmly wedded to the old audio-lingual concepts of discrete skills to be separately assessed. Curiously, none of the teachers was prepared to adopt a communicative assessment syllabus of just talking and writing and to make their own arrangements for separately assessing in their own way listening and reading. Essentially, they wanted an assessment framework which reflected the four-skills approach of the existing CSE/GCE examinations. Structures Apart from the vocabulary implied by the topics chosen and the grammar needed to perform the functionsasking for, stating, commenting, or whateverthe need to enable the students to generate language took two forms. Firstly, the teaching would have to permit the students to perceive and use grammatical structures. (To my mind, that meant a presentation of language forms which would stress the possibility of a patterned use by the students.) Secondly, it implied a use by the students of whatever forms they could produce to achieve the meaning they wantedits accuracy or lack of it playing a different role from the conventional one. Language in Use If we took as an example the function of self-identification, this would imply that the student was either an interviewer or an interviewee, asking for or giving information about him or herself. The topics of name, age, family etc. would require the forms: What's your name? How old are you? My name is . . . I'm . . . and so on. The grammar would therefore be restricted to the first and second persons. If it stayed there, the students would never be able to refer to others. They would therefore need, firstly to handle the language of reporting (third persons singular and plural) and the opportunity to use it appropriately; and, secondly, they would need to be able to see that patterns existed which could be used to create new meanings e.g. that 'mon' and 'ma' are not restricted to 'père' and 'mère' but can be used elsewhere as well.

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What I was arguing for was for the opening out of the language system where possible. My intention was to present an alternative to learning set phrases of the dialogue type. It was in this connection that I raised the question of the forms we teach. I did not wish to prevent teachers, for example, from teaching forms like 'Où habites-tu?' or 'Comment est-ce que tu t'appelles?', but merely to suggest that, if learning was going to be predicated on spoken French, teachers would have to pay some account to what French people actually said (as distinct from what the grammar books wrote and some French people thought they said). As Eddy Roulet (1975) makes clear in the following examples, French practice is varied: où va ton père? il va où? où va-t-il? où il va? où ton pere va-t-il? où c'est qu'il va? où est-ce qu'il va? où qu'il va? English teachers of French therefore need some criteria for their choice! I suggested that the language selected for presentation should be usable in authentic conversation and enable the learners to interact with others so as to get specified things done and to express their own point of view. The intention of the assessment syllabus was to focus on the personal competencies of the learner as a language user. But I also stressed that because the language we were teaching could not possibly be spoken Frenchfor which we did not possess adequate, usable grammatical descriptionsbut only a speakable version of written Frenchwhat Abercrombie calls 'spoken prose'we would need to be economical in the forms we expected the students to use, whilst exposing them to forms they would not be expected to use themselves. Council of Europe In setting out the theoretical background of the syllabus to be developed, I based myself on the work of the Council of Europe, particularly that of van Ek (1977). But I was at pains to point out that the Council's trail blazing work could be used only as a starting point for our own. The Council's work is aimed primarily at European adults anxious to achieve a working knowledge of another European language. Its adaptation for school purposes by van Ek can only be taken as a guide as to what needs to be done to produce a syllabus. We would need to define our own syllabus compatible with his initial framework. I explained that, although the assessment syllabus would be expressed in terms of objectives, roles, topics and modes, and that overall, it was the students' ability to communicate in speech and writing which would be

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assessed, we would not wish to restrict language learning for communication to communication only. Our experience as native language users includes communication in our purposes but those purposes are not limited to communication with others. We talk to ourselves, play about with language in puns and jokes, write memos for ourselves, keep locked diaries, tell and write stories, write poems and so on, where our purposes have nothing to do with imparting information to anyone. And although the language we listen to or read may indeed include information we can use, much of our reading and listening is recreational and pleasurable and is never converted into anything for anybody else. The communicative use of language is a useful aim in language learning but it is not all that language is about. In order to ensure that the learning of language is multi-focused, that is, that the learning to understand spoken and written language, to speak and write it coincides with its use, I proposed that the two outcomes which would be assessed should be talking and writing, linked in such a way that the two were interdependent at both the learning and assessment level. At the simplest level of information exchange, this would mean that students would learn to understand and respond to 'Tu t'appelles comment?' and would also learn to write it. But they would also learn to understand and respond to 'Il/elle s'appelle . . .' which they would learn to write as well. In that way, I hoped that we would strengthen the learning process even though the written form of the assessment would have no obviously communicative justification. The writing out of the dialogue that had just taken place between two students could have no communicative value; the report, which conveyed the data gained from that dialogue, was not really addressed to anyone other than the teacher. Language Learning My argument, no more than an extended working hypothesis, is that foreign language learning is likely to be best done if it can in some way be modelled on the native language experience: that the activities of the students in the foreign language should be obviously based on their experiences of their own native language, be a micro version of them. Consequently, the competencies of listening, reading, talking and writing cannot be considered separately in the learning process anymore than they can in use. In the early stages of learning it is probably true that the order of hearing, understanding, saying, reading and writing is a useful order to follow; but as students learn more, it is likely that that order can be changed so that reading, understanding and saying become just as much of a possibility as seeing, understanding and saying.

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What seems to be indisputable is that the focus on integrating the four modes of listening, reading, talking and writing increases the understanding and therefore provides the student with more resources to talk and write with. If I can extend this a bit with an example: suppose that the student is to learn how to ask for things in a shop. I would expect that if the student simply learned the French for a pound of butter, half a pound of cheese, etc. that language would suffer the fate of all lexical items learned in isolation and sink without trace. It is the embedding of items in a variety of contexts showing their different forms and functions that makes language available for use. Thus, 'je voudrais' needs to be used in other contexts with other meanings; 'une livre de beurre' contrasted with 'du beurre', 'le beurre', and other lexical items, of course. The ways of requesting would also need to vary so as to include, say, 'Donnez-moi une livre de beurre, s'il vous plait' and 'Une livre de beurre, s'il vous plait'. Of course, the manipulation would take place over time, as would the introduction of different ways of doing the same thing. And not all students would profit equally from such an approach, but some students, those who can, should not be denied the flexibility which the approach implies. This flexibility would have to be an aim of the teaching syllabus; an assessment syllabus can only reward the evidence of flexibility in students, it cannot produce it. Consequently, a teaching syllabus based on the assessment syllabus would probably resemble a spiral in which language forms were continuously being extended and recombined at each level just as the activities in which the students were engaged became more complex. Methodology Van Ek (1987) considers the communicative enterprise as methodologically neutral. In the sense that there is no royal road, I am inclined to agree, but I doubt whether all roads will lead to Rome: the most important setting is that in which the learners acquire the language and the strategies to perform the tasks envisaged. There is likely to be a considerable difference between those teachers whose reductionism leads them to the production of survivalist French and those who aim for something a bit more extensive for their learners. I stressed that there was no need for teachers to learn the sociolinguistic categories which would govern the language they taught; nor for them to feel oppressed by the weight of the terminology itself: the most important thing was that the learners should be able to express their views and feelings as a result. I was well aware that teachers would feel alienated by the terminology, but felt that they should understand the psycho-social dimension in which all language operates.

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Topics The problem of what topics to offer was obviously one for introspection and common sense. If we tried to construct a framework for the kind of contacts the learners might have eventually with the foreign culture, certain topics would readily suggest themselves; others might be arrived at by negotiation with the learners themselves. The list suggested by van Ek for the Threshold Level seemed as a good a starting point as any: personal identification, house and home, life at home, education and future career, free time and entertainment, travel, relations with other people, health and welfare, shopping, food and drink, services, places, foreign language, weather. Such a list, provided that it served as a basis for discussion and was not taken as a tablet of stone, seemed to cover most of what students might need as language users. Functions I proceeded to link the idea of language functions with the objectives to be achieved by the students. The value of the concept of language function is that it removes the emphasis from teacherly concerns like grammatical accuracy and concentrates on what the communication is about. Notions The presentation of the concept of notionsthe parameters in which grammar is articulatedwas more difficult for the teacher audience to come to terms with. And the idea that the exponents could be arbitrarily arrived at was something that they took some time to grasp. Most of those presentand in subsequent experiences the pattern has repeated itself wanted the language laid down as sets of lexical and structural items to teach: they were unused to starting from the function and deciding for themselves what language they would teach in order to achieve a certain effect. Grammar The role of grammar in assessment was the biggest stumbling block. Most teachers wanted formal accuracy to be rewarded for its own sake: they agreed that a particular communicative objective might be achieved by the use of inaccurate grammar but could not accept that inaccurate grammar could be rewarded, even if its inaccuracy did not interfere with the interlocutor's understanding of the message. The idea that any level of formal inaccuracy could be rewarded did not go down well. Many of the teachers present simply could not divorce what was said from the way in which it

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was saidand their dominant concern was for formal accuracy or its absence. The idea that an ill-formed message might be as understandable as a well-formed one conflicted too sharply with their deepest convictions. The suggestion that well-formedness might be rewarded separately for its function in reducing the stress on the (native) listener's processing capacity was, I felt, regarded by many as the erosion of professional standards. I tried to illustrate the relation between the teaching and assessment problems with an outline of how the variety of attested forms for asking for and giving information on the topic of self identification might be handled at various levels of the syllabus. Generally speaking, I suggested that teachers would probably select one form to start with and proceed to introduce others at later stages when the students could perhaps be expected to differentiate the exponents in terms of the register they expressed. Finally, I tried to make clear that such a series of syllabuses as I envisaged would have to be capable of internal differentiation such that within each level all students could be positively assessed; and that each level would be distinguishable from the next in terms of the increasing complexity of the demands made on the students' performance.

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4 Beginnings of French for Communication EMREB and Examination Change It is with something akin to shock that I look back at the papers charting the early course of French for Communication in 1978. The initial documents from the Examinations Committee of EMREB, which was charged with overseeing the development of the initiative, see the setting of short term goals as the principal innovation in the total process of change. Indeed, they are titled: 'Step by Step'. The outline of the steps and the nature of the tests presents a structure which takes currently available examining orthodoxy for granted and represents the summative test in a serial form, the innovation lying in the graduation. The steps are conceived as hurdles in a selective process: one in which the percentage of successful candidates would be reduced yearly until it reached the 30% mark for Level 5 (the equivalent of Grade C at O Level). The level is defined as accessible to the defining percentage of the total population. But knowing that modern languages suffer from the inevitable law of diminishing returns of the options system, the authors' attempt to forecast performance was clearly overshadowed by the anxiety to preserve standards as expressed in CSE/O Level terms. That the concept was influenced by, and limited to, current thinking about assessment is clear from the notes on the nature of the tests. Level One was to be a mixture of listening and reading comprehension, plus listening and speaking in role play situations, recorded on tape. As the students proceeded up the levels, the format was to remain largely unchanged, but the questions were to become harder! The twin concepts of accessibility and increasing difficulty are norm referenced, yet the whole project was designed to get away from norm referencing. Indeed, an earlier section of the same document makes reference to performance and to levels which would be difficult to define except in criterial terms.

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The levels were conceived as being administered by the Board, with the tests being externally set and internally marked (Levels 1 to 3) and externally set and marked (Levels 4 and 5). The framework is clearly CSE in structurethe attempt by a CSE Board to create examinations below the level at which it was used to operating and in a manner of which it had no experience. Obviously, whoever drafted the proposals would be bound to do so in terms which would be understood by, and acceptable to, the committee members who would have to approve them. Consequently, representation by teachers was conceived within EMREB's normal consultative and administrative structure: what emerged would be just another syllabus, subject to the usual controls. If the pilot schools liked it, the syllabus could be made available to others; the administration of the testing would replicate the system already in existence. The advantages were obvious: if the syllabus took off, its wider dissemination would be merely a matter of postage. Fortunately for the development of the project, the two day seminar of interested teachers at Stoke Rochford (see previous chapter) recognised the limitations of the Board's initial proposals. As a result EMREB's Languages Panel was apprised of the need to develop a functional syllabus with levels of performance being defined against positive criteria. It was also agreed that assessment procedures could not be defined in advance but would have to develop as part of a process of change. The Panel realised that the explicit description of a syllabus would itself constitute an element of prescription for teachers, but it felt that no uniformity of materials or methodology was necessary or implied. The Panel did however agree that the innovation represented a departure from CSE philosophy that 'teaching should determine what is examined'. It defended that departure on the grounds that teachers were agreed that what was to be taught should lead to competence in a language. Any worries I may have had initially about the possible constraining effects of working within the framework of an Examination Board were overcome by the ready acceptance by the Languages Panel and eventually by the Examinations Committee of our proposals for action and their consequences for the development of the syllabus. Steering Committee In order to ensure LEA support and control, a Steering Committee was set up composed of the Modern Language Advisers for the East Midland LEAs and EMREB officials, which had the responsibility of directing the work done by the coordinator and the researchers at the University of Leicester. As EMREB was LEA financed, the creation of a committee with

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an LEA background of responsibility and advisory expertise was not only a control, with each Adviser reporting back to their LEA and giving feedback to the committee from it, but, as I in my initial naivety saw it, it could also provide a beachhead with each Adviser making innovations in their own LEA as a result of the work of the committee. The Steering Committee had accepted my suggestion that the four or five Levels we might eventually have in operation should, at least for the period of the Feasibility Study (i.e. before certification), be closely linked to the chronological sequence of the secondary system. This meant that Level One would more or less fit Year 7; Level Two, Year 8; and so on. This particular linking I regarded as essential if the whole teaching process was to be changed in a communicative direction from the beginning and for the whole ability range. It also seemed important that judgments made about the feasibility of the enterprise should be made in relation to data derived from the whole ability range. I thought it would be easier to differentiate levelsi.e. to show just how a Level Two candidate was superior to a Level One candidateif the data gleaned covered the whole ability range within comparable age ranges. Unlike some of my colleagues on the Steering Committee and some of those engaged in graded objectives in other parts of the country, I saw little value in the reach-me-down tasks which learners are said to be able to take when they are ready for them (see Appendix 1, pp. 149/150, 159/160 & 168). Graded Objectives I endeavoured to make my own position clear with respect to the notion of graded assessment. The concept of grading implies that there are levels of achievement which students can be expected to reach in a particular order over a specified period of time. The wide variation in ability would therefore lead one to assume that each of these levels was itself composed of sub-levels; and that not all students would be able to achieve all the levels on offer. I doubted whether any scheme of assessment could lay bare the actual linguistic potential of the population it examines; the most it can do is to show the abilities of the students to carry out what the set tasks require. I accepted that short-term goals might prove a powerful motivator for students and that the levels could be instrumental in increasing motivation by giving frequent feedback and therefore encouragement. But my principal interest lay then, as it does now, in the change of values in the classroom which learning to communicate can bring about.

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Assessment Syllabus The problem of syllabus definition became a matter of concern. I was by now familiar with all the graded objectives schemes available. All seemed to show some superficial debt to sociolinguistics but only the Lothian scheme seemed to show any understanding of how sociolinguistics might be put to the service of language learning and assessment. All the schemes seemed to proliferate tests which could be administered by their teachers to their pupils. Mostso far as I could perceivesaw their tests as self-contained units which could be inserted into their teaching schemes at any point. The concept of a Level composed of a set of tasks for which a predetermined test was available seemed to me a priori to restrict the field of a functional assessment in an unnecessarily bureaucratic way. Since, too, the tests were predictable, there seemed to be the likelihood that the teaching would become reduced to a rehearsal for the tests, thus emphasising the focus on the content rather than the process of the communication being judged. The provision of tests seemed also to confirm the teachers in their role of consumers. New Perspectives I was in no doubt that re-focusing language teaching on communication would require a thorough reorientation of the teachers' role, methodology and materials. The turning away from the traditional textbook, ex-cathedra lesson could not be effected by the simple substitution of one content for another. If teachers were to put teaching for communication at the heart of the language learning process, then they would have to engage in an extended dialogue with themselves and others in the course of which they would have to learn how to construct an assessment, formulate and apply appropriate criteria for the assessments and flesh out the assessment guidelines into pertinent learning sequences for the learners. Such a concept implied that our experimentation was going to be as step by step as the overall assessment package in the production of an agreed set of guidelines. It seemed likely that the communication in which we were all going to be engaged would have to be open to all the teachers all the time. I could not see that we could in any way separate what we were hoping to promote in our learners, if we did not promote it amongst ourselves first (see Appendix 1, pp. 151-158, 161-167).

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Responses to Change It is of course well known that organisational structures develop their own internal dynamics. The Advisers were not delegates with constituencies. The Steering Committee had no power to impose anything. And although the initiative to fund the project had come from a working party of EMREB, responding to 'pressure . . . from teachers and advisory staffs of LEAs' (September 1979), the commitment to change varied from Adviser to Adviser, reflecting not only the local variationshow they perceived their role as Advisers or Inspectorsbut also their personal ideologies what language learning was about and how French should be taught. The Steering Committee was a curious organism in many ways. As it was not a decision-making body, all its recommendations went to Examinations Committee for ratification. It was much more a forum than a committee. The Advisers/Inspectors had radically diverse views of the work being done. None of them had a background in linguistics or assessment; some viewed any theory with deep suspicion; others feared that grammar was being sacrificed on the altar of communication; most had great difficulty in accommodating themselves to the linguistic formulations that I favoured for the syllabuses. Just as the LEAs differed greatly in the receptivity of their teachers to the ideas put forward, so too did the Advisers give the impression of not occupying common ground. One had already started a graded test scheme for the less able in his LEA, so he regarded the new scheme as unnecessary for his purposes. Another professed to be sympathetic to the idea of change but objected to the shape that the project actually assumed. A third was mildly benevolent to whatever was proposed but took no part in the often intense debates about substantial issues in the theory and practice of communicative language learning. One LEA was unrepresented for a long period of time as the Adviser had died and had not been replaced. For whatever reasons, the Advisers outside Leicestershire were content to allow the scheme to become a largely Leicestershire affair. The teachers in the LEAs mirrored the attitudes of their Advisers. Where schools outside Leicestershire took the project on board, the teachers were soon overwhelmed by the standardisation procedures and the administration of the assessments. Individual teachers would start off with some enthusiasm, recognise the increase in motivation of their pupils but wilt under the form filling, the problems of organising the assessments, the pressure to invent and the indifference or hostility of their colleagues. I found this difficult to understand, since the research evidence from both the pupils and the teachers had indicated considerable satisfaction at the positive results achieved.

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In the early days of the project, many teachers, accustomed to deriving their teaching syllabus from their course books, wanted to use them in parallel with the work on the project. The Steering Committee was clearly in favour of this and I saw no reason for schools to march in lockstep towards communicative language teaching. Unfortunately, the internal logic of the project militated against it as a possibility. Either teachers adopted the assessment syllabus as the basis for their teaching, making such use of textbooks as seemed necessary, or they stuck to their textbooks and abandoned the syllabus: there seemed to be no middle way. Leicestershire was undoubtedly privileged in having High Schools (1114) and 11-16 schools to bear the main burden of the development of the work. Outside Leicestershire, in the 11-18 schools, teachers seemed unwilling to spend their time changing what they did in class. Fortunately, some enterprising teachers in Lincolnshire, despite the fact that they had no Adviser to help them (the vacant post having been frozen by the LEA), organised themselves into a self-help group; participated when they could in Leicestershire meetings; organised their own when they could not; and simply set about introducing communicative language teaching into their five schools. When an Adviser was eventually appointed, he immediately recognised the value of the work that had been done and endeavoured to extend it. Sources of Difficulty The administration of EMGAFS was certainly cumbersome, particularly in the early stages. Not only did the teachers have to administer the various questionnaires on which the evaluation of the project depended, they also had to cope with the logistics of paired assessments and the accompanying paperworkwhich was considerable. Doubtless, even that burden might have appeared acceptable if it had been seen as part of the total structure of a five-year assessment programme culminating in the award of a GCE/CSE. But at that point no such outcome was assured; it was not even on the horizon. With the benefit of hindsight, I suppose one could say that, had the EMREB initiative embraced a GCE Board from the outset and the development to joint certification been assured, no teacher would have been able to use the uncertain future of the enterprise as an excuse for not taking part. As it was, teachers could complain that they were spending a disproportionate amount of time and energy on (at that time) Year 7 French. It was an argument commonly used by Heads of Departments that they could not spend so much of their time thinking about Year 7 when they had O and A Level preparation as well. And those who did not want to change what they

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were doing in the upper school, simply argued that we were wasting our time, because it would all have to be changed in Year 10 in time for O Level and CSE. Many teachers probably resented the inquisition which served the researchers but had no obvious value for the classroom practitioners. However, we learned from the returns a great deal about the department: their degree of commitment to innovation; whether they were elitist or democratic in their orientation; whether they operated as a single, unified department or not. The research (Freedman, 1982) investigated amongst other features the attitudes of both teachers and learners to the teaching and assessment of the Feasibility Study. In the first year of the Study the evaluation monitored by means of questionnaires the attitudes of pupils and of teachers and the relationship between the two. The pupils were asked about the following: (1) enjoyment of the teaching; (2) difficulty of the teaching; (3) interest of the teaching; (4) enjoyment of the teaching; (5) difficulty of the assessment. The teachers were asked about their: (1) rate of progress; (2) enjoyment of the Study; (3) preparation time for teaching and for assessment; (4) teaching and assessment problems; (5) pupils' enjoyment of teaching and of assessment; (6) pupils' difficulty with the work; (7) pupils' progress. The period of the investigation coincided with the maximum geographical spread of the work being done. It is interesting to note that in largely mixed ability Year 7 classes responses to questionnaires recorded 69% expressing enjoyment of the teaching and 52.2% enjoying the assessments themselves. As Dr Freedman points out the less able seemed to enjoy the work as well as their more able peers. As far as the teachers' responses were concerned, 60% said that they found the experience 'very enjoyable', despite the fact that they found the preparationand the assessment organisationarduous. They felt too that their classes enjoyed both the teaching and the assessment; and that their pupils were making good progress (26 out of 47 classes making better progress than the teachers would normally have expected, 19 making about

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the samethe teacher of the remaining two classes being unable to come to a firm conclusion). The part of the research which looked at cross-tabulations between the features investigated (i.e. the relationships between the profiles of responses to each of the features investigated) found a significant relationship between the teachers' enjoyment of the work and their view of the students' progress. If we compare the responses to the questionnaires with the recorded comments of teachers involved in the process at this early stage, the reaction of teachers outside Leicestershire seems very similar to those working in Leicestershire itself. There is simply no evidence to suppose that Leicestershire teachers found the new ways of working any less arduous or more profitable than teachers outside the county. Within two or three years the picture had changed. The returns indicated a wholesale commitment to graded objectives in Leicestershire; the other areasa few Lincolnshire schools exceptedwere clearly reluctant to re-order their teaching without benefit of textbook. Not surprisingly, most of those schools dropped out and later adopted a graded test scheme of the insert type which permitted the teachers to suspend their textbook, prepare and administer the tests and return to their textbook. It seems to be the preferred mode of a very large number of modern language teachers to operate within parameters defined by others. Whatever advantages such a mode offers, it restricts teachers' control over what they do. Continuous Assessment A strong disincentive for the less than committed was undoubtedly provided by our assessment system itself. We wereI think, rightly concerned to assess how far the students had acquired certain abilities as defined in the syllabus, rather than to judge one-off performances. Consequently, we insisted on continuous assessment with the three assessments per Level intended to elicit performances of the ability to carry out a specific function. And, in order to be reasonably sure that we were adding like to like, we analysed the expected exchanges so as to be able to observe how far the students were meeting the demands made upon them. For Level One, we had constructed tasks requiring the students to seek and give information, but we awarded the marks for the realisation of a function. The intention was to prevent the teachers considering only the grammatical accuracy of what was being said and to concentrate instead on a successful performance of the ability to communicate by the student.

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The scores were recorded and totalled at the end of the level, the overall acceptable scorethe passbeing agreed by consensus among the teachers at a meeting at the end of the Level (see Appendix 1, pp. 149-152). For the teachers the procedure comprised selecting the functions for each individual assessment, cueing them appropriately, hearing the students' exchange, scoring simultaneously the functions acceptably performed by each candidate, recording for each candidate the score awarded, and completing the Unit Class Assessment form for each class. If we add the bureaucratic consequences of a commitment to communicative language teaching to the very real strains of exercising that commitment in the classroommaterials production, pairwork, assessments it is understandable that the fallout should have been high. As the study developed, the demands on the teachers increased. Levels Two and Three were added to Level One; the Talking, Writing/Reading modes were increased to Talking, Reading and Writing. Each set of assessments needed planning. Teachers had to prepare their own materials and cue cards for practice and assessment; work out ways of coping with the very considerable problems of organising the assessments in class; and complete the documentation required in the appropriate formata very heavy load for hard-pressed teachers to bear (see Appendix 1). Did we need such bureaucracy? Looking back from the comparative simplicity of the present administration, it might well seem overdone. Why did we do it? I suppose there was the inevitable tendency to over-organise, an anxiety for the centre to feel it knew what was really going on out there. There was also a very strong desire on my part to try to ensure that the teachers engaged in standardisable practices: it seemed important that, where teachers had some freedom within the syllabus, they should be seen to be exercising that freedom in the spirit of the syllabus. Our aim was to produce a standard interpretation of the syllabus so that the certificates awarded would reflect the same values irrespective of school. It took some time for us to move away from the atomistic scoring of the early days to the holistic systems we now favour. The difference is ascribable not to a mere passage of time, but to the experiences of living within the system which eventually cracked it. Learning about Change Starting from Level One and building up to Two and Three was not without its disadvantages, too: not only did we tend to look at the later Levels as deriving from the earlier, in the sense that they were dependent

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on them linguistically, we were also limited by the way we had operated in the earlier Levels (see Appendix 1, pp. 153-172 for current examples). In a sense, despite our innovative intentions, our style of operation had become a conservative force. This is probably inevitable: the investment of time has material outcomesadministrative documentation, standardisation procedures, workshop circulars as well as cue cards, OHP transparencies, flashcards, reading texts and the assessment procedures. Once that formidable apparatus was in place and working, it was very difficult to see any other way of doing things. As everything had to be done by yesterday, important decisions about, say, the role of reading or writing in our communicative assessment syllabus, tended to be taken in accordance with the general tenor of the syllabus as an ongoing organism, rather than in a perspective of where we might differently go. For example, I had insisted from the beginning that oral communication was what we were about primarily, and that performances in other language modes would derive from this. Consequently, the certification procedure privileged talking; the other modesreading and writing (at that stage combined)were accessible only through talking. The intention was clear enough: talking was the prime learning and communicating medium; this would therefore be reflected in the assessments and no-one would be able to bypass Talking at any Level and be certificated. A student could be certificated in Talking, with or without Reading or Writing, but none could be certificated in either of the latter without Talking. This formulation led to the Talking assessment becoming physically necessary for the other two. I was of course aware of the very complex relationship between talking, reading and writing in both the learning process and in language use, but felt that it was legitimate to assert the primacy of talking for our pedagogical purposes since talking was the most neglected of the competencies developed in schools. This somewhat artificial construct was fine until we worked it out in practice! The first writing derived from the Talking consisted of a report and a scenario. The report summarised the information gained by the student in talking to his/her partner; the scenario was simply a writing up in dialogue form of the talking exchange which had just taken place (see Appendix 1, p. 157). The report was therefore quasi-communicative in that it conveyed in writing what had been learned in talking. It could be used as the basis of a further exchange between one student and another or of a reporting back session within a group where each student was responsible for reporting on another (not present) to the remainder of the group.

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The scenario had no communicative virtues at all. Its function was purely heuristic, a way of ensuring that all the language forms necessary would be available later when required (as, for example, in writing a letter). We were uncomfortable with the scenario and abandoned it as an assessed piece of writing after a while. Its use was then restricted to non-assessed work in preparation for any creative dialogue writing which the students might engage in. The limitations of the report and scenario became evident when we came to consider oral exchanges of a transactional kind. It was one thing to ask students to write up dialogues about transacting goods and services as a heuristic device with no communicative function; but it was quite another to get them to write up a report of what had happened in the exchange. We found ourselves in more difficulty when in Level Two we moved into transactions of a different type. Straight information exchange could relatively easily be converted into other modes with the students preserving their talking role of seeking and giving information. However, once the student was engaged in negotiating, say, an evening out with a friend, we were no longer able to find either a text for reading or a role for writing within communicative parameters. The textual problem was that of the linguistic differences between the texts produced orally in face-to-face negotiation and in writing representing them. Assuming that a suitable context could be invented, a report of the transaction would not only be appropriately in the past tense, it would also have to contain reported speech or a summary of the outcomes. Many of the teachers saw no great difficulties here for the most able even though they were not used to teaching the required forms that earlyand, indeed, the most able did handle the problems remarkably well. Ultimately, however, we decided that the whole process tended to became rather mechanical: texts, although accurately written, bristled with forms like, 'Je lui ai dit que', 'Elle m'a répondu que', 'Je lui ai demandé si' and became virtually unreadable. The alternative, to teach adequately the summarising skills, seemed a little beyond what Year 8 pupils ought to be doing. When we came to introduce Reading as an assessment mode, we still thought in reflexive terms. As well as limiting the text to be read to one reflecting a transaction, we also restricted the candidate's role to a noncommunicative transcoding of the text into pictures or symbolsprincipally, because we did not want summaries which might, we feared, encourage translation (which we did not know how to discourage, either). We were aware that it fitted uneasily with our concerns for assessing outcomes only, but felt we needed to insist on some language performance involving the reading of texts since a large number of schools were basing the whole

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of their work on the assessment syllabuses and were not engaging their students in any extensive or intensive reading. Reading was a late addition to the canon as far as the assessment process was concerned. Printed text had always been available as a stimulus for the talking, as an alternative to symbolic cue cards (see Appendix 1, pp. 155 & 164). It tended to be used for the more able students, but also needed careful formulation, if it was to give information for the role without providing a script for the candidate to read from. (We had similar problems later in GCSE, in the Reporter role where the candidate used a printed text as a basis for a talking assignment.) The original formulation tying the assessments closely to the oral had a drag effect here also. We tended to see the different media as almost mirror images of each other, so that if students were making arrangements to spend time together in the talking assessment, then the reading text would reflect such an exchange. Our original intention had been to preserve talking and writing as the only communicative modes i.e. the only instances of what the student can actually be observed doing. We had eschewed the processing of listening and reading texts as being noncommunicative. We were however happy to absorb non-communicative activities on a temporary basis for a limited period of time until we were clearer about what we were doing. The restriction of the reading assessments to transcoding worked well enough where the texts envisaged had a parallel existence in their own right, but rather less well where they did not. It was, for example, not only possible to transcode a set of directions as a map, it was also a legitimate activityone that, in some obvious sense, would be the appropriate response by a reader on receiving a letter containing the directions for getting to some agreed destination. Whether or not real readers make do with the verbal instructions or make their own maps from them, is immaterial to the argument: a symbolic representation of the directions involves the deployment of at least a subset of the skills needed to decode the directions into the route to be followed on the ground. Where, however, we suggested representing an account of a shopping transaction in a grid indicating the goods bought, their weight, size, number, cost and availability, we were not operating in the real world in the same way: we were inviting students to generate the cue cards on which the original exchange could have been based. The thinking on which the transcoding concept was based derives from Bruner's three modes of knowingthe enactive, the iconic and the symbolic (Bruner, 1962). The iconic mode enables understanding to be expressed graphically. Techniques using it have been developed by initial

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reading teachers. Basically, the underlying assumption is that the text can be represented by 'mapping' or 'modelling' it. The process consists of asking the reader to create (or choose from a selection) a model which will most adequately convey the information of the text. The intention of the initial reading specialists is to require children to create these models in order to develop the reflective thinking on which so much reading success depends. We assumed the relationship between the understanding of language in context and its expression in that context in a holistic way: that the ability to understand written directions engages with the ability to issue them. We therefore worked on the assumption that the ability to transpose a written dialogue or the summary of a shopping transaction into a cue card which could generate them was related to the ability to participate in the exchange and to express it in dialogue form. The original transcoding reading tasks were an excellent example of our Procrustean approach. Because we had developed an analytical scoring system, the reading tasks had to generate suitable scores on an item basis. As a result, the texts and tasks used by the teachers soon developed undesirable characteristics and it became evident that it was our scoring system which was pushing teachers into developing forms of transcoding which only they understoodand that with some difficulty. The realisation that the atomistic scoring developed from Level One was interfering with what we were doing in the later levels had two sources a developing unease with some examples of the transcoding on the one hand, and work done in preparing the pilot CSE/GCE examination, on the other. The 16+ and the Three Levels The unease derived mainly from the enthusiastic adoption of the transcoding system by some teachers such that a line of printed text could be represented in almost symbolic translation form. The results, though ingeniousand well within the competence of the majority of the children were meaningless to all but the initiated. It was clearly time to cry halt. But by far the greater impulse for change came from the work done on the 16+ examination where we had already decided to formulate tasks embodying larger stretches of text, requiring therefore more complex processing. It soon became apparent that an atomistic scheme for marking the talking assessments was impossible to maintain. It was a fairly long step but an inevitable one to a review of what we were rewarding in the assessments in the three levels.

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In the early stages of our work our situation as researchers was similar to that of the Level One Unit One students whose abilities to perform the seeking and giving information task were bounded by the poverty of the resources available to them at the timethe experience of some half-dozen sentences, in quantitative terms. Like them, we knew little and had no real understanding of how little we knew nor of what there was yet to learn. As our practical experience of the 16+ examination deepened and we faced the difficulties of writing assessment criteria which could lead to standardisable results, it became more obvious that the students' performances could not be regarded as simply the sum of parts which could be assessed separately in some way. We realised that if we were to think in holistic terms of tasks to be carried out, we could not avoid assessing the performances of the students in an equally holistic way. Just as we were using the concept of the candidate playing a certain role in the 16+Interviewer, Reporter, Negotiator etc.so we began to import the corollaries of that thinking into the lower Levels. The role of Interpreter is one that we used extensively in the 16+, so that it seemed natural to introduce it lower down. We were however not entirely without misgivings: we did not wish to turn our Levels One, Two and Three into rehearsals for the 16+. Although the Levels had been created as part of an intention to transform examining at 16+, we felt we had created something of value in its own right. Communication and its Limits There was another, wider issue: the possible range of responses to the reading of a text. We had rejected the comprehension test as incompatible with our philosophy, but had not found an appropriate role for the student to perform in its place. We were aware of the wide variety of text types, and of an equally wide variety of purposes for reading, not all of them communicative. We had in fact reached the point where, vital as communication was in our view of purposeful language learning, we were beginning to feel its constraints. We had never been under the illusion that communication was the sole function of language, but constructing a syllabus on functional lines had strongly influenced us towards producing assessment tasks whose outcomes could be predicted from the communicative objectives of the unit. At about the time we were chafing under the restrictions of the National Criteria, we found ourselves sharply confronted by the limitations of the objectives model of the curriculum.

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Teaching and Assessment We had found that a few schools were using the assessment syllabus as a teaching syllabus. The consequence was that the language to which the students in those schools were exposed tended to be formulated entirely within the framework of what was being assessed. This had never been envisaged: we had always assumed that teachers would wish to go beyond what was to be assessedas, indeed, most did. But, inevitably, some teachers, instead of making the selections from the syllabuses they were invited to make so as to tailor them to their own requirements, thought that everything had to be covered, even if this left no room for anything else. We realised that the restriction to communicative outcomes left no outlet for the creative or imaginative aspects of language learning. We felt there was a real danger that operating entirely within notional-functional parameters would impoverish the language experience of the students. We firstly extended the writing the students were expected to be assessed in by offering a creative alternative wherever possible. This opened the range to include playlets, stories or poems. The assessment criteria had to be replaced by more subjective ones; we decided not to worry about comparability for once. We changed the reading assessment texts to include non-functional text types. Experiments are still continuing in this area. The problemapart from the level of difficulty appropriate to the studentsis the task type: what could be considered an appropriate task if the text were, say, a Prévert poem? The concept of task seems to rule out enjoyment. Assessors look with a jaundiced eye on anything unquantifiable. We certainly want children to read and would prefer the reading to come about as a result of their wish to read rather thanhowever we may dress it upas a mark-grubbing activity.

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5 Language Learning and the 16+ Background to the 16+ I started on the framework of the current GCSE Mode 3 in 1980 when I was working with the CILT/NCLE group chaired by Alan Moys (then Deputy Director of CILT) which had been set up to produce an independent response to the National Criteria discussion. I presented a paper entitled 'More of a muddle than a model for a module' in which I tried to envisage a modular GCSE which was criterion-referenced, role oriented and communicative. Each module led straight into a GCSE grade. From the criticisms it received I rewrote the model and presented the revised version to a one day conference of Leicestershire modern language teachers. They warmly approved it and adopted it in preference to the Schools Council and JCLA proposals. That model formed the basis of the subsequent submissions to EMREB and, eventually, Oxford & Cambridge Schools Examination Board (see Appendix for example papers). 16+ model The model, being based on the three levels of French for Communication, was heavily biased towards talking and writing as assessable outcomes. Understanding had always been assessed as part of, and not separate from, the spoken or written performance of the students. Consequently, as it was evident that the new examination would deal with the 'four skills', I constructed the early models around the three aspects of understanding, interacting and composing in an attempt to integrate listening, speaking, reading and writing in tasks which would require student performances in talking and writing. The following three chapters map out the actual course of that original concept as we moved from the models to the reality of a GCSE Mode 3 examination. At the time we were debating ways and means of assessing foreign language performance, my own thinking was heavily influenced by a

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pessimistic view of what a reform of O Level under a Conservative administration would amount to. My view thenas nowwas that norm-referencing was not merely one way amongst others of describing examination outcomes, but inextricably linked to the philosophy of the 11+ and the tripartite system: its political role was to confer the respectability of balanced inevitableness on judgements which guarded access to higher education. Criterion Referencing The comment that the DES would welcome 'some move towards criterion-referencing of grades' had left me somewhat sceptical. Quite apart from the obvious problem of how much constituted some, I could not see how one could blend an essentially hierarchical and internally competitive system with an externally-referenced set of descriptions. The literature on the topic confirmed my unease. Gray (1978), referred to in Black & Dockrell (1984), lists 57 explicit or implicit definitions of the term 'criterion-referenced assessment'. Black & Dockrell make the very helpful distinction between criterion referenced interpretations of assessments and criterion-referenced instruments: . . . there is no doubt that norm-referenced and criterion referenced interpretations of test outcomes differ. The former focuses comparisons between individuals. The latter describes individuals' attainments in relation to a particular phenomenon irrespective of the 'performance' of their peers. What is more controversial is whether there is a clear distinction between norm-referenced and criterion-referenced instruments. Black & Dockrell came to adopt the definition of Popham (1975) that criterion-referenced testing may be used 'to ascertain an individual's status with respect to a well-defined behaviour domain'. The reason for their choice was to give themselves more licence in their work with reference to 'behaviour' of students learning in classrooms than would have been possible with 'rigidly defined behavioural objectives'. I soon learned that my approach to the problem was too academic: a highly-placed CSE colleague informed me that the CSE examinations were criterion-referenced, by which he appeared to mean that the CSE boards made no use of previous statistically arrived at grade distributions to establish their current grades. It certainly seemed to be the case that EMREB worked more from feel than from percentage norms: competent professionals made judgements about whether a script should be graded from 5-1 (1= the O Level C/B/A

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bracket) on the basis of their practical experience. The system seemed to me fairer in that the teachers teaching had full responsibility for the grading. But distinguishing the cut-off points between 5/4, 4/3, etc. by feel could scarcely claim to be criterion-referenced. The aggregation of points scored in different modes on different papers can only be interpreted as grade levels mathematically: each grade representing a narrow band of marks, overlapping with those above and below; the precise grade to be determined on the day of the meeting of the panel. Such a system allows, of course, for some flexibility in that candidates can be compensated, if the examination papers vary in difficulty (i.e. in the proportions of candidates scoring in the top, middle and bottom thirds of the population). But they are criterion-referenced only in the sense that candidates have to score a certain number of points to be awarded certain grades: there is no question of pre-established criteria of performance being satisfied as a condition of the award. Our experience of attempting to create criteria for the assessment of language performance in the three Levels had been quite successful, but, principally, because criterion-referencing is relatively simple to establish where the performances to be assessed are themselves simple. Even at Level Three, we had realised that our criteria had to be formulated in terms of principles which then needed interpretation and consensus for them to have value. At this early stage in the discussion of the 16+ examination, I expected that the four skills would be examined discretely but imagined that the results would be published as four profiles for each candidate. It did not occur to me that the final result of the deliberations of the Working Party would be to produce a network of paths to the various grades such that only the lowest grade could be described, and even that retrospectively, in criterial terms! Our teachers were quite unanimous in their opposition to the Basic/Higher divisions proposed by the National Criteria. They were quite used to dealing with the whole ability range in Years 7-9 and saw no great need to change their perspective of offering different rewards for different performances of the same tasks. We had resolved that problem in Level Two and thought we could resolve the 16+ problems in the same way. When the National Criteria were published in their final version, we realised that we would have to conform to them if our syllabus was to be accepted. At the time of their publication they seemed well-intentioned statements of intent, rather muddled in their mixture of admonition and prescription, arrogant in their assumption that 'the best way to test comprehension was through questions in English', but apparently open-

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minded overall. There was no feeling at the time that they would become the eye of the needle through which only selected camels would be allowed to pass. Assessing Listening and Reading We had avoided listening and reading as assessment modes in the three Levels, but had eventually brought in reading as an interpreting mode. We could see no value in assessing listening or reading discretely. Listening Separating out listening as a skill implies some kind of publicly broadcast text as a stimulus and comprehension as a response. Indeed, the very terms 'stimulus' and 'response' refer back to the audiolingual, behaviourist movement which produced them. The kinds of public listening catered for in current textbooks or examinations favour loudspeaker announcements, news broadcasts, weather reports and the like. The format of the comprehension test used is likely to reflect the setter's view of what comprehension consists of. Multiplechoice options suggest that language items used in the test can be matched with others outside it. Synoptic questions in English focus on discrete elements of the text to be listened to. Gist questions tend to be concerned with the whole text. Tests composed of individual items fragment listening into concentrated bursts followed by responseeither box-ticking or single word/short phrase writing. They are usually defended on user-friendly grounds: short items tend not to overload the memory of the student as longer chunks of text might. The repetition of the item two or three times is defended on the same grounds. It has always seemed to me doubtful whether such tests have any value in helping students to learn to prepare themselves for the real tasks of developing strategies for listening to what is said by native speakers in a foreign country. The testing of such an ability in real life seems unlikely to be achieved by means of the repetition of audio-recorded sentences divorced from any context of which the listener is a part. When we process discourse as listeners, live or recorded, whether we can interact or not, the language is almost invariably continuous, a web, not of sentences, but of utterances. In any stretch of text, whether it is continuously spoken by one speaker or broken up by the interventions of more than one speaker, there will be devices present allowing the cohesion of that text to be appreciated as discourse. Those devices are simply not present in

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dislocated single sentences. And it is precisely those devices which enable the discourse to be processed as coherent meaning by listeners. The processing of the larger sequences requires different strategies on the part of the listeners: they need to understand the concept of redundancy in language, the inbuilt tendency of talkers to take account of the limited processing capacity of listeners needing space to orientate themselves with respect to the language they hear and time to focus on the message being conveyed. The item assessment approach short-circuits the process by offering the students a prop in English (which they would not have in real life) and, at the same time, withdraws that contextualisation of the discourse which is all they naturally have to go on and which they need experience of if they are to develop the capacities which are supposed to be being assessed. Indeed, it is the function of the English prop to provide the contextualisation for the utterance to be understood by the students. The prop containing the question to be answered then directs the students' attention to the specific bit of the following aural text to which they are to attend. The students' capacity to concentrate their attention on what is being said depends critically on their ability to read and process the printed English of the prop. This is a curious way to assess the ability to listen. It is not surprising that a great deal of so-called comprehension testing is mere item translation. We were aware that realism would flood the students with text and create panic. We had to find some way of giving the students access to text in a way which, although in an examination, would in some measure replicate real life contexts. We wanted our students to listen to thematic discourse and to be able to construct it as it developed. We thought that the use of dialogue might enable one speaker to take the part of the non-interactive listener (the student) by focusing on specific meanings in the text, their sequence and interrelationship. As monolingual broadcast texts are relatively dense, we decided to increase their accessibility by increasing the redundancy in them. This is often achieved in broadcasts by a segmentation into introduction, presentation and summary. The model proposed included a mediator for the listening students whose job it was to help organise the information into manageable chunks and to explicate it where needed. By summarising what had been said, the mediator would be pulling together what had previously been said so as to enable the speaker to confirm, deny, modify or extend it. In this way we hoped the students would be presented with a coherent text in which a

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listener to the speaker would help by interacting with him or her on their behalf. Of course, the interacting native speaker cannot have the same real problems as the non-interactive, non-native listeners, but we thought that such an exchange had more in common with what our students could reasonably expect to have to do to process other people's text in France than if their listening was restricted to monologues. In a word, we thought that the ability being developed would prove more productive in the long run. It seemed to us that the breaking up of the text by the questioner would help the students to focus their attention and that the summaries would help them to retain what they had heard. The redundancy created by the questions and summaries is of course quite different from that created by the repetition of the text as practised by examination boards. It is easy to see that offering students three chances to hear a text springs from the desire to help them. The fact that such an offer is rarely made in real life does not detract from the user friendliness of the intention, but it is not unreasonable to ask whether there is any point in developing abilities which are only useful in examinations. Our intention, as distinct from the constraints on its realisation, was to accommodate as far as possible the perceived status of the listeners. Ideally, the needs of the listener would be expressed individually by interaction. This is clearly not possible. Our fiction therefore was that the questions put to the speaker(s) in the dialogue would focus on what the listeners would themselves ask, if they had the chance. The aim of the questions was to enable that formulation and reformulation of content which would facilitate the listeners' perception of the sense of what was being said. We have, of course, no direct evidence, whether we have been successful in anticipating the questions of the audience or not, but it seemed obvious that the kind of redundancy we were achieving was distinct from that brought about by the reiteration of the text in its original form: what the listeners get is a highlighting of the message in the new context provided by the responses to the questions and summaries. From the listeners' standpoint there can be no prediction that the message will be repeatedwith whatever advantages and disadvantages that represents. Instead, there is the expectation, borne of previous experience, that the format will mesh with their requirements as listeners. I would argue that the principal gain for the students is autonomy: they have to develop their own strategies for independent listening without the guide of any rubric. Of course, we have to accept that this is no soft option. In the experimentation it became evident that the recorded text had to be played in manageable chunks so as to allow the students to write their notes

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without too great a strain being placed on their memories. Moreover, the demands made upon us by the need to conform to the National Criteria severely reduced our scope for experiment. Our aim of student autonomy conflicted with the prohibition of gist comprehension: we were obliged to provide some guidelines for the students to follow in their interpretation. We tried to make those guidelines as unlike the synoptic questions used in Mode 1 as possible, but did not always succeed in doing so. As a result, the final version of the GCSE Mode 3 departs completely from the linguistic framework in which the model was set. The students no longer interpret for someone else: they show that they can listen to the text and answer the questions that only someone who had understanding of the text could ask. We thought we might be able to create dialogic texttexts in which there was some interaction between speakersif only in the interview mode of questions and answers. The addition of summaries would ensure the repetition of important information in the texts and therefore reduce its functional load in the total text. We expected to be able to integrate both listening and reading into activities leading to talking and writing by the students. We were unaware of just how difficult that would turn out to be within the framework of the National Criteria. Technological advances in the future may well mean that video-recordings can be used more widely in the teaching and assessment of foreign languages, but at present the assessment of students' capacity to process spoken foreign text (for whatever purposes) relies wholly on the taperecorder. This means that students cannot see who is talking, their facial expressions, their gestures. Nor can they see where and in what circumstances the talking is taking place. It is palpable nonsense to assume that most normal people interpret heard discourse only through their ears. Examiners who insist that students should hear each item two or three times show by that insistence that they know that their tests are not related to the real life employment of the ability being assessed. The principal problem is the discrete skill approach: the assumption that 'listening comprehension' is an ability in its own right instead of being subordinated to and integrated with all the other abilities needed by language users for the achievement of their purposes. Unfortunately for those of us struggling to put together our Mode 3 GCSE, thanks to the National Criteria, we were stuck with 'discrete skills'. Even if we managed to devise tasks integrating 'listening' with other 'skills', we knew that we would not be able to overcome the basic disadvantages of tape-recorded text on the one hand, and of the need to reward 'listening comprehension' on the other.

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Reading We found similar, but not such acute, problems in reading. Although we had taken some time to introduce reading texts into our three assessment Levels, reading had always been implicit in the structure. Just as listening is part of talking, so reading is part of writing. Moreover, the symbolic cues used in the early levels were expected to be replaced by written prompts later on. And the asking for a written outcome in the form of a letter inevitably implied written letters as models for the would-be authors. Most of our teachers were used to some form of instrumental reading in the foreign language classreading words and sentences from the board, exercises in worksheets or textbooks, but very few had attempted to integrate reading in the native user sense of the term into their teaching. In the main they thought that the native user sense was applicable to a very small minority of advanced students and was not within the compass of the majority of foreign language learners. Teaching classes in which facility with print could not be assumed, they tended to regard reading as an activity for the more able, older student. Unfortunately, reading in foreign language learning gets mixed up with 'reading comprehension': anything read has to be tested in some way satisfactory to the teachers. Reading texts are then followed by comprehension questions (in English or the foreign language). The problem here is that, as in most forms of testing, the procedures adopted come to stand for the process itself. As a result 'comprehension', which obviously underpins everything the reader does in reading, becomes isolated as something the reader does after reading to show that the reading has been successful. The comprehension test format also diverts the readers' attention from the text in hand to some other text which takes them back to some aspects of the original to which they are expected to attend in some defined way. 'Comprehension' is then judged in terms of the responses to the test of comprehension and not in terms of the students' response to the text itself. The requirement for feedback from readers is clearly an institutional demand, it is not a necessary part of the reading process: during and after reading we may or may not talk or write about what we have been reading. Like listening, reading has no necessary outcomes. Recipes, menus, crossword puzzles, quizzes, instructions are likely to lead to meals being cooked or ordered, letters being filled in, answers being written and kits being assembled. Poems, stories, newspaper items, adverts and so on, may or may not incite further activities on the part of the readers. Comprehension testsand I put questions on texts into that categorytend to rely on the grammatical components of sentences. Questions then

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focus on the relations obtaining between the parts of sentences. Questions rarely require more than a couple of sentences of a text to be viewed by the students at a time; and it is even more rare for the whole text to be the subject of scrutiny. Linguistically, this means that the text simply cannot function as discourse: it is merely the exponent of a set of characteristics arbitrarily focused on by the setter of the questions dissecting the students' 'comprehension' of it. Such tests centre also on lexical meanings in sentences. Because the analytical question fragments the text into bits, the concentration is on the function of lexis in the narrower context of the sentences in which it occurs rather than on the function the sentences perform in the discourse as a whole. There would be little dispute about the importance of grammatical relations or, indeed, of lexis, in discourse, but they constitute only dimensions of the whole. And it must surely be obvious that the whole goes well beyond the text itself into the competences of the reader. Recipes, crosswords, quizzes, instructions appear in textual form certainly, but unless the ability to read the text is accompanied by other relevant competencies it is unlikely to be of much practical use. It may well be by cooking, doing crosswords, quizzes and assembling kits from the printed word that one becomes a more proficient reader in the register and also develops one's skill in the art, but there is an obvious sense in which practical competence has to precede and inform the reading. Making a meal from a recipe implies that the reader understands the recipe as a cook does. Without some interest and practice in cooking, the reader is unlikely to make appropriate sense of what is written. Texts are only understandable if the reader has somewhere to put the content. Understanding the text is more than decoding the print, it is understanding what is mediated by the text. Fluent reading (and I am not referring to reading aloud) is the outcome of experienced understanding of the relations between the outside world and texts, the ability to perceive world processes through text and to see text as mediating world processes. I think that when we talk about understanding foreign language texts, we should think first of all about the experiences they mediate and only later about the formal devices used to mediate them. Although it is obviously true (and as true for ourselves as for our students) that in confronting foreign language text we encounter difficulties in the form of unknown lexis and structure, it is our previous experience of what the text is mediating and not some quantifiable degree of lexical knowledge which makes the difference to the kind of understanding we have of the text.

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The conceptual problem faced by readers is to grasp that the meanings to be got at reside not in the text but in the readers themselves. This may seem perverse, but it does no more than confirm that human beings are meanings looking for somewhere to happen; that understanding is a very active and outgoing process of interaction with the outside world in a struggle to interpret and control it. Readers confirm by reading that their predictions about meanings thought to be expressed are, or are not, correct. The view of the relation between reading and experience expressed above regards the languaging process as essentially one: the engagement of students in activities which deepen and focus their experience of language meanings and eases their access to the discourses which express them, and consequently, of the texts, aural or written, which mediate them. This is not a view shared by the authors of the National Criteria. Interpreting, Interacting and Composing The three aspects of understanding, talking and writing that we had selected as the basis of the 16+ framework seemed to admit of further definition in outcomes as interpreting, interacting and composing. Interpreting as an activity could take place in speech or writing and involve the interpretation of spoken or written/printed sources. Interacting takes place in face-to-face contexts and is therefore mainly oral but it could also include interaction at a distance and over time (as in letter writing). Composing implies time for reflection and operates in both the oral and written media. In these three domains we thought we could develop the following activities: Interpreting activities in which the students: (a) interpret in English texts heard or read in French for someone who needs help in understanding the language; (b) negotiate as bilinguals between a monolingual English and French person; (c) interpret in French a text in English for an English person needing help with the language (also: Composing). Interacting activities in which the students: (a) interview a French visitor to GB; (b) are interviewed by a French visitor to GB; (c) negotiate for themselves goods and services;

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(d) negotiate for others needing help with the language goods or services (also: Interpreting (b)) Composing activities in which the students: (a) make an oral narrative from an aural and printed source; (b) interpret in written French a letter for an English monolingual (also: Interpreting (c)) (c) compose letters in French commenting on (i) letters read in a magazine (ii) a radio broadcast discussion, expressing their own point of view. These activities (see Appendix for examples) seemed to be expressible in terms of the following roles: Interpreter (1): (reading/listening to French and writing in English); Interpreter (2): (listening to English and French, talking in English and French); Interviewer/ee: (talking in French); Negotiator: (talking in French); Reporter: (listening to spoken French, reading printed French, narrating in spoken French); Correspondent (1): (reading notes in English, writing in French); Correspondent (2): (reading printed French, writing in French); Correspondent (3): (listening to spoken French, writing in French). Although we were putting together an examination, we wanted to include at least something of an appropriate audience role for the examiners. Their function in the oral modules would be to facilitate the exchanges and, of course, to evaluate their effectiveness; but we also hoped that they would be seen as sympathetic collaborators and not as interrogators. They would also have to act as receivers of the written communications and act therefore both as audience and examiners of them. This seemed an appropriate intention for the community of schools collaborating in the project. Finally, the 'community of users' needed a formal existence and a specified role. We established a networking system in which the contributing schools were expected to collaborate in the construction and marking of the assessments. A Syllabus Planning Committee had the job of planning the work in two year cyclesdeciding topics and tasks for each of the assessments and allocating them to individuals or departments to produce. Assessment Production Groups were set up to permit meetings of teachers to consider the assessments for each role. It was assumed that all participating schools would be equally engaged in the marking of the assessments.

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6 Interpreting 16+ model In 1981 we set out to create an examination system at 16+, which, like the three levels, was democratic and user-led. We expected that students would enter for the modules of their choice and be rewarded with a profile of their performances: we did not anticipate separate tasks for the more and less able. We wished to preserve the motivating structure of short term goals which had been so successful in the three Levels. We wanted therefore to spread the assessments throughout Years 10 and 11. Finally, we wanted to create a community of users, responsible for teaching the syllabus, devising and marking the assessments and reflecting on the results of their work in a systematic way. This, we thought, would ensure the constant revitalisation of teaching in Years 10 and 11 as it had in Years 7,8 and 9. The model for the 16+ presented to EMREB and the Oxford and Cambridge GCE Board for their joint certification of CSE and GCE O Level in 1986 (see Appendix) had the characteristics of the three Levels of French for Communication: (a) it was modular and task-based, providing short-term objectives for students within a coherent framework of language use; (b) it was not structured into Basic and Higher assessments: it differentiated the students on the outcome of their performance of common tasks; (c) it did not test skills discretely: it integrated language activities. (d) it was not imposed by an examination board: it was democratic and reflected what the teachers wanted to assess in the way they wanted to assess it. The development of the three Levels had contributed powerfully to changing the focus of language teaching in the schools using the assessment syllabuses. Teachers had moved from textbook exercises to a concern for the production of meaningful language by the students. Our initial concentration on language performance had equipped us to extend our assessments in the 16+ area in both talking and writing. We were however unwilling to contemplate separate assessments for public listening and

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private reading. In this area then we had no experience to build on to accommodate ourselves to discrete skill testing. We realised that we would have to take account of the discrete four skills of the National Criteria, particularly since marks had to be awarded equally in each skill area, but we were unwilling to contemplate the notion that our examination had to abandon or at least modify its purposeful role basis in order to fit the criteria of acceptance by SEAC. We wanted to find valid purposes for all the language activities we engaged the students in. We did not want to include activities where the students simply showed the examiners whether they could answer comprehension questions or not. Assessment Modes: Interpreting, Interacting and Composing From our experience of language teaching and learning we were more or less agreed that understanding, talking and writing represented not only a description of what the learners did, but also constituted a rough hierarchy of difficulty: students would be able to understand more than they could say; they would be able to say more than they could write. When we tried to translate that homespun philosophy into an examination model in which we focused on what the students were actually doing in their assessment tasks, understanding became interpreting, talking became interacting and writing became composing. The process from the early model to the accepted GCSE Mode 3 syllabus for 1990 was fraught with difficulty for the teachers. After years of working on the three Levels at producing tasks which integrated language activities, they had to accustom themselves to assessing listening, speaking, reading and writing separately. National Criteria and Underachievement In this chapter I shall set out some of the reasons for choosing a path radically different from that taken by Mode 1 examinations and present some examples of student work which our approach produced. I have chosen the exemplars from work of the more able students deliberately. In my view, not only are the National Criteria inadequate as a statement of assessment policy, they are also responsible for perpetuating underachievement. Assessing Understanding The National Criteria for both Basic and Higher Levels stress that understanding is to be demonstrated by the students' grasp of specific information in the texts they listen to or read. They further state that the assessment

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is best carried out by questions in English. The consequence of these restrictions is that examiners are predisposed to select listening or reading texts which can yield items of information in conformity with the requirements of the Criteria. The techniques adopted by Mode 1 examinations undoubtedly meet the requirements. My doubts concern the significance of the results they yield, particularly with respect to the principle that the tasks set should be, as far as possible, 'authentic and valuable outside the classroom'. Comprehension Tests The assessment of understanding can only be carried out by inferring from what the students say or write how well they have understood what they have listened to or read. In conventional examinations this is usually carried out by means of a comprehension test in which the students answer synoptic questions in English. Such questions typically give some of the context and some of the detail that the students need in order to locate the part of the text in which their answers are to be found. Memory furnishes old GCE listening comprehension favourites such as 'What weapons did Uncle Silas have hanging on the wall of his study?' or 'What happened to Uncle Silas' boat in the storm?' The objections to this technique are four: (1) It does not represent a real language activity: it is one of the things that teachers make students do in examinations: there is no occasion in real language use where we ask questions to which we already know the answers. That is to say, such an activity cannot be communicative. (2) The synopses in the questions (e.g. 'Uncle Silas had weapons hanging on the wall' and 'something happened to the boat in the storm') give information to the students in English about the French text they are supposed to be showing their understanding of. (3) The understanding sought is very often of lexical items in isolation rather than of whole text. (4) Such a focus leads to analytical marking for specific items. Interpreting We wanted the students to meet language, whether spoken or printed, in the use that people make of it. That meant that they would be listening to or reading language in context and not in isolated bits (see Appendix). In order to provide them with a purpose for listening or reading we gave the students an interpreting role in which they would assist an English person who needed help with either a piece of spoken or printed French.

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Ideally, we would have liked to make the mode oral but the logistics of the examining system made that impossible. The process of interpreting spoken or printed text, as we understood it, required the students to express the meanings they encountered in a way that made that text accessible to someone who otherwise would have been excluded from it. The interpreting mode is essentially holistic in that it attempts to make sense of all that one reads or hears. The scripts of a class of students may be ordered hierarchically as a series of ever closer approximations to what may be thought of as an adequate interpretation of the whole: at the bottom of the pile will be those scripts which fail to interpret anything; and at the top, those scripts which faithfully render what the text is about. But what all the scripts have in common is that they represent the students' view of what the total meaning is and how it should be rendered. Each script asks the examiner the same question: how well does this interpret the text? The response to that question is really the answer to another question: how useful to the reader/listener would this interpretation be? Interpreting: Listening Most teachers find the use of audio-recorded tape extremely difficult for students to follow. The activity deprives the listener of the sight of the context in which the language is being used and of the people who are using it. We had little sympathy with the National Criteria's use of isolated bits of text for assessment purposes. We appreciated that listening to snippets of text was intended to be within the capacity of the least able of the examined population, but could see no point in doing something without relevance to the real world of language use, and therefore without value. Consequently, we looked for activities in which the students would have time to accommodate themselves to the tape-recording; and for roles in which they could perceive a valid purpose for attending to what was being said. The tape-recorder can legitimately represent a radio or a public address system, that is to say, a medium which limits the listener to listening without the possibility of any interaction. We wanted to make the students pay attention to the whole of a broadcast text and not just bits. This raised the question of the number of times a text might be expected to be heard in real life. For instance, a railway announcement or a police notice might be repeated, but a recorded interview might not. Consequently, we decided that students would hear a text in the examination as often as they might expect to hear its equivalent in the world of language use.

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As we wanted to assess the students' interpretation of the broadcast in a natural context, we aimed at getting them to provide an understanding of what they had heard with as little guidance as possible. The experiments showed that the students had no particular difficulty in making notes on the text after one hearing only, provided that the chunk of French they were listening to was not too long or detailed. We had at first feared that students might vary in what they thought worth interpreting as well as differ in what they could interpret. We were concerned that we might therefore unknowingly falsify the assessment itself, so, over time, we had to develop strategies to focus the students' attention on specific topics or themes in the text. Interpreting: Reading The students face a different problem when confronting printed or handwritten text. No matter how difficult the text may be, at least its continued presence on the desk gives the students some time to reflect on its meaning. The layout may well give some indication of what the text is about. It may contain helpful visual material focusing on an important theme. Despite these differences, the reading assessments on interpreting posed similar problems to those experienced in the construction of suitable listening tasks. As for the listening task we assumed that the student had been asked to help someone who had received a French text which they could not understand. We had therefore to guide the students to attend to what we wanted them to attend to. We would have preferred to ask for a summary but that appeared ruled out by the National Criteria. We rejected the alternative of providing the sort of questions which could only be formulated on a knowledge of the texti.e. the standard 'comprehension' teston the grounds that it implied a knowledge that the English speaker asking for help could not have. The earliest assessments of listening and reading had simply asked the students to say in English what the texts were about. They contained no guidance and students expressed in English what they understood. There was no particular problem in that the students' summaries could quite easily be assessed in global terms of, say, fail, pass, credit and distinction. However they posed difficulties later on when we had to produce marks which could be mapped on to grades. From our experience of the students' versions of the tasks set, it was obviously true that not all students gave an English rendering of exactly

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the same text. Given the global task undertaken by the students, there was no way of disintricating different student perceptions of the task from different levels of understanding of the text. We simply had to assume that the hierarchy which emerged reflected students' ability to perform the task. A global judgement was easy to arrive at. Given the level of cooperative understanding of the teachers it was also easy to moderate. But the need to allocate marks tended to encourage the usual teacher preference for clusters of favourite scores across the range, with neither the highest or lowest bands being used. Holistic marking for qualities as opposed to analytic marking for items became increasingly difficult as we tried to accommodate ourselves to the structures of the National Criteria. However, the principal difficulty for us came, not from the students' idiosyncratic interpretation of what was worth interpreting, but from the examiners' need to allocate marks which could eventually map on to points. Numerical marking pushed the examination setters towards the inclusion of items which could be traded for marks. It was really this need to generate marks which conditioned the solution arrived at: whatever objections we had to comprehension questions, the GCE/CSE experience illustrated the advantages to the students of marks being printed against each question and permitted the finer grading required by the examination. We had to find some way of marrying our concern that the students should be asked to interpret the whole of the text with the institutional need to grade their efforts. Dialogic Texts for Listening and Reading Our solution started from the concept of dialogic text i.e. one in which the structure of the text responds to the implicit questions which would generate it. Our task was to find the sort of questions which would direct the attention of the students to the text in such a way as to enable them to structure their summaries appropriately without undermining the interpreting task itself, and without falling foul of the National Criteria. As far as the listening tasks were concerned, we abandoned monologues in favour of interviews. As a result, a French speaker could be asked questions by an interviewer on the theme of the broadcast. This had the advantage of creating a natural context for the students to respond to the questions being asked of them on the examination paper. The examiners' difficulty then was to try to formulate questions which might be asked by the English speaker as the student was giving his/her interpretation, but without revealing a knowledge of the text itself. The intention of the questions was to provide a coherent base from which the

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students might make their interpretations and thereby ensure that they were all dealing with the same text and not an arbitrary selection from it. We printed marks alongside the questions so as to give the students some idea of the density of the possible information needed for the response. The original intention was certainly not to offer marks for items, but the influence of the National Criteria pushed the examiners more and more into that position. Our experience in the period leading up to the acceptance of the 1990 model had shown us that the need to generate marks which could be translated eventually into points meant finding spoken and printed texts rich in information items corresponding to the requirements of the Criteria. Consequently, the processing of the texts becomes increasingly the translation of lexical items or clusters of lexical items. Items thus highlighted become more important than the text. The complete text tends to disappear and be replaced by whatever the examination questions focus on. Listening and readingand in a listening examination reading is also needed to enable the student to find out what has to be listened forare reduced from whole-meaning oriented activities to selective point or theme searches. There may be occasions in real language use where we economise our attention in this way, but such reductionism is surely inadequate as a paradigm for listening or reading as language activities. Discrete Skill Testing The insistence on discrete skill testing prevents the natural use of listening and reading to complete a task requiring talking and writing in the foreign language. The requirement to yield marks obstructs the setting of linguistically viable tasks which the students can carry out. As we moved from our original model via a series of constructions at the level of CSE and the Joint CSE/GCE to the examination finally acceptable to the SEAC, we found ourselves moving further away from the task base of our preferred style. It became increasingly difficult to maintain the interpreting stance we had originally selected. Instead, as the requirement to produce marks became more pronounced, the open-ended invitations to summary tended to give way to comprehension questions which would yield marks to order. Backwash of English The National Criteria's insistence on comprehension questions in English seems to have been formulated without thought for its backwash effect on classroom practice. The presence of comprehension questions in English in the examination inevitably means that a great deal of time will be expended in class on familiarising students with what is required. The

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examination does not ask students to make use of their ability to listen to or read foreign language texts for any other purpose. It is unlikely that students will develop any competencies that will not be assessed. The role of listening in talking or of reading in writing will not emerge in learning if they are denied their integrated existence in use. Listening and Reading account for at least 50% of the marks available at GCSE: the system encourages teachers to slot work in the foreign language into the mainstream of classroom talk in English.

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7 Interacting Assessing Interaction The National Criteria specify answers to questions plus some role plays as the performances to be elicited at Basic and Higher Levels in talking. We had set off earlier in a quite different direction. Starting from the principle that the old GCE and CSE had unduly restricted the oral language use of the students, we had tried to define the language roles we wished the students to have experience of. We also felt that, if oral assessment was to be taken seriously, it would have to occupy a more considerable place in the whole assessment scheme than in the old structures. We realised, of course, that there would be restrictions imposed on the feasibility of an increase in the amount of oral examining, but thought that our experience from Levels One, Two and Three, in which oral ability is assessed over time, could be replicated in GCSE. National Criteria The National Criteria limit spoken performance at Basic Level to a number of transactions in public settings. This accentuates the role of the student as tourist and runs the risk of limiting language teaching to phrasebook French. The Higher Level requirement to ask and answer more questions simply extends the basic range by more questions on the same topic or more topics. To this is added a 'free conversation'. Obviously, the framers of the National Criteria wished to be less restrictive in their formulation for the Higher Level but their proposal is so open as to be empty. A conversation has to be about something. The participants usually take turns in speaking but their turn-taking is not prescribable. The topics will change in the course of the conversation but their emergence is not easily predictable. It seems doubtful whether conversation can occur in an examination setting. Of course, the 'free' conversation is not a conversation at all: it is just a disguise for another question and answer session. No one will dispute that the more able should be expected to do more than the less able in an examination, and to do it better. Unfortunately, the National Criteria do not help matters greatly by being over-prescriptive

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and, therefore, reductionistat Basic Level and simply vague at Higher Level. Language Use When we started thinking about the kinds of oral exchange we wanted our more able students to be assessed in, we had in mind not merely satisfying the National Criteria, but also describing our students' activities in viable linguistic terms. That is to say, we wanted our students to be assessed performing roles which are actually performed by language users in real life. We therefore concentrated on the ways in which the different aspects of language are integrated in language use and looked for assessment tasks which would realise them (see Appendix 2 for examples). The original proposals for the model (see Appendix 2, p. 177) were for five roles: interviewer, interviewee, negotiator, interpreter, narrator/ reporter. We thought that the different styles implied would involve the students in a variety of language use which would stand them in good stead as bilinguals operating in France and England. The interviewer/ee exchanges were designed to seek and give information of a personal kind; the negotiator/interpreter role was concerned with transacting goods and services; and the narrator/reporter role was focused on re-telling events (faits divers) reported in newspapers. We thought that they would require the students to ask and answer questions; to make inquiries; to relate information given by others to their own programmes, plans and intentions; to negotiate for themselves and others; and to recapitulate events in sequence, adding comments, adducing cause or stating effect in narrative discourse (see Appendix 2, pp. 180-192). We intended the students to resource their performances from printed rubrics, documents (menus, timetables, brochures etc.), newspaper articles, as well as from their interaction with the examiner. Not only did the model involve the students in different kinds of language use, it also required the integration of language media. The Reporter module, for example, was resourced by print and sound and the students were expected to talk and write in their assessment. The strength of the original proposals lay in the experience of the teachers in Levels One, Two and Three and their ability to construct language tasks of sufficient complexity to engage the most able in demanding activities and yet not frustrate the least able in their performance. Students were used to being expected to think on their feet, to expect and react to the unexpected in oral assessments.

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At the point of formulation of the model we had had no experience of either the Interpreter or the Reporter roles in the three Levels. Both roles were accepted on trust by the teachers. One of my principal concerns in the development of the three Levels and of the GCSE Mode 3 was to emphasise the role of the target language in the whole undertaking. Most of the Leicestershire teachers engaged in Levels 1-3 expect to be using French in class for the purpose of communicating with their students. It is quite natural for them to express in French the tasks the students are to perform. Clearly, this implies that strategies have to be developed by teachers so that students can understand what is expected of them. We were very concerned at the amount of English used in the National Criteria rubrics for the assessment procedures. Subsequent textbooks vaunting their capacity to deliver the GCSE seemed to contain even more English than their predecessors. We expected that teachers would interpret the signal as meaning that they could continue to teach in English and insert French as many had always done. The Oral Modules 1981 The three modules give access to three grades, the final grades depending on teacher consensus. We had decided that, rather than award grades cumulatively in interviewing, negotiating and reporting, we would seek some differentiation in the performance of each role in terms of content and style. We were anxious to avoid a detailed specification of content as our experience in the early days of graded assessment had taught us that such procedures lead to marks for sentences. We preferred to leave matters open for the teacher examiners to discuss at moderation meetings. The specifications for content and style enable task completion to be rewarded adequately and for the higher order performance abilities to be encouraged. The grade specifications attempt to express the learning linkage between talking and writing in that grade 3 (= C in GCSE terms) would be awarded only on a competent oral and written performance. It should be noted that the writing involved is non-transactional and not directed to a specified audience. At this stage in our development we were not thinking in terms of Basic and Higher Levels nor were we separating writing out from the other media. We were however aware of Sir Keith Joseph's insistence that writing was essential for the upper grades.

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1981 Interviewer and Interviewee We needed a fiction to act as the framework for the two roles so as situate them in meaningful discourse. We decided that the students should interview a French person who had arrived in their school as part of some business or sporting exchange. Their task was to find out as much as possible about the visitor as they could. At the end of the interview, the French speaker would seek similar information from them. Such an interviewing task at the earlier stage of the three Levels would have necessitated the students writing notes of the information they had gathered in order to report it furtherprobably in the form of an account in the school newspaper. We could, however, see no way of including such a requirement at 16+. We decided nevertheless to make the demand and use the students' notes as a rough control for the examiner that information offered had in fact been understood. In order to resource the French native speaker Interviewee role, we asked our French Assistants to invent a series of biographies which the examiners could use as the basis for their fictional role as the French visitor. We then constructed a rubric to help the students construct their two roles. Our first experiments made it obvious that we had been too enthusiastic in the demands we made on the students as the two roles took some 20 minutes to assess. However, the teachers were delighted with the improved performance of their Year 10 students and were therefore loath to solve the problem by abandoning one of the roles or reducing each in length. After discussion, we decided to prepare both roles in the teaching phase, but to require only one by a random allocation in the assessment. 1986 and Joint CSE/GCE Certification In the period from 1981-1985 it had become obvious that the two roles were by no means equivalent. As we had noticed before during our experiments with the Levels, students find asking questions much more difficult than answering them. This created a dilemma, particularly as the teacher examiners tended to be less generous with their marks for the Interviewer than for the Interviewee role. As the roles were randomly distributed during the examination, some students ran the risk of being discriminated against simply because fate had allocated them the role they were less happy with. Rather than abandon one role or shorten both we sought to solve the problem by restructuring. As a consequence, the Interviewer role which focused on the themes of the French person's visit and work, was matched in the Interviewee role by a focus on school/home and leisure by the French

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visitor. We had, however, no specific prompt for the students to indicate this in the assessment: it was expected to be part of their previous classroom experience of the module. We changed the marking grid (see Appendix 2, p. 183) so that the scheme permitted the examiners to allocate marks for content on three occasions, roughly following the flow of the talk, with a global assessment of style at the end of the assessment. The marks printed after each section indicate what is available for that section: they do not represent marks for sentences. The grid separates out content from the follow up by the student. Most teachers using the grid would put dots or ticks in the boxes indicating an acceptable reference to the topic concerned. The follow-up box was used to reward those students who were able to listen to a response from the examiner and to formulate their next question or to make their next comment appropriate to it. This element of the system was designed to reward the interactive use of language by the students. The students were randomly allocated the Interviewer or Interviewee roles at the point of the assessment itself. For the Interviewer role the students were handed a 'fiche d'interview'a blank version of the examiner's 'biography' (see Appendix 2, pp. 180-182). Each examiner had a selection of six biographies to choose from. The information given in note form was intended to be used in any appropriate language form by the examiner in response to questions from the student. There was no restriction on the number of questions to be asked and no guide as to how the students might express themselves. The students knew from previous classroom experience that they were expected to get as much information as possible from their interlocutor in line with the French headings on their prompt. As an example of the type of interview which the scheme encouraged, I am printing here an interview which arose in the course of our making videos for INSET work in Leicestershire for French for Communication. We had gathered a number of teachers and some of their Year 11 students at the School of Education at the end of their Spring Term. They had all just completed the Reporter Module in the Joint 16+. We asked them to role play on video some of the earlier assessments. They had taken the Interviewer module at the end of Year 10 and the Negotiator module at the end of the Christmas term of Year 11. As a result, it was fairly unlikely that any of the teachers had been specifically practising the language or the roles we were asking the students to demonstrate. The following interview was recorded with only a few minutes preparation by one of the students. She interviewed the Assistante from her

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school. She used the 'fiche d'interview' as the basis of her questions, but departed from it whenever she felt like doing so. Transcript S: Puis-je vous poser quelques questions? A: Oui, bien sûr. S: Vous vous appelez comment? A: Je m'appelle Anne D . . . S: Et . . . puis-je vous demander votre âge? A: Oui, j'ai 21 ans. S: Vous êtes . . . vous habitez où? A: J'habite en France dans un village près d'une ville. Le village s'appelle Cysoing. S: C'est petit? Non, c'est pas petit, c'est relativement grand comme village et près d'une grande A: ville, Lille. S: Il y a beaucoup de faire? A: A Cysoing? Non, mais à Lille on peut aller au cinema, on peut sortir. S: Euh, vous êtes célibataire? A: Oui. S: Pouvez-vous me dire des détails sur votre famille? A: Alors, j'ai un frère qui a 18 ans . . . S: Et il s'appelle comment? A: Il s'appelle Yanne. Et j'ai une soeur qui a 12 ans qui s'appelle Karine. S: Vos parents, il fait quoi? A: Alors, mon père vend du materiel industriel, il est constructeur. S: Architecte? A: Non, non, non. Il a une entreprise . . .une entreprise pour vendre à des industries. S: C'est quoi exactement? A: C'est des bascules. C'est pour peser . . . pour peser des choses. S: Ah, oui, d'accord. Et votre mère? A: Et ma mère reste à la maison. S: Vous fait quoi dans la vie? A: Je suis étudiante. S: Vous allez à quelle éco . . . collège? A: Je vais à l'université de Lille. S: C'est grande? A: Ah, oui, c'est une grande université. S: Vous avez beaucoup d'amis? A: Ah, oui. S: Quelle est la raison pour votre visite?

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A:Je voudrais perfectionner mon anglais pour devenir prof d'anglais. S: Vous êtes arrivée quand? A:Je suis arrivée le 17 septembre. S: Vous êtes restée combien de temps? A:Je reste jusq'au 5 juin. S: Vous part à quelle date? A:Je pars le 5 juin. S: Vous faites quoi ici? A:Je suis dans un collège et je donne des cours de conversation en français. S: Vous êtes dans quel collège? A:Je suis à X . . . S: Vous aimez les étudiants et les professeurs? A:Ah, oui, tout le monde est très gentil. S: Vous logez où? A:Je loge chez un professeur, à Leicester. S: Un professeur du mème collège? A:Oui, il enseigne l'histoire. S: Il s'appelle comment? A:Il s'appelle M P . . . S: Ah, oui, je connais. Qu'est-ce qui vous a frappé quand vous arrive à Leicester? Alors, j'ai trouvé que toutes les maisons se ressemblaient, étaient toutes semblables A:et que les magasins ferment vraiment très tôt. C'est pas pratique. S: Vous aimez Leicester? Oui, je trouve que c'est une ville agréable parce qu'il y a beaucoup de jardins A:publics. S: Vous aime les jardins publics? A:Oui. S: Vous avez des problèmes? A:Euh, oui, j'ai surtout des problèmes de transport parce que je n'ai pas de voiture. S: Mais il y a beaucoup d'autobus ici. Oui, c'est vrai, mais il n'y en a pas le soir, alors quand on veut sortir ce n'est pas très A:pratique de revenir à pied. S: Vous fait quoi dans votre temps libre? A:Dans mon temps libre, je monte à cheval, donc je fais du sport. S: Vous allez où, pour un cheval? A:Je vais à Oadby. S: C'est loin? A:En bus, c'est loin. J'ai une heure de trajet.

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S: Vous allez dans une farm ou dans un club? A: C'est plutôt une ferme qu'un club. S: Vous payez combien? A: Je paie 4 livres par heure. S: O là là, c'est cher! A: Oui, c'est cher. S: Alors, merci, je vous remercie. What I find remarkable in the text is the conversational skill of the student. She can ask questions using the vous-form without too many problems. Where she cannot manage the form, the sense is clear enough for the Assistante to reply. Not only does she keep up a continuous flow of questions, partly structured for her by the fiche d'interview, but she is really listening to what is being said and following up with questions to secure information not yet given or to ask for explanations for what she does not understand. And when she really does not understand, as in the matter of the scales, she carries on without a hint of confusion and changes the topic. One notes as well that her conception of her role does not limit her to asking questions only: she offers a comment on Anne's transport problem by mentioning Leicester City's bus service; finds out who Anne is lodging with and tells her that she knows him; and, finally, makes her own surprise evident at the price Anne pays for her riding lessons in Oadby. And, most encouragingly, her performance is evidence that language work begun in Year 10 is still available for use two terms later. Of course, none of us would wish to claim that all the students are as competent as she is in keeping conversations alive in this way in French, but we did feel justified in making demands which go well beyond anything experienced in the standard GCSE mode 1. Incidentally, the student concerned, had it not been for the joint CSE/GCE examination, would have been entered for CSE only, as her written French would not have been thought up to standard for GCE. It came as no real surprise to learn that she did well in the Joint 16+ examination and ended up taking A Level French at a Sixth Form College. GCSE Mode 3 Interviewer/Interviewee 1989/90 The modifications for 1989/90 had to take account of the SEAC view that the examination was too demanding for Basic level students. This was not our view. SEAC also insisted that the rubrics be in English. The teachers' examining group therefore abandoned the random allocation of roles on Interviewer and Interviewee in favour of a restricted version of each for all students at Basic Level. The effect was to halve the number

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of topics which might be handled in either the interrogative or the response role and to distribute them between the two. Instead of the 'fiche d'interview' in French the students received an examination rubric in English setting out the four topics they were to concentrate on in each role (see Appendix 2, p. 198). Undoubtedly, the removal of the arbitrariness of the allocated roles has meant that the examination is to that extent fairer. However, the restructuring of the marking systems and the awareness of the teachers of the problem of possible discrimination had already eliminated the imbalance between the two sets of marks. Most importantly, many teachers regret the change as reducing what they know their Year 10 students were capable of learning to what the SEAC thought they should be restricted to. The mark scheme shows a change as well. The grid system has been modified to accommodate the reduction in content of the oral module. Aware that the reduction could lead to marking single sentences, the teachers have opted to retain the allocation of total marks to blocks of utterances, limiting the scorer to the choice of 0,1 and 2 in each case. This has the advantage of avoiding marks for sentences whilst limiting individual arbitrariness to manageable proportions at moderation (see Appendix 2, p. 200). Mark scheme 0 represents a failure to communicate 1 represents acceptable and appropriate communication i.e. understandable to a sympathetic French native speaker. 2 represents fluent communication i.e. presenting few problems for a French native speaker. The marking scheme tries to preserve the holistic approach for which French for Communication is known. The examination is now scheduled to last 10 minutes, 5 minutes for each role. 1981 Negotiator/Interpreter The original concept for the module was to engage the students in processing transactions for themselves and others whilst requiring them to attend to different message sourcesprinted text and spoken language, for example. The settings we selectedrailway/bus station, tourist information office, campsite, hotel, youth hostel and restaurant conformed to the National Criteria. We did however know that the majority of our students had no experience of hotels, campsites or youth hostels in England, let alone in France. Our rationale was based on the language role, not the setting. Our assumptions were that the competencies being learned went

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beyond the settings in which they were realised in the assessment and would be valuable outside them. In our preliminary experiments we soon discovered what we had suspected to be the case, that exchanges in one setting do not present the speakers with the same linguistic problems or opportunities as those in another. It was rapidly borne in on us that we could easily be confronted by the same unintended discrimination as in the random allocation of the Interviewee/Interviewer roles. We had chosen settings in which some negotiation could take place but the negotiation required would clearly be very different in a restaurant and in, say, a tourist information office; whereas, negotiations for accommodation in hotel, youth hostel or campsite, although different, would have an element of similarity about them. I had always expected that the interpreting role in which the students had to negotiate on someone else's behalf would be most accessible to the most able candidates. What I did not expect was that the least able candidates would have preferred that role to the Negotiator role for themselves. It had not been obvious to me before we started that the role of the English native feed gave the Interpreter a structuring in English which was denied to someone negotiating on their own behalfSimple, mais il fallait y penser. I hasten to add, of course, that the ease of access accorded by a continuous prompt in English is not an argument in its favour. In our examination, it occurs simply because it is part of the interpreting context. Equally, the presentation of the rubric in French for the Negotiator's role, can certainly not be justified on communicative grounds (any more than a rubric in English could); nor could we argue that it made matters easier for the students. We recognised that an English commentary would be easier for the students but preferred to keep instructions in French, just as we had done throughout Levels 1-3, because we wished to underline the integration of the four basic aspects of language learning. 1986 Negotiator/Interpreter Negotiator The task set (see Appendix 2, pp. 184-188) was conceived as a negotiation between the examiner and the student. The student is provided with a brief written in French, setting out the context and aim of the negotiation. The examiner has only the details of the setting (campsite, hotel, youth hostel, restaurant, railway station, tourist information office), plus a requirement to ensure that students exercise choice.

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The students' brief is in French as part of the total French context of the assessment. Undoubtedly, students could make use of transformations of the text provided in their own contribution. We not only expected this, we welcomed it and even provided an aide-memoire for their notes of preparation. The assessment was of their competence to negotiate a successful outcome, not to test that they could retrieve certain items of vocabulary or structure in doing so. Anything that could help the students materially to handle the negotiation was thought suitable for incorporation in the rubrics. Interpreter The alternative Interpreter role (see Appendix 2, pp. 184-188), which was allocated randomly to students, left the student to negotiate in English with the English speaker the details to be dealt with in the transaction with the French speaker. The English speaker was provided with a brief, outlining his/her requirements of the transaction to be negotiated by the Interpreter. The role of the English speaker was played by a second teacher, a PGCE student, a pupil from Year 12 or 13, depending on the circumstances of the school. The criteria for assessment remained similar to those for the Interviewer/ee modules in that the same basic distinction was observed between content and style, with content representing the acceptable negotiation of the details of the brief and style accounting for the students' capacity to handle constraints in a grammatically coherent and fluent way. The division of the mark sheet into sections (see Appendix 2, p. 189) was intended to enable the examiners who had to handle from four to six tasks with their students to keep track of what was going on without relying too much on memory. As usual, the marks printed in the totals were the maxima available for that section and did not constitute marks for specific sentences or content. In order to give some idea of the quality of language interaction produced by the students, I am printing the transcript of a dialogue recorded as part of our INSET work at the end of the Easter term. The students involved in the recordings had completed their Negotiator/Interpreter assessments in the previous November. The Interpreter version of the Negotiator is constructed, as far as possible, to replicate the demands made on the student negotiating for him or herself. The INSET video begins with the English person giving details to the student who is to carry out the transaction on her behalf. She says that

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she wants to travel second class to Paris on that day and would like to arrive before 10pm. The student writes down some notes before he begins. Transcript I = Interpreter; ES = English speaker; BC = booking clerk (teacher examiner) I:

Est-ce qu'il y a des trains qui arrivent à Paris entre 21 et 22 heures?

BC:Oui, il y en a deux, monsieur. I:

Le train part à quelle heure?

BC:Il y a un train qui part à 13h53 et un autre qui part à 14h06. I:

One train leaves at 1.53 and the other at 6 minutes past 2.

ES: Could you find out when they arrive. I:

Les trains arrivent à quelle heure, s'il vous plait?

BC:Les deux trains? I:

Oui.

BC:Alors, celui de 13h53 arrive à 21h22 I:

Oui

BC:Et l'autre arrive à 21h35. I:

The first train arrives at 9.22 the second at 9.35.

ES: I'll take the first train. I:

Elle va prendre le train qui part à 13h53.

BC:Oui, monsieur. I:

Elle voudrait un billet aller simple en deuxième classe.

BC:Aller simple, ça fait 165F, monsieur. I:

Would you like smoking or non smoking?

ES: Do you have to pay for a reservation? I:

On doit payer pour une réservation?

BC:Oui, monsieur, il y a un supplément de 10F. I:

Yes, there is a supplement of 10F.

ES: I'd like to reserve then in a non-smoking compartment. I:

Alors, un billet pour le train qui arrive à Paris à 21h22, une place non-fumeur, deuxième classe.

BC:Alors, je vous donne le wagon 51, place no 16. I:

Je dois réserver une place?

BC:C'est noté, monsieur. I:

Ça fait combien en tout?

BC:Ça fait 175F. I:

That's 175F, altogether. Voici l'argent.

BC:Merci, c'est exact. ES: Do I have to change? I:

Il faut changer?

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BC:Non, c'est un train direct. I:

No, it's direct.

I'll probably want to eat. Can I eat on the train and if I can't, can I eat at the station ES: and in that case is there a left luggage office? I:

On peut manger dans le train?

BC:Oui, monsieur, il y a un buffet. I:

There's a buffet.

ES: But is there a dining car? I:

Il y a un wagon restaurant dans le train?

BC:Ah, non, monsieur, pas dans ce train-là. I:

No, there's not.

ES: Is there a restaurant in the station? I:

Est-ce qu'il y a un restaurant à la gare?

BC:Oui, monsieur. I:

Où?

BC:Juste à côté. I:

There's a restaurant here, just opposite.

ES: Is there a left luggage office where I can leave my bags? I:

Il y a un bureau des objets trouvés?

BC:Vous avez perdu quelque chose, monsieur? I:

Oh, what was it you wanted?

ES: Left luggage. I:

Lockers?

ES: Yes. I:

Ah, excusez-moi, je suis désolé. Est-ce qu'il y a des coffres-forts?

BC:Pour les bagages? Il y a la consigne. I:

Oui.

BC:Il y a une consigne automatique. I:

There's an automatic locker. Où?

BC:Si vous tournez à droite, puis à gauche, c'est juste en face. I:

Right, left and it's next to it.

I'll need to telephone my friends to tell them when I'm arrivingand I'll need some ES: change for the phone. I:

Où sont les téléphones?

BC:Près de la consigne, monsieur. I:

They are near the lockers.

ES: And change? I:

Où on peut avoir de monn . . . d'argent?

BC:De la monnaie pour le téléphone? I:

Oui.

BC:Il faut demander dans le buffet, monsieur.

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I:

You have to ask in the buffet at the station.

ES: Oh, what platform does it go from? I:

C'est quel quai?

BC: Quai no 6, monsieur. I:

Leaves from platform 6 and it's seat 16. Merci.

BC: Merci, monsieur. The student had a few minutes to review his role before being informed by the English speaker what she wanted him to ask about. During the exchange he made notes continuously without disturbing the flow of the transaction. Despite his limited preparation, it was evident that he could deal competently with most of the information he was asked to relay by the two monolingual speakers and ensure that the English speaker's needs were met. His French was for the most part very accurate and only found wanting when he needed the French for 'left luggage'. His mistranslation (twice) of 'en face' is, incidentally, lexical only: in the physical context of the actual station the difficulty would have been resolved differently! Unlike the Interviewer/ee role, the Negotiator requires language for getting things done in public settings. The personal element is not involved. The Interpreting role tends to stress this transactional factor, making the language terse and succinct. 1989/90 GCSE Mode 3 Negotiator/Interpreter In response to the criticisms of SEAC, the teachers decided to keep the roles of Negotiator and Interpreter, but to limit the Interpreter role to the Higher Level only. As a result, students can be offered all settings at both Basic and Higher Levels but the Interpreter role is available only at Higher level. Although this makes good sense in making more available at the Higher Level, it was precisely the Interpreter role that the less able tended to favour because of the support offered in English. The students now receive a brief in English, setting out what is expected of them. The settings used are campsite, hotel, railway station, restaurant, tourist information office and youth hostel. Students offering both Basic and Higher are examined in different settings for each role. The Basic Level is expected to last five minutes, Basic and Higher together 15 minutes (see Appendix 2, pp. 201-205). The format of the briefs for the Basic and Higher Negotiator roles represents the attempt to distinguish the two roles in a way which gives enough information to the students at both levels but reserves more of the openendedness of the original assessment for the Higher Level role only.

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At Basic Level students are expected to negotiate with their examiner playing the adult role (campsite warden, hotel receptionist etc.). The brief does not require them to ask specific questions or to respond to questions of a specific type in a set order, but it is likely that the layout of the brief will help structure the negotiation which takes place. The examiner has access to the printed sheet which the student does not have. The examiner is instructed to give information only when asked for it. At Higher Level students are presented with more choices by the examiner and need to ask for more information and explanation than at Basic Level. 1981 Reporter My original proposal to the teachersi.e. before the publication of the National Criteriawas that the students should learn to handle narratives in both their spoken and written forms. The settings had obviously to be non-transactional and the roles performed compatible with narrative. It seemed to me that some kind of collaboration between examiner and student might be envisaged which would provide an atmosphere conducive to the generation of appropriate narrative. Clearly, such a proposal would upset the normal examiner-examinee relationship; and, in any case, might prove difficult to achieve, since, no matter what we did, it would still be perceived as an examination by the students. We subsequently adopted a framework in which the student was staying in France with a French family. An adult member of the family had agreed to help them with their French. The students would undertake to read the local newspaper and listen to local radio and report on any incident common to both. The reporting was to be in two stages: an oral report, followed by a discussion (i.e. an attempt by the examiner to get further precision or by the student to ask for help with vocabulary, for example); and then a written report of the events as the student perceived them. The learning linkage was then listening and reading for gist, notemaking, followed by an oral formulation of the story of the incident and, finally, a written version of the events. It seemed as if the Reporter module would provide a satisfactory bridge between the spoken and written performances in the examination and in the learning which preceded them. We had no real problem with the listening, reading and talking componentsthey seemed well integrated in a plausible way, but the writing seemed free-floating. Whereas we could find an appropriate audience for the role and a setting for the talking, in which the listening and reading simply provided the content and (some of) the form, the writing was not obviously intended for anyone except the examiner. Our fiction to extend

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the audience of the talking to include the writing did not really seem legitimate: the examiner helping the students compose their oral reports could include some feedback for the students but obviously not in the form of any language correction. In writing however there could be no other role for the examiner than examiner. We decided to live with that as part of the concessions we had to make to the fact that we were producing an examination and not a linguistic model of second language use. Our firstand only!experience of the original, integrated task showed up its weaknesses as an assessment mode. However we might argue the pedagogic strength of the assessment for the classroom, we had to admit that the logistics of the kind of integration we had chosen were beyond us as an assessment procedure. Although the experimenting schools willingly agreed to provide the necessary backup, all reported the strain on their resources as intolerable. In order to preserve the security of the examination we had to produce a number of different printed and oral texts. The students completed their orals and then went into the examination room where they did their writing. Only in schools with relatively small entry numbers was the operation trouble-free; schools with more than 100 students found the proceedings nightmarish. There were other problems, too. The unfocused nature of the written report with no audience in view left the provision of a stylistic model as a preparation too open. Moreover, the narrative writing required was well beyond what was required at Basic Level by the National Criteria. We realised that if we were to persist with the structure we would have to find another Basic Level task or drop the writing requirement for the Basic Level students. Interestingly enough, however, despite the enormous difficulties, the experiment did show the soundness of our original judgement about the students' learning. Most of the students took both the talking and writing assessments; and, although the narrative written requirement was thought to be something only the most able could do, the evidence was that rather more students than the top ability range coped meaningfully and competently with the task set. As our Assessor reported after reading all the scripts, no comparison with CSE was really possible because CSE students would not have been expected to handle the past tense in writing, but the standard of written French was much higher overall than she would have expected. The teachers confirmed this view. The teachers had had no previous experience of tasks integrated in this way. The logistics of the assessment were beyond what schools could

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possibly bear. But the work did show that a blend of reading, listening, talking and writing can lead to an enhancement of the writing produced. No one who knows anything about language will find that surprising. Any examination geared to integration is likely to show the improvement we recorded. 1986 Joint 16+ Reporter (Higher Speaking) Arising out of our experiences with the Reporter assessment we sought to retain what we could of the valuable learning experiences of the module in a possible examination setting. Despite the difficulties we were unwilling to abandon an integrated task which asked the students to process texts from both a written and an aural source in a context requiring the use of language beyond sentence level. In the Reporter module the students had access to two sets of information about the same event, one from a newspaper and the other from a radio interview with a participant or an observer of the event. The students received a blank brief for their note taking which they were expected to hand to the examiner at the beginning of the assessment. The examiner was expected to see that the student had in fact made notes and not copied out chunks of the printed text. The notes were then made available for the student during the examination. The student was allowed to refer to the notes but not to read from them. The examiner was provided with an outline of the details of the oral and printed texts as well as the printed texts themselves. The mark sheet followed the usual pattern, distinguishing acceptable content from stylistic appropriacy, the headings of the brief providing a memory jog for the examiner (see Appendix 2, pp. 190-193). We preserved the original thrust of the Reporter module precisely to make available to students the language forms needed to encourage them to develop their own autobiographies in speech using the expression of the third person experience as a model. This was the hoped-for spin-off. We hoped to encourage the listening to, reading, telling and writing of narratives in class as the jumping off point for such personalisation of narrative. The narrative structure elicited by the module depends totally on the previous experience of narrative of the students. Not, I would add, on the mere rehearsal of previous texts, but on familiarity with information retrieval, note taking, sequencing, and relating events to their causes and consequences. This familiarity derives best in my view from the valuing of narrative from the earliest stages of language learning.

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Narrating or Reporting? There were difficulties in requiring the examiner to assist in the creation of the narrative. As the French speaker was the examiner, s/he had to be in possession of the text being presented by the student. There was no question therefore of the student presenting the examiner with a genuinely unknown text, because the examiner would have had difficulty in judging the performances. (None of the teachers wanted to record all the orals and mark them from the tape afterwards.) The teachers felt that their role was ambiguous: they were quite happy to examine the students on the text but not sure how to operate if that was not what they were supposed to be doing. My own preference was for the students to have more a narrative than a reporting role. I was more interested in the students being effective narrators than efficient reporters i.e. able to create a narrative that convinced the listener. I was in difficulty in that I could not express succinctly how far a student might depart from the original text and still qualify as a competent narrator. My feelings that we were likely to get only minor departures from the sequence of events, and, maybe, some confusions between causes and consequences did nothing to clarify the problem for the teachers. In the end, the narrative/reporting role was reduced to a reporting role in which the students could be judged on their capacity to record their response to a whole spoken or written text. The examination problem was quite acute since it brought out the difference between telling stories and reporting events. In my original presentation I had confused the two because creating narrative in a convincing manner seemed to me more valuable than reporting what someone has written or said. The evidence that accrued in our early examinations tended to show that students who departed from the original texts did so because they had confused possibilities with actual events. Thus, if there was mention of someone going to both a café and a station, either might be substituted for the other in a narrative where neither was significant for the story. That is to say, that if there was a robbery as someone was getting on or off a train, after which the thief ran off the platform and disappeared in the crowd, the station would appear as the location of the event. But if the robbery occurred in the street after or before the subject went to the station and therefore the station was not the location then the sequence of events could easily be displaced. From the narrative point of view no rupture would have taken place; but from a reporter's viewpoint details would have been misplaced by the student. We agreed that the reporting function should take precedence over the narrative, but it was interesting to note that many teachers did, in fact,

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during the oral examination, tend to accept narrative instead of reports or to reward the one as highly as the other. I suspect that this showed no dereliction of duty on the part of the examiners, rather more that they, like the students, could not always keep the precise sequence in their heads and were, in fact, more influenced by the narrative flow than, theoretically, they had expected to be. There was, of course, no question of the students being interrogated on the text or made to contrast their narrative with the originalsexcept in the most tentative of ways. Text Types After some experimentation with different kinds of texts, we settled for a first person narrative embedded in a descriptive text. Consequently, we looked more for newspaper type interviews written up after the event in which the story is contextualised by the reporter who then interviews the witness to or protagonist in the incident under review. The broadcast accompaniment then took the form of an interview at the local radio station with the protagonist or witness of the newspaper incident. The two were arranged so that the story of the one medium was supplemented by the other. If the newspaper interviewed a witness, the radio interview featured a protagonist; and vice versa. As some of the schools presented more than 200 candidates, we felt that we could not use one text only as the details would be made available on the grapevine in no time at all. My colleagues felt on the other hand that we should maintain security by producing alternative texts. This looked like proving a very time-consuming and, probably, unsatisfactory business. When we looked at alternative texts on different topics of the syllabus we soon discovered that we would be creating very considerable problems of comparability since some of the texts we used were obviously more complex than others. We decided therefore to produce a set of texts, aural and printed, which were minimally different from each other. The story was essentially the same, but the details of names, places, times etc. changed according to the text used. Unfortunately, although we had created a system of texts which guaranteed their security, we had also created a set of problems for ourselves which we had not intended. The similarity of the aural and printed textsa necessity in our economical systemmeant that we could not tell from the students' performances whether they had got their information from the aural or printed text. It seemed a reasonable assumption that the aural text was virtually redundant in the assessment process. We also found that the teacher examiners had considerable difficulty in keeping the trivial differentiating details of the texts in their heads during

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the examination of the students. The problem was also rendered more acute by my failure to be precise about the narrating/reporting distinction. The problem can be illustrated perhaps by a crude example. Imagine two texts, A and B. Text A: X leaves house in morning, goes to bank, meets friends in café, wallet stolen on way back home. Text B: Y leaves flat in afternoon, goes to shops, meets friends in baker's, purse stolen on way home. The fusion of these texts can easily create another: Text C: Z leaves flat in afternoon, goes to shops, meets friend in bank, on way to café has wallet/purse stolen. Obviously, text C can be told with as much narrative effectiveness as either A or B. Marking for narrative effectiveness, the teachers thought, would fail to reward reporting abilitywhich was what the assessment was called. The usual problem was posed: how do we evaluate a stumbling but accurate reporter as compared with a fluent but creative narrator? We had no wish to specify marks for accurate recall of text for this would have required us to make some attempt to quantify the narrative qualities as well. We could not ignore that the students were confronting two sources, aural and printed, so that some reward had to be made available for respect for the texts. The issue had to be resolved for the examination. My view that narrative quality lies in the delivery and not in the text could not prevail in an examination. In any case the fact that the listener was the examiner and therefore knew the textindeed, had to know the textinevitably meant that the unfolding story was set against the known facts: it could not be taken as pure narrative, i.e. a telling engaging the listener. Insisting on the reporting rather than the narrating aspect of the event had the advantage of rooting it in the original texts and thus of integrating listening and reading into a speaking activity in National Criteria terms. We altered the structure of the texts so that the aural text complemented the printed text in a specific way: if the aural interview was with a participant, the printed version was with a witness, and vice versa. We thus allocated specific events to the different media in a way which enabled us to evaluate the role of the media in the final outcome. We also reduced the specific detail in each text so as not to require the students to pay too much attention to what was insignificant for the whole. Once we concentrated on producing a variety of texts with different settings and incident structures, the problems we had previously faced seemed to disappear. The students mainly recalled the thrust of the narra-

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tive, using generalisation strategies to gloss specific details not precisely recalled. The text types we used failed to generate the alternative but false texts we had (at least, partly) suffered from on the previous occasion. The examiners found no great difficulty in rewarding recall instead of invented narrativeindeed, there was little evidence of invention at all. We were still left with the inevitable lack of comparability between texts: the argument was always open that student A might have done better on text B. We decided that we would have to live with that as a problem and compensate retrospectively if examiners noted difficulties with particular texts. On the whole, we relied on the vetting of the possible texts during the examination creation period to alert us to what might turn out to be a lack of balance between them. As far as I could see, the students would have had considerable difficulty in creating viable, alternative texts to those they were presented with. What tended to happen was that they created variously reduced versions of the original with their highlightings, misrepresentations or omissions reflecting their capacity to process the data from the broadcast and printed texts. It would be possible to line up a set of student versions and show them in descending order of merit as reductions of the original: with the more elaborated versions containing most of the significant data and the relations between themcause, effect, consequence etc.and the less competent versions presenting fewer data and articulating less accuratelypossibly paratacticallythe relations between them. The change in format was significant as well. Our first attempts had failed to elicit narratives in which the students showed that they had attended to both the spoken and printed sources. This was entirely due to my failure to think through the role of integrated text in the assessment context: I had been principally concerned to make the comprehension and therefore the retelling of the story easier. The new format with its increased stress on significant detail helped the students to sequence their stories better than before, but there was still a dichotomy between the narrating and reporting aspects of the task. Originally, before the restriction of the Reporter to Higher Level, all students had the opportunity to take part. Teachers, anxious that their less able students might be unable to construct an appropriate narrative, had asked for some sort of grid which the students could complete and bring with them into the examination room. The intention was not only to help the students but also to inform the examiner about what they seemed to have grasped of what they had heard and read. We were therefore left with a kind of study skills grid which enabled the students to record information about the topic, participants, context and

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the sequence of events in the story (see Appendix 2, p. 215). The grid allowed the students to note down details as an aidememoire, but the format implied a prescription for the examination itself: it led to the expectation that the students would be examined on the texts they had made notes on under the headings printed. This was not what we had intended at all. Examiner Problems We had never formulated the examiners' task mechanically: they were expected to facilitate both the reporting and narrating aspects of the task so as to permit assessment by the agreed criteria, but without distinguishing between them. The instructions insisted that the examiners were not to submit the students to an interrogation on the texts, but to encourage as much as possible a flow of coherent text from them. This unaccustomed role for the examiners caused a lot of discussion and not a little difficulty. The teachers were used to knowing the texts and to seeing whether the students knew them too. Now, instead of asking open or leading questions they were expected to support someone else's narrative. In real life, if the interlocutor did not know the story, any questions asked of the reporter would have the function of establishing meanings not shared. But, as this was an examination, the examiners were obliged to know the story and could not ask questions to which they did not know the answers already. Moreover, the students' expectations of questions often seemed to show that they regarded them as indicators of the true state of affairs, as some kind of re-routing of the direction so far taken. This expectation clearly derives from students' experience of teachers' questions, very few of which are likely to be asked for information. Also, attempts by teachers to help by summarising or bridging awkward gaps in the student's narrative often sent negative signals to the candidate where none were intended. For example, in a text about a bomb scare in the metro in Paris a train driver had been alerted to the presence of a suspicious bag left on a ledge in the entrance to a tunnel. It had in fact been dropped out of an open window by a passenger on a previous train who had noticed it under a seat. An examiner, trying to get clarity from the student in front of her, said: 'Alors, le conducteur a laissé tomber le sac sur le quai. C'est bien ça?' She was expecting the student to rectify the statement; instead, the student, knowing, I suspect, that the text had referred to 'Une petite plateforme dans le tunnel', confirmed that it was so, thus leaving herself and the examiner high and dry! The facilitator's style indicated that she was trying to sum up

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what was established so far, but her gloss was interpreted as the correction by a superior. An example of the kind of work envisaged may be gathered from the following transcript which illustrates a video produced as part of the INSET programme for French for Communication referred to earlier. The student volunteers had the usual amount of time allowed for the examination (about 10/15 minutes) to make themselves familiar with the printed and tape-recorded texts before presenting themselves for videoing. The transcript gives some idea of what the Reporter module might produce in terms of interaction between student and examiner on the subject of a printed newspaper text. It is not to be thought of as either typical or ideal: it is simply what one student produced on the day. The teacher begins: Transcript T:Qu'est-ce que tu as lu dans le journal ce matin? Il y avait des vols au camping de la Courance. Philippe Mercier qui avait 18 ans S: était étudiant de medecin à l'université de Lille. Il était victime des voleurs. T:Ah, bon. Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé exactement? C'était vers 4 heures du matin. II est allé au disco cette soir et il était fatigué donc il S: a dormi mais il s'est réveillé parce qu'elle . . . il a vu une main dans la tente. T:Une main dans la tente? Qu'est-ce qu'il a fait quand il a vu la main dans la tente? Il a crié et a sorti du lit et il a poursuivi le Valero mais il l'a perdu dans les arbres. S: Puis il a entendu le bruit d'un . . . d'une moto. T:Ah, le voleur partait à moto, c'est ça? S:Oui. T:Il y avait combien de voleurs? S:Deux ou trois. T:Deux ou trois voleurs. Qu'est-ce qu'ils ont volé? Philippe manquait son portefeuille, sa carte d'identité, son permis de conduite et vers S: 400F. T:Qu'est-ce qu'il a fait quand il s'est rendu compte qu'il avait perdu tout ça? Il est allé au gardien et au commissariat et la police . . . la police a commencé un S: enquête. T:Est-ce qu'il y avait d'autres victimes? Oui, Isabelle Guillon, qui avait 20 ans et était étudiant à l'université de Rouen. Elle était seule. Normalement, elle a fait du camping avec deux copines mais cette fois S: elle a voyagé seule.

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T:Ah, bon. Elle est aussi allée au disco ce soir. Elle est rentrée dans sa tente vers une heure du matin, elle est endormi mais elle n'a pas dormi parce qu'il pleuvait et elle a entendu S: un coup de tonnerre et elle avait peur . . . T:Oui, je comprends . . . S:Puis elle a vu une main dans sa tente . . . T:Elle aussi? S:Oui, elle a crié et elle a lancé la torche et elle a touché le voleur avec la torche. T:Qu'est-ce qu'il a fait, le voleur? II a parti. Isabelle n'a pas poursuivi le voleur et elle n'a pas vu le voleur. Elle n'avait pas une description de lui et le lendemain matin elle est allée au gardien du camping S: et au commissariat. T:Alors, qu'est-ce qu'on lui a volé? S:Rien. T:Rien? S:Oui, parce que son portefeuille était dans son sac à couchage. T:Ah, bon. Merci . . . 1989/90 GCSE Mode 3: Reporter The teachers recast the Reporter module so as to preserve the integration of the reading and talking activities in a context which could be managed in a school examination. The students now receive the newspaper text and a blank copy of the aide-memoire for their notetaking. The examiner is expected to look at the notes before the oral examination to make sure that appropriate notes have been taken. The examination on the text is expected to last 10 minutes, the remaining five minutes being devoted to general conversation as prescribed by the National Criteria. Once the examination had received its approval by SEAC the Reporter module was split into two, with the integrated listening and reading task of the original being hived off as a separate Higher Level interpreting task written in English. The integrated reading and talking task then focused on the reading and reporting of afait divers from a newspaper. The rubric allows the candidates to ask for any information they need about the text and the scoring system allows for credit to be given for the intelligent use of this resource. The examiner's role is to encourage a narrative in whatever manner s/he thinks fit: interrogations on the text are inadmissible. The examiner has also to ensure that the candidate uses, but does not read from, the notes s/he has written.

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The candidates' task is quite complex: they are presented with an unseen text which they have to assimilate in a few minutes, using their aide-memoire to sort out details of the textwho, where, when etc.and to note the sequence of the events in the story. The story may have two or more spoken sources, protagonists and witnesses; the chronology of the event may not follow exactly the sequence of the account in the text. The text itself may contain difficulties of vocabulary or construction which cannot be resolved unless the candidate asks the examiner for some help during the examination itself. In the following transcript of the examination of a candidate in 1990 on the Reporter (see Appendix 2, p. 213 for text), I have attempted to conserve the pronunciation of the candidate. Where possible I have used a semi-phonetic script preceded by an *. Where I have been unable to identify the sense of what the candidate was saying, I have introduced a question mark in brackets, thus (?). The rubric to the candidates allows them to ask whatever questions they like in order to understand the text. It has to be borne in mind that the candidates have had about 10 minutes to study their textin fact the amount of time taken by the preceding candidate's examination. The examiner is required to look at the candidates' notes before beginning the examination. The candidates have a support (see Appendix 2, pp. 214-216) which is intended to guide them in their notemaking. The examiner is expected to ensure that candidates do not write out what they intend to say in the examination. Although the candidates are allowed their notes, they are prohibited from reading aloud from them: it is the examiner's job to see that the notes are used as notes only. Transcript E= examiner; S= student E:Bonjour, est-ce que je peux voir tes notes, avant de commencer? S:Bien sûr. (Reads) Très bien. OK. (Hands back). Merci. Est-ce que tu as des questions à me E:poser? S:Oui, je ne comprends pas *meson, *meson. E:Non, je ne comprends pas, non plus. Pardon. S:*Meson? Ah, maçon, maçon. C'est un emploi, je comprends, maçon. C'est quelqu'un qui E:fabrique des bâtiments. Tu comprends? S:Oui. Oui. E:Voilà. C'est tout?

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S Non. Il y a aussi 'perturbé'. Qu'est-ce que c'est? Ah, oui, c'est 'agité'. Par exemple, quand on a un examen, je suppose que les E:candidats sont un peu 'perturbés', 'agités'. S:Ah, oui, bon, oui, je pense que c'est tout. E:Ah, bon, on peut commencer. Oui? S:Oui. E:De quoi s'agit-il dans cet incident? S:Il s'agit des enfants retrouvés sains et saufs. E:Très bien. OK. Ça s'est passé où, exactement? S:Dans un petit village . . . de commune, situé à quelques kilomètres à l'ouest de Pau. E:Oui. Est-ce que tu as, par hasard, noté le nom du village? S:Je pense que c'est *son, Saint Eloi? Oui? E:Oui. L'incident s'est passé quand? S:Ça s'est passé le treize . . . le treize avril . . . avril. C'était un vendredi. E:Oui, un vendredi. A quelle heure? S:A douze heures, à douze heures, oui. E:Les participants, maintenant: de qui s'agit-il? De M et Mme *Bergerac de Lascars et ses enfants: Marius qui avait 6 ans, Laure S: qui avait 4 ans et Lucille qui avait 2 ans. Et M Bosc qui est le *meson . . . le maçon. E:Très bien. Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé exactement? La mère des enfants avait *lassé (?) pour passer à une voisine, 5 ou 10 minutes au maximum. Elle est . . . elle a revenu, la porte de l'entrée était . . . tait . . . grande ouverte, mais aucune trace des enfants. Son mari était rentré. Ils ont commencé à chercher pour les enfants. Ils ont . . . ils ont fait les jardins et les champs alentours, mais en vain. A huit . . . à huit heures ils ont *dicidé à téléphoner la police. Le S: *meson, le *mesonc'est exact, le *meson? E:Le maçon. Ah oui, le maçon a *dicouverti les enfants. Le *chantierre est *inaccessible . . .*inaccessible au public et on ne sait pourquoi . . . les enfants ont *reusé à y entrer. Il a ouvert la porte du chantier, il a remarqué une porte et aussi . . . et aussi une porte. Il a entendu et trouvé les deux enfants ont forcé la porte S: et ont trouvé l'intérieur. Je pense que c'est tout. E:OK. Quand, exactement, est-ce que M Bosc a trouvé les enfants? S:Pouvez-vous répéter ça, s'il vous plait? E:Oui, oui. Les enfants ont disparu vendredi, n'est-ce pas? S:Oui, oui. E:Quand est-ce que M Bosc a trouvé les enfants? S:Je pense que c'est douze heures? Je n'ai pas de . . .

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E:Tu n'as pas de notes? OK. Quelles ont été les conséquences, après? Ah, bon. Après deux heures à la clinique de St Eloi, les enfants avaient déjà pris un S: bon repas et puis dans la voiture les trois enfants ont *dormé. E:Donc, pas de problèmes? Pas de blessés? S:Non, ni morts, ni blessés. E:Merci beaucoup. (The examination concludes with the Higher Level Conversation based on questions and answers as prescribed by the National Criteria) The student in question copes quite well with the demands of the examination. He has managed to sort out the main points of the story but is unsure of how M Bosc got to the children. His notetaking is obviously satisfactory to the examiner and enables him to make the transition from the first to the third person without too much difficulty. Not until his story reaches the building site itself does his narrative begin to lose contact with the events he is retelling. The examiner makes no attempt to interrogate the student but neither does he offer help with the narrative. Teachers find their role in this task extremely difficult and a great deal of experience is required to carry it out sympathetically, precisely because no specific guidelines can be offered. Colleagues agree that the procedure is very demanding on students. Doubtless, the actual examination could be made less stressful, perhaps by making the texts available to the students at some earlier stage so that they would have longer to prepare themselves for the oral transmission. Any alteration of that type would of course have implications for the security of the textsI would personally have no objection to the students having as long as possible to study their texts, with whatever access to, say, monolingual French dictionaries or the French assistant, as could be accommodated in an examination. My Leicestershire colleagues have recognised that more narrative work needs to be done in schools at an earlier stage, if the Reporter is to be successfully tackled by more students. To this end they are introducing narrative elements into Level Three of French for Communication. I feel sure that the recognition of narrative as an important area of language use from the beginning of language learning can only help, not only the performance of narrative tasks, but also bring about the natural integration of reading into purposeful oral discussion. Ultimately, the capacity of students to operate competently in either the reporting or narrating mode, depends on the number of occasions in which they have themselves encountered or produced narrative text in talk and writing. The more the student has the opportunity to read something and tell someone else about it; to hear something and write it down in the

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foreign language; to hear stories and retell them; to read stories and rewrite themthe more likely it is that their narrative/reporting facility will be enhanced. I would like to see teachers incorporating stories and storytelling into their everyday classes from the earliest possible moment. Fortunately, the National Curriculum provides ample opportunity to consider more creative language use than was envisaged by the authors of the National Criteria.

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8 Composing National Criteria 1985 The specifications for writing suggest letters, postcards, lists and notes at Basic level, and writing in 'continuous French' at Higher Level. Early Days In the original model of 1981 we did not distinguish between Basic and Higher Level tasks. Indeed, we regarded writing as a higher level task per se. We had always made the distinction between writing for learning which all students need to do as part of the language learning process and writing for a communicative purpose in which not everybody will share. At this early stage we were principally concerned with integrating writing with those other activities which can support it in learning and use. Thus, the students' first writing task was linked to the reporting of the event heard and read about as the basis for their oral Reporter task. The second and third were in the Correspondent mode in which they reacted to a tape-recorded discussion in French and to some letter extracts. Our expectation was that all students would take the talking role of the Reporter and that most of them would offer the written version as well. The two Correspondent modules we expected to be taken by the most able students only, but we had not intended to limit students' participation by labelling some modules Basic and others Higher. Indeed, we thought we had constructed a hierarchical model which would have allowed students to progress upwards as far as they wished to go and find adequate reward. In the Reporter writing the objectives were the same as for talking: the students were expected to be able to describe the context in which the incident/accident occurred; to relate the sequence of events; to describe the people, vehicles, buildings, locations involved; and to respond to requests, where appropriate, for more detailed information about the context of the incident/ accident, sequence of events or the actions of the participants. The earliest Correspondent module required a response to a letter. It was expected that students would mention in their replies a number of the

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points of information asked for in the letter but no rubric was written specifying how this might be done. In the accompanying module the students were expected to listen to an interview on French radio and write a response to the 'Service des Auditeurs', expressing their own views in relation to the views expressed, bringing forward data relevant to the development of a discussion, giving reasons for accepting, modifying or rejecting the viewpoints considered and advancing their own views with their reasons for them. The exemplar provided was chauvinistic in tone, inviting a crisp response from the students. The criteria listed the examiner's expectations that the students would refer to a number of the themes raised and express themselves with appropriate accuracy and communicative effectiveness. The exemplar was not used except as the basis for further discussion. The content criteria were specific to the text used and would have needed restating for each subsequent text. The question of the kind of student rubric implied was not raised at this juncture. The alternative Researcher module was intended for a small minority of able students, essentially those who would be studying A level and proceeding to Higher education. There was no equivalent of the activities envisaged here in the three Levels. What I had envisagedthere was never any teacher demand for this modulewas a project based on the students' own interests on which they could be assessed with respect to their competence in both talking and writing in registers not accessible elsewhere. The assessment would not have been comparable in any meaningful way with the module it replaced but I hoped that the quality of the work done would make detailed comparisons irrelevant. The grade structure would not have admitted further rewards, unfortunately. Overall, the syllabus reflects its value as a discussion documenta statement of possible intentrather than a coherent examination rubric. 1986 CSE/ GCE O Joint Certification By the time we had reached 1985 and the prospect of joint certification between EMREB and Oxford & Cambridge, we had realised that we would have to produce a basic writing assessment like those available in Mode 1. This raised the problem of the stimulus: we had never used English as a stimulus in our work and were most unwilling to do so. Our attempts experimentally to produce writing directly in response to letters containing questions had shown that the discourse problems of the writing do not stem from the writers' need to supply information asked for

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in the letter to which they are replying but from the nature of correspondence itself: letters may well contain answers to questions but they also contain information and comment and what is usually called phatic communion between writer and reader. We soon realised that although we could get students to write quite successfully in answer to letters and even, in some cases, show appropriate awareness of the demands of the genre, we could not easily provide a brief which would generate a letter of the complexity and quality the students were capable of. We felt the need to preserve the connection with existing modulesto ensure that the language of the theme of the letter was reactivated before the writing took placeand also to provide a brief which would not require a translation. We soon found that we could not avoid the use of English as a prompt. However, by continuing the Interpreter role, we were able to make the letter a reply to the letter interpreted into English by the student earlier. The brief provided was then couched in telegraphese so as to indicate what was needed without requiring the students to translate into French. 1990 Module 3c Basic Writing (Interpreter) SEAC insisted that we add postcard and note writing to the Basic Level writing module. Consequently, the interpreting role of the earlier modules is reduced and the student becomes a conventional examination candidate. The Interpreting role is however preserved for the letter which is the answer expected to the letter interpreted in Module 3b (see Appendix 2, pp. 206, 207 & 211). As in the earlier examples of the technique the students are offered a set of notes to put into an appropriate letter form in French. The marking scheme distinguishes between content and grammatical style, offering marks for individual items acceptably expressed and grammatical competence recorded on a scale of 0-4. The emphasis is on getting the message across and only secondarily on its form. 1986 Correspondent Modules The NC specification for advanced writing is for 'continuous French'. Most Mode 1 examinations settle for another letter. This reflects the difficulty we are all in when we start casting about for activities which will engage our students in written communication in a foreign language. The old O Level stand-by of continuing the story of a passage used for translation into English or of writing a story from a series of pictures has gone, but there seems little reflection on what might have been lost by their going or what might be gained by including something else.

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We were looking for something which made the kind of demands on the students which would fit our preference for an integrated approach and provide the basis for advanced level work. As with the Reporter module, we were expecting that our solution would occur in an area where the module could be resourced from different media. Just as the Reporter afforded access to reading, listening to and talking about narratives, so we wanted the Correspondent to open the students to reflection on the views of others and the expression of their own. As usual, we started from the fiction that the students were in France. They were assumed to have read in a teenage magazine extracts from letters which interested them. They were also assumed to have heard the broadcast of a discussion on a matter of concern to them. In each case they were to write a letter to the magazines to publish their opinions on what they had read and heard and present their own views on the issues raised. The two tasks proposed are similar but not the same. In the first case, the students have the extracts before them while they write. In the second they are totally dependent on their ability to make adequate notes while listening to the broadcast discussion. Ideally, of course, we would have liked the listening and reading to be integrated into a single writing task, but as we were obliged to record separate marks for these two abilities, we were unable to contemplate the possibility. In any case, our experience of the original Reporter had provided some insight into the problems of integrating aural and visual sources in a single examination! Correspondent Tasks The tasks (see pp. 103 et seq. & Appendix 2, p. 196) require the students to attend to their sources and to process the data they select in accordance with the rubric: they are expected to identify the topic of the letters or the discussion, to respond to the views expressed and to express their own opinions. Such activities imply that the students are sufficiently in contact with the written and spoken registers to understand the expression of opinion, to report and comment on it and to express their own standpoint. Underpinning such an activity in class requires the oral exchange of one's own views and the reporting of those of others. The techniques required are similar to those needed for the Reporter, but here the reporting is in writing (without oral rehearsal) and the register is personal. Our first attempts at providing suitable sources were quite successful and most of the students carried out the tasks well. At that time we had not differentiated between Basic and Higher Level students, but preferred to allow open access to the modules. As a consequence we had a pretty clear

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idea of the ability range for whom the module was appropriate and of the abilities the students needed to complete the module successfully. Abilities Needed The experience of the examinations has made it clear that the Correspondent is a very rewarding but demanding task. Rewarding, because it enables the most able to show how well they can handle written language to express their own, often complex, thoughts. Demanding, because the underlying skills of note-taking, selecting, comparing, reporting and evaluating have to be brought together to produce a final coherent text. The teachers know that those skills cannot be assumed: students have to learn how to take notes and how to structure argument using them. They have to learn to select the more from the less important points and to embed them economically in appropriate structures. The formal skills of summarising and reporting have to be practised. Stylistically, the students have to learn how to report the views they wish to comment on, but also to vary the way in which they report them. They also have to strike a balance between reporting and commenting on the views of others and expressing their own. This is most likely to be achieved if they have had access to the registers they need to become experienced in making use of what they have read and heard. Writing and Reading From a language learning point of view, writing depends vitally on reading: not simply in the sense that it has to use the same spellings to achieve its effects, but, more importantly, that the written language in the variety of its textual forms provides the rhetorical frameworks we need for writing. It provides us with sentence, clause, paragraph conventions as well as text typesinformal/ formal letter, postcard, advert etc. However difficult it may be to describe the features which help us to distinguish one type from another, we would not expect to be able to write, say, a formal letter without ever having read one. It seems obvious that response is easier than initiation. In speech our role as respondent is linguistically distinct from that of our interlocutor. In writing, however, particularly in a foreign language, we are heavily dependent on the layout of the text before us, as we shape our reply. As competent foreign language users ourselves we are likely to make use of our capacity to manipulate paradigmatically at least some of the devices used by our native correspondent in order to express our own meanings. This is a strategy that students have to learn.

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The Correspondent is designed to get students to pay attention to the formal devices for conveying propositional meaningsquotation and reference, summary, comment, self-insertion and the rest. The interesting point about the relation between the reading and the writing is that the devices needed are, for the most part, not contained in the texts used to stimulate the writing: they have to be derived beforehand from other text types. It is therefore in the preparation for the module that the integration of specific study skillsthe identification of propositional content, point of view, reasons and consequences, for examplecan be made orally from the base of written/printed texts and the content expressed in the appropriate referential form. Thus, for example, a stimulus letter containing the following, 'Je n'aime pas le football' might lead to the referential, 'X dit qu'il n'aime pas le football' and the self-insertion comment of the type, 'mais, moi, je l'adore'. Integration of the modes But the preparation of the module cannot be left until a few weeks before the assessment. Of course, teachers are rushed off their feet and the time available is never enough, but the roles and functions implicit in the Correspondentlistening to and reading about the experiences, feelings and views of others, summarising, selecting, commenting from one's own point of viewneed to be present in the methodological armoury of the teacher from much earlier than Year 11, however imperfectly expressed and however restricted in accessibility across the ability range. The differentiation in text-types between the two sections of the Correspondentletter extracts from a teenage journal and a recorded chaired discussion between two discussantsfunctions in the same way as the spoken/written aspects of the Reporter. The contents of the letters can be expressed in speech just as the content of the discussion can be expressed in print. The difference created by the medium of recorded speech is that the students are totally dependent on their information retrieving capacity before they can process the data retrieved in line with the rubric. And, in my view, that capacity depends on experience gained and exploited over time. Unlike the Reporter, the Correspondent is intended to focus on themes within the experience of the students as participant, that is to say, to deal with topics which students can respond to differentlyschool discipline, homework, parental control etc. The preparation should therefore include the students stating their own circumstances, explaining, say, their parents' viewpoint, noting down what is said by one student and comparing it with

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what is said by another and, finally, interpolating their own point of view and expressing it publicly in speech or writing. 1990 Higher Writing (Parts 1 & 2) Correspondent In the Higher Writing (part 1) module the candidates read extracts from letters written to a youth magazine (see below) and respond according to the printed rubric. Il y a deux semaines nous avons publié un article de Sophie N . . . sur les rapports entre professeurs et élèves dans les écoles. L'article a évidemment provoqué beaucoup de discussions. Voici vos réactions. 1. Je préfère garder une certaine distance. Je ne veux pas ''connaître'' les profs. Nous sommes là pour travaillerle prof enseigne, nous, on apprend. Le professeur ne doit pas essayer d'étre populaire avec ses eléves. Il doit faire son métier. C'est mieux comme ça surtout si on veut réussir aux examens. Nicolas, 15 ans. 2. C'est plus facile de travailler si on s'entend bien avec le prof. On peut mieux discuter, on comprend mieux et si on a des problèmes on peut trouver des solutions plus facilement. J'avais un professeur avec qui je ne m'entendais pas très bien. J'avais un peu peur de lui et je n'osais pas lui parler quand j'avais des difficultés. Je suis sûre que c'est pour ça que je n'ai pas réussi à mon examen l'année dernière. Sophie, 16 ans 3. C'est une bonne idée d'avoir de bons rapports mais j'ai toujours l'impression que les profs n'ont pas assez de temps pour parler avec les élèves. Les parents ne s'intéressent pas non plus à ce genre de contact entre professeurs et élèves; ils préfèrent qu'on travaille comme quand ils étaient jeunes. Francois, 16 ans. 4. Je m'entends bien avec la plupart de mes professeurs mais j'ai un prof de biologie que me pose des tas de problèmes. Je pense que c'est tout simplement parce qu'il ne m'aime pas, mais je ne sais pas pourquoi. J'en ai parlé avec mes amis, mais ils ne comprennent pas le problème. Que doisje faire? Nathalie, 16 ans.

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Sophie wrote the following in response:

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She manages to extract the information she wants to refer to but incorporates it in her own constructions. For example, Nicolas writes 'Je préfère garder une certaine distance'. She writes '. . . et je pense il a tort quand il dit que si on veux réussir aux examens, on doit garder une distance'. Similarly, Sophie writes 'C'est plus facile de travailler si on s'entend bien avec le prof' She writes '. . . parce que je trouve que c'est plus facile de travailler quand on a des bonnes relations avec les profs'. Not only does she cope easily with the problem of citing the opinions she wants to comment on, she gives the impression of quoting what the author thought rather than copying out what he or she wrote. And her interest in the letters is accompanied by an ability to sympathise with the author by expressing her own similar experiences: 'C'est vrai que quand j'ai peur d'un prof, je ne peux pas lui parler si j'ai des problèmes'. In the Higher Writing module (part 2) the students listen to a studio discussion between three peoplea chairperson and two participants on one of the topics of the syllabus. (As a result of SEAC intervention, they now hear the recording twice). They are allowed to make notes as and when they wish. They are assumed to be interested in the topic of the discussion to the extent that they write a letter to the magazine taking an attitude to the participants in the discussion and expressing their own views and any relevant personal experience (see following text).

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Présentatrice

Murielle

Hervé

CORRESPONDENT: LISTENING (TRANSCRIPT) PRESENTATRICE MURIELLE MERCIER HERVE DURAND Chers auditeurs bonjour, et bienvenue à notre émission 'Parole aux Jeunes'. Aujourd'hul nous allons parler de la mode. J'al avec moi Murielle et Hervé Alors, Pres:tout d'abord, voulez-vous vous présenter. Euh oui, je m'appelle Murielle Mercier, comme vous l'avez déjà dit, j'ai 17 ans et Mur:je vais au Lycée Désiré Nisard à Dijon. Pres:Et vous, Hervé? Her: Oui, je m'appelle Hervé Durand et je suis élève au Lycée Victor Hugo à Rouen. Pres:Alors, Murielle, voulez-vous nous donner votre point de vue sur la mode? Il faut dire que je ne m'intéresse pas à la mode. J'aime être assez bien habillée mais je déteste passer mon temps à trainer dans les magasins, ca, c'est du temps perdu. Je préfère lire, faire du spor t et ouer de la guitare au lieu de passer un Mur:samedl à choisir une veste ou un pantalon. Un jean et un tee-shirt me suffisent. Alors, la mode pour vous n'est pas très importante, Murielle. Hervé, vous avez un Pres:point de vue différent, je crois? Oui, J'aime beaucoup les vétements qui sont bien faits. Je préfère acheter des vétements qui coûtent chers mais qui sont d'une meilleure quallté. Je pense que c'est une fausse économle d'acheter quelque chose parce que c'est bon marchéça Her: ne dure pas. Si c'est bon, je ne regarde pas au prix. Donc vous, Hervé vous préférez des vétements de bonne qualité et vous, Murielle, vous préfèrez ne pas passer beaucoup de temps à cholsir vos vétements Pres:parce quo vous pensez qu'ils ne sont pas importants. PAUSE Pres:Que pensez-vous des gens qui prennent leurs vetements au sérieux, Murielle? Je trouve que ces gens sont très vaniteux et ils essalent de projeter une image d'euxmemes. Ils aiment croire qu'ils sont supérieurs aux autres parce qu'ils sont mieux habillés. Je trouve ça triste. Ils doivent avoir une vie bien monotone, si, Mur:pour eux, tout ce qui compte c'est l'apparence.

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Pres:Je suppose que vous n'étes pas d'accord, Hervé? Non, pas du tout. A mon avis, c'est la première impression qui est très importante. Si on n'est pas présentable et on a l'air négligé ça peut donner une mauvaise Impression, en particulier quand on cherche du travail. En plus, quand on est bien habilé on se sent mieux et donc on a plus confiance, que ce soit au travail ou Her: quand on sort avec des amis. Merci, Hervé. Merci Murielle. Alors, chers auditeurs, deux points de rues très Pres:différents sur la mode. Qu'en pensez-vous? Ecrivez-nous à 'Parole aux Jeunes' . . . The task the students face is clearly different from the first in that, although they are expected to process their thoughts in a similar fashion in both modules, success in the second requires them to have retrieved from their listening the data on which their writing can be based. Whereas in the first module the students have texts before them from which they can make their selections to comment on, in the second module they are entirely dependent on their ability to grasp the topic and the standpoint of the participants on it before their writing abilities can be brought into play. Two students (B1 and B2) wrote in response as follows:

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The first student (B1) has identified the topic of the discussion and the different attitudes of the participants to it. She has managed to fuse the information given in the first part of the recording with that of the second part so as to present each participant's view as a whole. This enables her to insert her own attitudes and generalisations in a coherent way. The second student (B2) has correctly identified the topic but has wrongly attributed the opinions held by the participants. She has also restricted herself to the first part of the recording, preferring to offer her own views on clothes rather than adopt the focus of the participants. Consequently, her letter, despite its apparent confidence, fails in large measure to meet the demands of the rubric. I have included the examination responses of students from the Higher Level range to illustrate some of the possibilities and difficulties presented by the integrated assessments used in our examination. I would certainly not wish to suggest that the examination formats we use are in any way ideal: they represent an attempt to require the students to carry out integrated tasks within the framework of the National Criteria of the GCSE. As those criteria actively discourage integration, our enterprise was undermined from the outset. Examinations and Learning Particularly in modern languages, students tend to be taught to do what they will be required to do in public examinations. What the examinations require, the teachers will teach. Unfortunately, it is less likely that students will acquire the competences necessary to carry out tasks, than practise (with old examination papers) in carrying out tasks previously set. There is a certain inevitability about this, I fear: it is highly doubtful whether a particular examination format can by itself influence the way teachers teach. Not unreasonably, teachers will want to do their best for their students. They will be under pressure to interpret good examination results as evidence that the teaching has been effective. If the examination encourages and rewards good practice, teachers will find some way of developing it for themselves. They are not likely to value what is not rewarded in the examination: the risks of non-conformity are too great. A great responsibility rests therefore on those responsible for the national assessment process. To devise an assessment instrument like the GCSE which offers the students half their total marks for writing in English and requires all the examination instructions to be in English, is to legitimise English as the medium of foreign language teaching. As a result, the foreign language rarely becomes a means of communication in the classroom: when teachers want to be understood, they speak in English.

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An assessment instrument can only handle the competence of the students to use language in ways defined by the format employed. It cannot require teachers to promote one kind of learning as opposed to another. At best, it may become evident over time that some favoured procedures fail. This may encourage teachers to reflect that different procedures might be more successful in enabling students to cope with what the examination asks of them; but it certainly will not do more than that: for that discussion with others is necessary. French for Communication, both the three Levels and the Mode 3 GCSE examination, is successful in promoting spoken French as the means of communication in the classroom. That success however does not derive wholly from the integrated character of the assessments, it comes principally from the fact that the teachers want to teach in French: the assessment tasks help them, instead of getting in the way.

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9 Moderation 'Moderation in all things'. Yes, indeed! The fact that all levels of French for Communication are assessment-led requires consideration to be given to the problems of moderating judgements made by teachers. Most teachers of modern languages are well aware of the need to be, as they have learned to say, accountable. They are acutely aware of the dangers of subjectivity of judgement but the alternatives of objective testing using multiple-choice, pencil and paper tests etc., seem some distance away from what classrooms are about. Yet, the problems remain. Any set of examination procedures must be applied consistently so that students are assessed fairly. Any assessment involves human beings who have to produce tasks and criteria and some system to ensure that those criteria are being consistently applied. Levels 1, 2 and 3 of French for Communication differ from other Graded Objectives schemes in a number of ways, none more important than that the syllabuses consist of guidelines for assessment and contain no tests. Not only is French for Communication a suite of assessment syllabuses it is also the focus of a continuous in-service programme of teacher selfeducation. Indeed, without the constant review of procedures French for Communication could not exist. Assessment Criteria Moderation in our sense is learning to establish criteria for assessment within the framework of what is desirable but also possible. The self education includes recognising how easy it is for different schools to make different demands on their students in the tasks set for the same role, mode and level. It means spending time to thrash out criteria to generate comparable tasks so as to enable teachers to preserve their own freedom of operation within a common framework. It also means inventing procedures which will ensure that those criteria are appropriately and consistently followed by all the teachers involved. The question is therefore partly theoretical but mainly pragmatic. We may argue that all the teachers ought to be involved in all the assessment

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decisions the whole of the time. In such a system the students' scores would be the total arrived at divided by the number of assessors contributing. An obvious non-starter in the race to moderation! The amount of time that teachers can in fact set aside for moderation, in their own free or teaching time, is strictly limited. If the three Levels of French for Communication are assessed more or less in parallel, the final assessments of all three occur at about the same time at the end of the school year. In the early days of the project it was possible to institute moderation procedures at about the halfway mark and to finalise the results at the end of the year. With three Levels, a Mode 3 GCSE and the other demands on teachers' time, that possibility no longer exists. The moderation has for some time consisted of premoderation meetings designed to increase understanding of what was required and to align teachers' expectations of the outcomes in the various modes. Once EMREB funding ceased, certification has increasingly depended on the professional judgement of the teachers in the schools involved. So long as finances permitted, the process was assisted by teachers seconded by Leicestershire LEA to the University of Leicester School of Education. The first syllabuses were relatively crude with respect to those in use now but they presented the same problems to the teachers: how to move from a norm-referenced to a criterion-referenced assessment. Moderation and Teacher Education The early stages were much more concerned with the teacher education process than with moderation in the technical sense: as the certificates had no validity at the level of a public examination it could be argued that a wide tolerance was possible. However, it was never like that: teachers were very concerned that the performances of their students should be similarly rewarded, irrespective of the assessor. They spent a great deal of their own free time to ensure as high a degree of congruence as possible. Obviously, as the number of Levels increased from one to two and then three, the amount of work increased exponentially. Schools reacted in different ways, with the larger ones allocating responsibility for each Level to a separate colleague. Once the burden of creating the 16+ was upon us, the 11-16 schools found themselves with responsibilities that neither the High (10-14) nor the Upper(14-18) Schools had. Inevitably, the amount of time available for moderation had eventually to equal the amount of time the teachers could in fact spend on it.

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Sharing Responsibility Undoubtedly, the most important factor in the process was the sharing by the teachers of responsibility for both the creation of the syllabus and its implementation. Arguments about aims, objectives, modes, roles, tasks etc. could easily be settled when the teachers were used to working together and coming to decisions about what they wanted to do. Indeed, problems of interpretation of the syllabus would often lead to a reformulation of the syllabus itself, preceded by a workshop on the points at issue (a process which could take a year). In my association with the project I recall only one serious lack of alignment between the teachers' conception of their responsibility to produce compatible tasks from the guidelines. That problem arose after we had introduced Reading as an assessment mode. The discrepancies highlighted by our seconded teachers between different schools' conceptions of what constituted valid assessment tasks in the framework of our syllabus were considerable. The problems were however caused not by some imprecision in the guidelines but by the coincidence of union action which prevented teachers coming together to discuss the syllabus and its workings in the usual way. The fact that discrepancies had arisen seemed to us a clear validation of our procedures. From Analytical to Global Assessment The Three Levels In the necessary evolution of the three Levels the principal assessment changes occurred in the way performances were rewarded. Teachers saw the need to change from totting up scores to making judgements about performance. The thrust of the modification was to shift assessment criteria towards a concern for task completion. This meant that assessing became increasingly global and less atomistic. Moderation discussions then tended to be about how we might value performance. As a result, the relationship between the student and the task tended to be foregrounded at the expense of some putative analysis of the components of that performance. The shift to a whole response helped to move assessment away from a consideration of the items of which the performance was composed. Most teachers found this more satisfactory even though more difficult. The security afforded by numbers is of course well known to us all.

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The 16+ The moderation at 16+ level was a different kettle of fish altogether. Although we had responsibility for the syllabusin the early CSE and Joint GCE/CSE stage not interfered with by the National Criteriawe were obliged to adopt the moderation practices of EMREB. The Board was, as in all our dealings with them, liberal in their responses to our interpretation of their procedures. I found them in the main sensible but wondered whether the small samples of marks they based their moderation on could in fact yield the overall corrections they were supposed to provide. The problem was this: any assessors (including the moderator) are liable not merely to error but also to inconsistency in the application of the criteria they are supposed to be following. Of course, no system can be errorless, particularly one based on judgements of samples of work. The EMREB procedure required the Moderators to attend a standardisation meeting before they started their work each year. Their work was monitored by a Team Leader or Chief Moderator during the moderation period. If, in the opinion of a school, the Moderator was in error, the school could appeal against the decision. Obviously, it would not be in the interests of the school to complain about too generous treatment by a Moderator. I was interested in seeing if one could, if not eliminate, at least, reduce the possibility of moderator error. It did not seem reasonable to suppose that the degree of marker error could be extrapolated from a sample which did not cover the whole range of scripts marked by the assessor. The problem, was, I thought, compounded in the moderating of the oral examination. It is one thing to read a set of written scripts; quite another to listen to a set of tapes and to maintain a consistent attitude to the performance of the examiner with respect to marking criteria. As we were innovating assessment methodologies as well as assessment tasks, we clearly had to concern ourselves as much with the performance of the assessors as with their effect on the students in terms of the marks awarded. I had tried to separate out these two issues by proposing a facilitator (who conducted the oral) and an assessor (who marked the performance) for each of the three oral modules. Certainly, where teachers were able to separate out their roles they found that the examining was much easier; but, of course, very few schools could afford such luxuries. The attempt to use French assistants in the facilitating role had to be discouraged as there were no opportunities or time to train them for what seemed a simple but was in fact a very demanding task.

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Task analysis We predicted the content of the exchanges to be assessed and divided them into sections for marking purposes. We listed key concepts for the convenience of the assessor and allocated marks for each section. Faced with the actual performance, the assessor armed with the key word list, noted which parts of the exchange had been acceptably performed and awarded a mark on the scale of 0-5. The mark did not correspond to a specified number of acceptable utterances: it was a judgement about where along the scale of realistically possible performances the performance should be placed. Secondly, the keyword list was for the assessor: it was not a specification of what the candidates were expected to include in the exchange. Once the question of the acceptability of the performance had been resolved, the holistic criteria of fluency, flexibility and grammaticality could be applied. Again: the judgement placed the candidates on the putative continuum for each criterion. The problem of making, so to speak, a post facto analytical judgement (i.e. the application of the three holistic criteria at the end of the performance) was overcome by inviting the assessors to tick the appropriate boxes while the candidates were performing which they could then refer to at the end of the performance. These ticks were not intended to be anything other than reminders of the presence of text which could be rewarded later: they did not constitute marks. Judgement criteria We had always been aware of the need for definition in our examining role. For example, we had throughout the three Levels tried to insist that the monitoring teacher in the assessments should always be in the role of the sympathetic native speaker. We did not seek to define this role beyond a prime concern for meaning. In order to give the concept some validity we had gone to considerable lengths to test our 'sympathetic native speaker judgements' against the views of a number of native French speakers in France to whom we sent recordings and scripts of the students' performances. In the early days, some teachers had discovered to their surprise that native French speakers were far more tolerant of formal inaccuracies than they were themselves. Consequently, the task of the 16+ assessors had been greatly simplified by the process of self-education they had all been through. The insistence on judgement was quite deliberate. The whole thrust of our work has been towards principled policies underpinned by reflection and discussion. Since communication takes place between human beings, subjectivity is inseparable from it. Any assessment of communication

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which seeks to solve its problems by editing out that subjectivity just guts the whole process of the life that sustains it. What we were determined to do, was not only to make the performance of the candidates communicative, but also the judgement of that performance by the examiners. That is to say, we insisted that neither candidate nor examiner would find their role reduced to the mechanical application of predigested formulae. Fortunately, we soon discovered that, although our trial assessments produced very different marks from the teachers for the same performance, the differences themselves were not statistically significant. I discussed the problem with Roger Appleyard, then Research Associate at the University of Leicester, who provided us with a solution. The summary which follows is based largely on an unpublished article of his. Moderation Problems The problem set for moderation is that different assessors may in fact be using different criteria or marking to different standards. The moderation of students' marks by an experienced examiner has usually been carried out in an unsystematic and intuitive manner, offering little guidance where the moderator suspects that assessors are operating different standards. There are two sources of uncertainty in assessing students by means of examinations: (1) The work produced in the examination may be different in quality from that normally expected of the student; (2) Different assessors may rate the same piece of work in different ways, either because they are using different criteria of adequacy or because of other differences between them. Although Roger Appleyard's article does not deal with the first point, it is clearly of relevance in the case of the oral modules at least of the Mode 3 GCSE. Our teachers are very well aware of the dangers of compensating for perceived deficiencies in oral performance in examinations or of reacting too strongly to unexpected improvements. They were aware of the possibility of recording and re-listening to the recordings at some later date for assessment purposes but could see no virtue in such masochistic arrangements. They preferred to be trained to operate appropriately as facilitators and to have their work moderated by their peers. Examiner Differences The fact that different examiners will rate the same script differently is well known. It matters little if the script is an essay, a tape-recorded

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dialogue or an artefact: different examiners will rate the same scripts differently. If there were no examiner uncertainty, all examiners would give the same script the same mark, but award different marks to different scripts. In fact, different examiners will not only allocate different marks to the same script but will operate different marking patterns. The differences between examiners may be grouped under four main headings: (1) Attitude to marking: some examiners will be generous, others sparing with their marks. Such examiners will show a mean mark above or below the means of marks awarded by other examiners for all the scripts. (2) Attitude to mark range: some examiners will use the whole mark range, others will use a narrower part, or parts, of the range available. (3) Attitude to criteria: some examiners may mark to different criteria from others. (4) Consistency: not only may there be differences between examiners, there may also be variability in the performance of each examiner over the time spent marking. This degree of consistency may be considered a function of other three. The Moderation System The moderation procedure proposal contains checks on the sparing/ generous and bold/timid dimensions. It assumes that the criterial differences and instabilities in examiners are negligible. (In fact, in the French for Communication in-service procedures the pre-assessment meetings were concerned with precisely the problem of criteria application. The problem of instability is clearly one which can only be remedied after it has been recognised.) Stages The moderation works in two stages: (1) School level: here the aim is to moderate the different examiners for the subject within the institution. (2) Regional level: here the aim is to moderate the different schools. The system of moderation proposed was for the oral components of the GCSE Mode 3 examination. (A simplified procedure would also be possible for written scripts, but this will not be discussed here).

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Procedures Each examiner within a school submits, say, three tape-recorded scripts covering the range of ability in a class s/he has assessed live. A person not involved in the examining then selects three scripts per examiner from the total recordings submitted. A selection of, say, seven scripts, is then assessed independently by all the examiners in the school. The selector chooses at least one script from each examiner and the seven scripts cover the range of marks awarded by the examiners. Ideally, each examiner would reassess each of the seven tape-recorded scripts on their own; but, if examiners prefer to carry out this re-assessment together, it must be agreed that the re-marking will take place without any discussion of the performances marked or the marks awarded. It is also important that the live marks previously awarded should not be known to the other examiners until after the re-assessment of the taped performances. The technical detail of the moderation will not be given here. Suffice it to say that the system of correlations which it entails is intended to align the examiners of each school before aligning all the examiners in the region in such a way that the script of each student receives a final mark as if s/he had been assessed by the average of all the examiners operating consistently. Implementation Most of the teachers taking part in the procedure found it time-consuming and difficult to accommodate themselves to at first. Familiarity reduced or removed the worry about the procedure itself but did nothing to reduce the time taken. Overall, however, despite the worries, there was a general acceptance that the procedure was by far the fairest any of them had had experience of. The procedure had to be changed when we were no longer able to fund a computer operator to run the programme. The question of consistency in oral or written script examining is obviously difficult to address and remedy. It is likely to present more of a problem with larger than smaller batches of scripts and with examining which takes place over longer rather than shorter stretches of time. The criterial problem was something we endeavoured to overcome by in-service work on the issue over time with all the teachers involved in examining. This tended to work well when it was in fact possible for all the examiners to meet beforehand and to carry out a pre-assessment moderation. Difficulties tended to arise when some examiners were unable to attend. Where examiners failed to operate the criteria appropriately in the examination, the failure could often be traced back to their absence from

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the pre-assessment meeting. Taking part in an exercise which leads to a consensus about how the group intend to apply the criteria tends to exert a powerful influence on the participants. Obviously, such values will be lost in groups above a certain size.

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10 Retrospect The development of the assessment syllabus in 1979 presented us with a large number of problems, due principally to our unfamiliarity with the implications of the concept we were developing. All the teachers taking part were familiar with the notion of syllabus. They had GCE and CSE examination syllabuses; they had, in some cases, written syllabuses of work for their classes; but their expectations from the syllabuses were of areas of language to be covered in teaching, not of student abilities to be promoted. They were all dissatisfied with the lack of specificity of the existing GCE examination syllabuses; found the grammar, vocabulary and topic lists of the CSE helpful; and resourced their own syllabuses from current textbooks. As far as assessment was concerned, most of the teachers used the term, if at all, as the equivalent of test. Testing was what you did at intervals to see whether language had been learned. There was no formal assessment of oral competence before the GCE/CSE examinations; the tests were of the paper and pencil variety, but most teachers rated oral work highly. Their syllabuses were teaching syllabuses. The examination syllabuses (GCE/CSE) did not set out to assess the learners' ability to operate as language users. Indeed, none of the teaching syllabuses considered learner behaviour at all: the emphasis was on language forms. Testing was therefore limited to seeing whether those forms had been learned and how well. The determining factor in a school syllabus, was what was assumed to be required in GCE/CSE. The teaching syllabus, particularly from Year 10 on, was essentially derived from the examinations to come. Teachers obviously felt constrained by the need to do their best by their pupils to limit their aspirations to what could be extrapolated from public examinations. As the examination was not task based, neither were the teaching syllabuses. The limited instrumentalism of the syllabuses in use contrived to reduce the learners to being measured against them for goodness of fit; those out of line being discarded as unsuitable in some way specified by the syllabusfailure to control the perfect tense, to make adjectives agree, or to get genders right. The teachers were unaccustomed to looking at the use made of language by the user. They were concerned about oral work; most of the

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teachers who took on French for Communication taught largely in the target language and expected their pupils to develop good accents and an oral command of what was used in class; but the work done was not integrated into a concept of language development over time, reflecting the longer term aims of increasing language use by diversifying the roles the students could play. However unsatisfactory they judged the division of language into the so-called four skills, experience of the examination system had taught them that it was a force that had to be reckoned with and their teaching showed this. Our problem in defining an assessment syllabus for Years 7, 8 and 9 of secondary education, was to get agreement on what learners could be expected to be able to do with language and to define that performance in such a way that any teacher reading the description would be able to suggest a language task which would elicit it. However, the problem was double: not only had the syllabus to rest on tasks to be performed, it had also to underpin language learning effectively. The simple replacement of a grammatical syllabus by a functional syllabus might substitute one set of definitions for another and still not address the principal learning problem. As I saw it, the learning problems were twofold: those of the teachers and those of the learners. The teachers had to learn to think of strategies for encouraging both learning and communication; the learners had to learn how to learn and to learn how to communicate. There was never any doubt in my mind that the heuristic function was the most importantthe very function ignored by both grammatical and functional syllabuses. At the same time, I realised that the insistence on performance of language functions would limit the outcomes to talking and writing. It seemed sensible to make that limitation into a virtue. Most, if not all, the graded objectives syllabuses either ignored writing or restricted its use to the composition of letters or postcardsas, indeed, most mode 1 examinations in the GCSE do. We know from our own native language use that talking, listening, reading and writing interlock and reinforce each other, even if we seem to speak and listen more than we read or write. Any assessment system which tried to mirror likely future use of the foreign language might run the risk of undermining learning. If we were going to make decisions about what learners were going to be assessed in being able to do, we would also need some way of ensuring that we were enabling them to learn how to learn.

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The problem of enabling the teachers to learn how to construct relevant teaching and assessment procedures from a defined assessment syllabus was obviously one which could not be resolved by the formulation of the syllabus alone: it would require constant learning by negotiation. This is the keystone of the principles on which the syllabuses are constructed. Syllabuses without INSET would be a contradiction in terms. However, the form of the syllabus was also important: it had to be so constructed that individual teachers using it could interpret it in a uniform way; and it had to embody the principle that teachers were responsible for making their own choices of objectives from the syllabus, and for setting appropriate tasks in accordance with the guidelines laid down. The three Levels have undergone various changes since their inauguration in 1979. The process has involved all the participating teachers through questionnaires, INSET meetings, visits from Advisory teachers, experimentation and final redrafting to reach a consensus. The revisions of the Levels took place in tandem with the formulation of the various stages of the GCSE Mode 3 and have therefore been influenced by them. The 11-16 and the 14-18 schools were acutely aware of what their students needed to be able to do from Year 10 onwards and were able to provide their feeder 10/11-14 schools with adequate information about the performance of their students and their future needs for the examination. The Teachers' Views In order to get some idea of how teachers involved viewed the three Levels and the GCSE Mode 3 examination, I sent out a questionnaire to each of the schools taking part in 1990. The observations below summarise the responses of the teachers. The Three Levels Changes 1979-1990 Asked to summarise the principal changes in the three Levels since 1979, the teachers speak of a simplification in the administrative and assessment procedures and of a reduction in the content of what has to be assessed. They welcome the opportunity thus afforded to give their students a richer diet than previously and to concentrate more on the acquisition of language systems by the students. The introduction of narrating (reporting) activities has also extended the range of systems the students could come into contact with in Years 7 to 9. Several teachers mention too that in the course of their experiments they have realised that depth and variety can only be obtained at the expense of content: they are learning to do more with less.

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Assessments The requirement that the assessments take place in class time caused a great deal of discussion in the early stages of the project but which very soon settled down as the teachers tried things out for themselves. The oral assessments (which may require the teacher to monitor an exchange between two students) are more burdensome because the monitoring teacher has also to maintain cooperation from the rest of the class. Most teachers seem to have little difficulty in providing suitable alternative activities for their classes; and the classes themselves seem well enough motivated to allow the assessments to proceed without interruption. Some schools make clear that they need to do a great deal of INSET work with new colleagues and some are aware that not all their colleagues operate in the spirit of French for Communication. Those schools with only two lessons of French per week worry about the loss of teaching time, but still manage to cope with the assessments adequately. Some teachers note that the least able students cannot produce conversations with their peers and that they have to be assessed in an exchange with their teacher. The assessments impose considerable difficulties on teachers, requiring a high degree of organisation and planning. Space has to be set aside for the oral exchanges in the classroom, all assessment materials have to be to hand, the students have to be well prepared for what they are going to do, work has to be ready for those not being assessed. Above all, the monitoring teacher has to be able to assess the pair of students in front of her and keep a watchful eye on the rest of the class. The few uncooperative students referred to are to be found amongst some of those not intending to carry on with French in Year 10. Those apart, the reports are of students who understand and appreciate the need for cooperation. Some teachers find judgement based on the degree and quality of task completion difficult to handle. They agree that the problems are resolved by eventual moderation, but still find the procedures difficult to operate. Often the Advisory teachers discuss the issues and summarise the consensus views, or make one possible by their suggestions. All the teachers agree that experience and discussion with others is the key: printed guidelines are only valuable if they reflect the views and values of those who choose to operate them. Teaching or Assessment? Since its inception in 1979 the teachers have been concerned to avoid their assessment syllabus becoming their teaching syllabus. Once a set of guidelines is published with clear statements of what students are expected to achieve, it is very difficult for teachers caught up in the assessment mill-race to set objectives beyond those which are going to be assessed within the

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system. Most teachers seem very aware of the dangers of reductionism and make efforts to teach topics, lexis and structures beyond those needed for each unit, to introduce materials for reading or listening extraneous to the assessment syllabus, like for example, information on the changes in the French school system, in one school, formal work on grammatical systems in another. The teachers who go well beyond the requirements of the syllabus tend inevitably to be the most experienced and best organised of those involved. Those teachers who admit to not straying far from the guidelines, do so because of the constraints of time imposed on French teaching in their schools. Methodology The methodology used in the schools varies considerably. It would not be possible to state, for example, that there is one preferred procedure. Inevitably, of course, a common assessment system encourages uniformity in the ways in which language performances are stimulated and assessed, but this by no means implies a common methodology. What is interesting, is that the teachers regard the process of change for which they are responsible not as an imposition to be accommodated but as an indication of their own power and ownership. Consequently, there is a wide range of experimentation with presentational and teaching procedures, using computers, recorded and printed texts, language manipulation exercises, approaches to grammar, and so on. Motivation: Students and Teachers From the earliest evaluative measures (Freedman, 1982) the scheme has recorded increased motivation from the students, reflected not only in an improved attitude to language learning across the ability range but also in an improved take-up in the Year 10 option systems. The changes in content and procedures seem to have increased that motivation, according to the teachers. This improvement appears to be due to the increased variety in the language activities in which they are involved. And for some schools twinned with French schools the innovations have related directly to the new concerns of the students themselves. Those who teach in the 11-16 or 11-18 schools comment very favourably on the impact of the work on their Year 10 students. Generally, they find the students more highly motivated than previously and with greater powers of language retention. Some say that the weakest students would be impossible to motivate in Year 10 had they not had the experience of success of the three Levels behind them. Others express concern about the performance of extremely low ability children and those with statements of special educational needs.

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Ownership The teachers are also convinced that French for Communication has enhanced their own motivation as teachers. Its structures have enabled them to maintain themselves in a continuing dialogue about aims, materials and methods for a very long time. It has helped them to become better classroom managers, to think more carefully about making the resources needed for teaching those with special needs and thinking more positively and rigorously about assessment. Some comment proudly on the sense of definition their modern language departments have acquired in their schools, implying a higher self image than they notice in some other departments. Far from showing dissatisfaction with the restless questioning which is a characteristic of the enterprise, they welcome its challenge to boredom, complacency and routine. The achievement of the students is highly satisfying to the teachers. The sense of ownership is clearly very motivating. Several teachers have experimented with IT and found stimulus in providing alternative reading and writing experiences for their students, particularly for those who find writing difficult. The use of data bases, the development of interactive video is in its infancy but teachers describe it as a growth area for their own schools. The high status of technology is said to have a motivating effect for at least some students. The sense of ownership of the teachers is reflected in their attitude to commercially published materials. None of the responding teachers uses a textbook; most refer to making occasional use of published recorded or printed reading material to bring variety into class. Often commercial materials are praised precisely because they do not fit the assessment syllabus pattern. This has the advantage of giving the students access to lexis and structure they would not otherwise meet. There is also the recognition that the sheer professionalism of published materials as compared with the home produced variety offers a bonus which can be made use of occasionally to some profit. Time The teachers are well aware of the enormous amount of time needed to produce their own materialssome estimate at least two hours per week. This may sound strange since the three Levels have been running since 1985, but it is evident that the amount of time spent on materials is not entirely accounted for by the need to keep pace with the revisions. All the teachers concerned describe the process of sitting down as a department and discussing whether their materials need updating, or could be made more effective. Impermanent materials present the prospect of modification which permanent materials do not. Teachers who have experienced

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the pleasure of successful teaching provoked by their own materials know that the preparation of the materials presupposes a preparation of the lessons using them. They know that they are obliged to consider precisely what they hope to achieve before thinking about what they should produce. All the teachers questioned agreed that the students liked materials produced for themand especially by teachers whom they could identify and appreciated the increase in personal control they themselves had gained. Since the materials are held in common in schools, produced by departments acting together, and used by all the teachers in the department, the degree of critical involvement can be considerable. Cooperation It will be evident from the above that all the teachers involved in the scheme think that it has encouraged departmental cooperation. Regular meetings focus on the syllabus and the teaching which is needed to support it; materials which are appropriate for the syllabus and specific students' needs. In schools with mixed ability classes a constant check is needed to ensure that parallel classes are receiving the differentiated teaching they need. In some schools, not only materials and methodological procedures are shared: colleagues teaching parallel classes assess each other's groups. All agree that the ongoing discussion about methodology is valuable not only for newcomers and probationers but also for the more experienced teachers. Teachers are also agreed about the role of the scheme in encouraging interdepartmental cooperation within and between schools and welcome the opportunity to take on new ideas and to discuss interpretations different from their own. The standardisation meetingsone per Level per yearare particularly appreciated as they afford the chance to align standards and discuss student performance. Most schools find, however, that there are so many initiatives absorbing time both during the day and after school that they are unable to meet colleagues from other schools as often as used to be the case. The Advisory service recommends new teachers and newcomers to the scheme to pay visits to practising schools in order to gain insights into the framework of support offered by the school network. All teachers agree that the climate for cooperation which produced the scheme in the first place no longer exists. Internal school pressures make cooperation with others very difficult. The situation in which between 20 and 40 teachers were prepared to give up two hours of their own time to take part in fortnightly discussions to establish the three Levels and the 16+ is, alas, long past.

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Commitment All the teachers agreed that commitment to French for Communication requires a special dedication. Teachers need to be good linguists, prepared to work long hours in their own time preparing appropriate materials, finding authentic and meaningful texts, and creating a viable methodology. They need to be excellent classroom managers, capable of organising pairwork, monitoring assessments, enabling classes to work independently of the teacher. Above all, they have to be inventive, adventurous, willing to make mistakes and to be able to discuss what they do with others in a totally open way. MEG GCSE Mode 3 There were fewer responses to the questionnaire on the mode 3 than on the three levels. The questionnaire was sent out at a time when the GCSE was still being marked and therefore a very inopportune time for the teachers occupied with it. Nevertheless, my feeling is that the difference in the response may well reflect a difference in the way the examination and the Levels are perceived. Revisions for 1990 Most of the respondents were involved in the preceding French for Communication CSE, and the joint GCE/CSE but very few of them were personally responsible for creating the GCSE Mode 3 model or for defining the subsequent modifications. This reflects the fact that the revisions were insisted on by SEAC and did not emerge dynamically from the teachers' perceptions of the need for meaningful change. The actual changesthe new tasks or the revisions of tasks unacceptable to the SEACwere recorded in exemplar material produced by a few colleagues working under great pressure to meet deadlines for the authorization of syllabuses for 1990. Value of the Revisions None of the teachers thought that the changes required to bring the syllabus in line with the National Criteria had improved it as an instrument for assessing students' performance. In the main, their view was that the changes had made the system more complex to administer. There is a general feeling also that less interaction is now required of Basic Level students than before and that lower standards are being asked of them. Some teachers comment that the SEAC insistence that recorded material be heard twice has helped student performance; others, that the effect has been largely cosmetica decision welcomed by the students, without making a difference to the outcomes.

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Overall, the revised syllabus is thought of as the addition of SEAC imposed tasks to the original syllabus. The resulting syllabus has therefore lost its original coherence. Students no longer see the point of what they are doing. The additional tasks add nothing to what the teachers learn about the competence of their students. Most teachers find the bittiness of the SEAC requirements, for example, the Basic Level signs and adverts in reading, extremely difficult to incorporate in a sensible teaching syllabus. The lack of coherence and the increase in the number of assessments in Year 11 have created confusion and pressure for both staff and students. As far as the administration of the assessments is concerned, the picture changes according to the size of school. The larger the school, the more intolerable the administrative changes have become. Some have changed to Mode 1 for this reason; others, to avoid the task setting and marking burden of a Mode 3 examination. For the smaller or average sized schools, the administration is complex and worrying for the teachers but not so great as to cause them to change to a Mode 1. All complain about the timing of the assessments in Year 11. Discrete Skills The task setting imposed by the discrete skill approach of the National Criteria poses many problems for teachers who have become used to developing integrated tasks over the first three Levels of the syllabus. Not unexpectedly, they find listening tasks difficult to invent. The SEAC insistence on the isolated snippets to be presented in Basic Listening and Reading is particularly problematic for the task setter. Probably irrespective of syllabus, students would find the Listening the most difficult of their examinations because of the problem of integrating a tape-recorder as a source of meaningful messages for listeners. The Mode 3 students are no exception to this. Tasks and Roles Teachers comment positively on the role-based nature of the assessment tasks since the specification of role enables the students to grasp clearly what each task implies. The students also tend to see the relevance of whatever they are doing as a result. Some teachers find however that the revised differentiation of the Basic from the Higher level roles has reduced the amount of interaction required from Basic Level students and thereby limited the transferability of language strategies between the roles. Both the Reporter and the Correspondent are regarded as difficult by the studentsneither is required by the National Criteriabecause of the problems posed by narration in the past tense required by the first and

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breadth of the task of the second. Teachers find them difficult to prepare for now that the syllabus coverage has been extended. Generally, their contribution to the raising of the level of spoken and written French is welcomed. Staged Assessments All the teachers were positive that the staging of assessments in GCSE Mode 3 was beneficial to the students. Amongst other reasons given was the increasing familiarity of students with what assessments are like; students tend to grow in confidence as the assessments progress. The staging has clear advantages in that the assessments are more closely related to the teaching, which itself can be more focused. On the negative side, however, some complain and others fear that increasing numbers in Year 10 will make three orals impossible. Many would like to see the present modules distributed more evenly across Years 10 and 11, so as to avoid the bunching of assessments which occurs at present. Moderation The computer assisted moderation system had to be discontinued once the statistician left the University and could not be replaced. Most teachers found the system time-consuming to operate but were agreed that it appeared to be more objective. Many feel that the current, orthodox system is likely to be subjective and less reliable. Receiving Schools' View of the Three Levels The response of the receiving Upper schools to the performance of the students from the feeder High schools varies quite considerably. In the few cases where the feeder High school restricts its students to a limited diet of language, there is a complaint that students are frightened of unknown language, can only operate within a prescribed framework and have developed no useful coping strategies. Where the approach of the feeder schools requires their students to be more flexible, the receiving schools make no such criticisms and are full of praise for the students' competence on entry. In a word, the three Levels do not in themselves open the students out towards a more flexible use of language: this depends entirely on the teachers who do the teaching. A few teachers in the Upper schools regret the absence of any Listening assessments in the three Levels. As a result, they complain, the Year 10 students have not been prepared by their earlier assessments for the Listening tasks in the GCSE. This comment is by no means general. Most teachers in the feeder schools prefer to introduce their own Listening activities into the early learning years without separate assessment.

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Generally, the teachers in the receiving schools feel that the three Levels prepare their students particularly well for the Negotiator/Interpreter and Interviewer/ee assessments. Doubtless, the decision to assess narrative tasks in the three Levels will help the preparation for the Reporter in the future. Discussing their INSET arrangements most teachers would prefer more time to be available for their specifically GCSE needs but, equally, they are unanimous in wondering where any extra time could come from. The induction of new staff is timeconsuming, as is the production of appropriate learning materials for the students. Ownership The fate of the syllabus, governed as it is by the National Criteria and their gatekeeper the SEAC, has materially affected the sense of ownership of the curriculum by Leicestershire modern language teachers. Dissatisfaction with any aspects of the three Levels leads not to withdrawal but to discussion and change by persuasion and consensus. Teachers obviously feel discussion will not help at GCSE level. One of the effects is therefore to reduce the sense of community which the teachers held so high before. Not an uncommon feature in market-led education. Cooperation As far as the production of the assessments goes, the democratic system of getting the participating schools who make use of the assessments to produce them does not work satisfactorily in that the main burden of the work falls on the shoulders of a few. This is almost inevitable but it is an obvious drawback, if the system is unable to draw in more colleagues willing to gain the experience necessary to set assessment tasks for the group. Any turnover in staff presents problems of induction into a new style of examining which schools find increasingly difficult to resolve. Motivation: Students and Teachers There is unanimity that the GCSE Mode 3 is more motivating for both teachers and students than any Mode 1 could be. The need to produce, score and moderate the assessments requires the teachers to understand what they are doing in a way which is supportive of the way in which they teach. But the advantage comes at great cost: all the teachers talk of the exhaustion which comes from having virtual control over what they do, particularly since they are competing for time in Years 10 and 11 with other colleagues making demands for coursework on their students. The sensenot just from Frenchthat teaching overall has been swamped by assessment is widespread. Teachers find that their non-language colleagues are increasingly unwilling to cover for members of staff conducting orals.

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Overall there is anxiety about an increase in pressure as numbers rise, occasioning the abandonment of important parts of the syllabus. For example, all teachers were initially agreed that, if the oral work of students was to improve, more time would need to be devoted to oral assessment. In the MEG Mode 1 examination there is one oral assessment per pupil. The oral examination is usually about 10-15 minutes long. The Mode 3 system spreads out three separate orals over three terms with a total time component of about 30 minutes. Pressure is also increased by the nature of Mode 3 operations. Chief examiners are practising teachers who need time to visit schools, hold meetings, check papers before their production for use. Examiners need time to discuss with each other criteria for assessment and their application. Teachers need time to consider the language performance of their students as measured by the assessment process. It is well known that the Conservative government does not welcome teacher control of any sort. Although Mode 3 arrangements are at present permitted, they are not encouraged by the SEAC in their watchdog role. The notion that examinations could be set and their capacities as assessment instruments compared by observation is not admitted under this regime. Control is exercised at the point of entry: only syllabuses conforming to the letter of the National Criteria can lead to certification. Teachers' Overview The final picture from Leicestershire teachers shows almost universal satisfaction with the three Levels but less with the GCSE Mode 3. It looks as if the principal reason for the satisfaction with the Levels derives from the sense of ownership that the teachers have over the syllabuses. Of course, that may change as the demands of the National Curriculum make themselves increasingly felt. Particularly, if schools feel impelled to think of themselves as in competition with others for both staff and students, there may be a weakening of the ties which bind schools together in pursuit of common goals. In Year 11 pressures are increasing on teachers to change syllabuses.

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11 Prospect Agenda for Language Learning The new agenda for modern language teaching which was set by the introduction of GCSE has itself now been replaced by the publication of the National Curriculum. Unlike the GCSE, which purported to affect only Years 10 and 11 of language learning in the secondary school, but had a backwash effect much further down, the National Curriculum is all-intrusive, setting out to inform Years 7 to 11. The DES document, 'Modern foreign languages for ages 11 to 16' (October 1990), stresses its affinity to both the GCSE and the Graded Objectives movement, although it specifically states that it adopted an 'essentially different approach' from both, in that the latter, being assessment syllabuses, start from endpoints. The National Curriculum is concerned with the process of learning. The Initial Advice had urged integrated assessments in which only the outcomes of talking and writing were profiled. The Proposals accept recommendations from interested bodies that all four skills be profiled. As a result, the statements of attainment express single skills but in the context of their interactive relationships with each other. Levels and Criteria The concept of levels implies a set of descriptions of language performance which can be expressed in criterial terms. If we take the analogy of a swimming test, we can set a swimmer a task of, say, swimming 25 yards in order to achieve Level One. By swimming, we shall mean that the swimmer shall use any stroke or strokes, however well or badly, provided that s/he covers the 25 yards in continuous activity without any support (i.e. without touching the sides or the bottom of the pool). Such a criterion is easy to establish (even if not exciting . . . ), and permits Level Two to set a similar task for, say, 50 yards, with the same restrictions. It must be obvious that no swimmer can reach Level Two without reaching Level One first. The first Level is independent of the second but the second is criterially dependent on the first.

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A criterion-referenced test of a physical activity is comparatively easy to set. Provided that the descriptors are precise, the test may not even need assessors who are competent in the discipline being judged. In the example offered, there is no restriction on time, so that the judges would be concerned only with a quantitative evaluation: whether the candidates had swum the required distance or not. Such purely physical activities are light years away from a task involving human beings in interaction, yet the problem of reference against a criterion or criteria is posed in the same way: (a) What is the student expected to have learnt to do? (b) How shall s/he demonstrate that learning? (c) By what criteria shall the demonstration of that learning be judged? As soon as we move out of the purely physical, we enter the controversial and judgemental: What shall the task consist of? How shall it be conveyed to the students? How far does the mode of instruction interfere with the performance of the task? How shall one task be assumed to be the inferior, equal or superior of another? How shall one performance be agreed to be the inferior, equal or superior of another? How shall one performance be agreed to represent the non-completion as opposed to the completion of a task? How shall two agreed complete performances of a task be distinguished from each other in terms of the competences they reveal? Levels of Learning? A teaching or learning syllabus for a five year progression entailing levels of student performance defined by an assessment process carries the implication that both the progression and the levels can be determined by that process. It seems to me unlikely that a sequence of language learning activities could be formulated which would define the path to be taken by the student over five years such that no other construction was possible to achieve the same ends. As one definitive path cannot be plotted for learning, no one set of steps can be proposed to measure progress along it: any number of constructions are possible. If you look for 10 levels, you will find 10; if you prefer 20, you will find 20: quot homines, tot sententiae. As anyone who has had any experience of operating graded objectives schemes will know, the division of syllabuses into Levels is a highly arbitrary affair. In Leicestershire we attempted rough performance divisions based on increasing complexity of role, on the one hand, and on increasing complexity of language use, on the other. Crudely speaking, we assumed that seeking and giving information was less complex than negotiating a transaction or reporting an event. The logic behind this judgement

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reflected the different use of language and strategies implied by the roles: giving and seeking information meant largely using question and answer on a continuous basis; negotiating implied questions and answers but also required getting agreement, exercising choice; whereas reporting meant assimilating events and people's involvement in them, summarising them in an ordered sequence for a listener. Although we separated out the Levels in the way described, there was never any thought that what we called Level Two could not have been replaced by what we called Level Three: a change in Levels would have simply resulted in different kinds of teaching. Indeed, an early version of Level Two demanded that Year 8 pupils learned to use reported speech. As a consequence, teachers taught the forms. And within the Levels, the Units could in fact be taught and assessed in any order: there is nothing linear about language learning. We were able to distinguish different performances of specific tasks. The tasks themselves could be simple or complex, performances could always be rewarded with passes or credits according to qualitative criteria. The judgements, however, were post facto and task specific. It was likely that the students who performed best were those who, generally, the teachers expected to do well. The criteria were always expressed so as to require a discussion of their interpretation in relation to the work done by the students. Other graded objectives schemes moved in quite different ways usually, by increasing the topic areas in which the students were expected to perform. The GCSE uses this criterion as one descriptor of the difference between Basic and Higher Level performances. Unfortunately, purely quantitative descriptions fail to inform about differences in quality. The National Curriculum Proposals I find the Proposals worth a cautious welcome. Cautious, because we still await the assessment tasks of the SATs. Since the Modern Foreign Languages group agreed, against its own Initial Advice, to profile each of the 'four skills', the pattern of assessments may well follow the current one for GCSE. I nevertheless welcome the Proposals because they present the possibility of breaking the logjam of petty transactions which the National Criteria have reduced language learning to. Taking language out of the narrowly conceived communication of graded tests opens language tasks out to include narrative, argumentative and creative uses of language. The content-free design of the National Curriculum is the very antithesis of the prescribed content of the GCSE. As such it leaves the responsibility for the decision of what to teach to the teachers. Of course, the choice is guided, but it is a choice: it leaves the decision open to local definition. This

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implies consultation and discussion. Secondly, the recommendation is that the tasks offered should be mixed-skill, where possible. Thirdlyand most important, in my viewthe firm recommendation is for the foreign language to be delivered and assessed in the target language. A fourth pointone which may well get lostis the preference of the Working Party for a continuous assessment model, rather than for the summative test model. I cannot see this surviving in an atmosphere in which schools compete in the market place by proclaiming their examination achievements. Attainment Targets Despite expressing the attainment targets discretely, the document attempts to exemplify their meaning in mixed skill terms. What I find interesting is the way in which an alternative to the GCSE assessment model is presented as a set of formulations about language learning. Implicit is the criticism that GCSE offers too restricted a base for sound learning. I find in that some support for my view that GCSE has perpetuated underachievement in modern language learning. It is relatively easy to see that the National Curriculum works from a wider base of language use and to a higher level. Some have objected that the performances expected of students at Levels 9 & 10 are so high as to be unrealistic. I can well understand the anxiety created, particularly if teachers think that their students should be at that level now. It will be quite a different prospect surely once teachers and students have had experience of ordering learning in line with the new perspectives over a period of years. If we look, albeit selectively, at some of the components of the different attainment targets, it is interesting to note how different the language is from that used in the National Criteriaparticularly if the exemplification and the proposed mixed skill outcomes are taken into account. Listening In Listening (Attainment target 1), for example, Level 6 is expressed thus: the students should: (b) 'understand the gist or main points of messages, dialogues or brief narratives from the media or live sources, given guidance or repetition'. And in the example offered, the students might: 'identify the main points of a video-recorded TV interview played several times, given structured questions to answer'. The suggestion that students should listen to spoken language; read questions helping them to focus on or to summarise it; and then write

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answers to the questions in the foreign languagemay well alarm teachers used only to listening comprehension exercises with questions in English. They may be even more alarmed when they realise that this activityonly one example of the ways in which the attainment might be realised, of courseis intended for the average student. The boundary between Levels 6 & 7 is taken as the current median i.e. grade D at GCSE. Reading In Reading (Attainment target 3), Level 7 has: the students should: (a) 'understand a wide range of writing on topics familiar to the readers and identify information related to a specific need or purpose' and, (b) 'respond to the above orally and in writing'. In the examples offered, the students might be engaged with the following: Longer newspaper and magazine articles and extracts from reference materials; 'authentic' children's writing; selected poems and lyrics of songs. Selecting and saving materials from an on-line database. Select appropriate extracts from reference materials needed for work on a topic. Reply to a letter; use reading as a stimulus to express one's own views on similar topics; write simple stories, poems or songs for peers or younger pupils. Again, as for Listening, the thrust is away from an assessment which indicates the comprehension of surface structures only and towards using written language as a source for an articulated and appreciative, even imaginative, response of one's own. More: the way the examples are expressed indicates a difference from what might be expected at a lower level. There is no reference here to any guiding test: the implication is that the students will, at this level, be operating more autonomously, i.e. without teacher provided support in the form of questions, outlines or prompts. Speaking The Speaking section (Attainment target 2) asks for 'short memorised or prompted talking' (Level 4) and 'simple narrative or descriptive language to make brief statements about recent experience; offer explanations' (Level 5). In the examples offered the students: 'Can describe a friend and his/her house. Can describe an uncle's likes and dislikes'. 'Last summer I went to Scotland with my family. We stayed with some friends who live there'.

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'I saw a red car. It crashed into the bike. It skidded'. At Level 9, the students can: (b) 'seek and offer reason to back up statement and opinion'. The examples suggest, 'Why do you say that? What happened? Because of the . . . (Statement of fact is used as an explanation.) What do you think of the new motorway scheme? (It's stupid because . . . ) Why? It's great because . . . and at Level 10, the students can: (a) 'initiate and maintain exchanges or presentations in which range and structures are sometimes unpredictable and which contain concrete and abstract elements'. (b) 'put a point of view, with reasons'. (c) 'talk freely or with notes with variation in vocabulary, structure and tense (although perhaps still with some formal error) in discussion about factual or imaginative material'. In the examples given, the students: 'Can roleplay reporting an accident from a photograph/ picture series or video by responding to questions of fact and opinion posed by others'. 'Can discuss the dangers of smoking by doing a brief presentation of the facts and figures, expressing own opinion and seeking comment'. 'Can give the outline of a short story or article and answer further questions of detail'. I have deliberately highlighted activities which are associated with the higher levels, but the implication is surely that they are appropriate in the five year course: whether or not they can be performed well and by how many is largely irrelevant. The point is that they do not feature in classrooms now because the GCSE Mode 1 does not require them and therefore teachers do not attempt them. 'Mixed skill' tasks at the lower levels also anticipate a spoken or written response to heard or read text. This makes abundantly clear how much language work in the classroom will be expected to change in the next few years. Writing The expectations of change in Writing (Attainment target 4) are no less profound. At Level 7, we have: the student can:

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(a) 'perform tasks involving a number (e.g. 5 or 6) of simple, discrete statements describing how something is done, or giving instructions, with occasional support or use of reference materials, and with some redrafting'. (b) 'write short, factual items, short narratives or descriptive pieces (real or imaginary) using simple link words, with use of reference materials and redrafting'. In the examples offered the student can: 'Prepare a leaflet showing how to use local transport, perhaps using desktop publishing software'. 'Summarise in a few statements the findings of a survey on TV preferences to be displayed or sent to an exchange school; use words such as ''first'', "next", "also", etc. Write a brief story or poem. Reply to a letter in the target language which contains prompts which help the writers to reply. Use IT to combine and organise different forms of information for a presentation e.g. produce a short newsheet, based on a model including a short interview, advertisements, picture, etc'. At Level 8, for example, we read: The student can: (a) 'write short texts adapting language from source materials to parallel situations, (b) 'write short imaginative texts developing the content of something read, seen or heard'. In the examples given the students can: 'Read several brief newspaper accounts and write a text based on them. Using IT can select, use and adapt a variety of "model tasks".' 'Produce an alternative outcome for a short news item that has been read; write a short description e.g. of a wanted person or a pop star, perhaps for a poster or in continuous text'. 'Make arrangements for holidays giving reasons for choice; give an opinion on smoking as part of a letter; using resource materials, prepare a discussion poster in reaction to a newspaper headline'. And at Level 9, the student can: (a) 'complete a range of written tasks, sometimes imaginative, adapting length and style to purpose and reader'. (b) 'express a range of responses and attitudes to events, issues or opinions, giving reasons'. In the examples given, the students can:

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'Imagine a story for a newspaper headline. Descriptions of local business and leisure facilities for foreign visitors to the area'. 'Write to a newspaper or a friend expressing horror, surprise, anger, etc. at an event described, saying why; prepare a script for a two-minute debate on pollution'. And at Level 10, the student can: (a) 'organise the written task with occasional use of reference materials or support; adopt a suitable format and organise the ideas coherently'. The example offered is: 'Write a summary of project work in which facts and arguments are logically presented using words and phrases which connect and contrast ideas'. I am sure that the idea of students undertaking project work in the foreign language; or of writing short narratives; or of preparing leaflets in the foreign language will not come easily to teachers used to preparing only the Higher Level letter tasks for GCSE. What is indisputable, however, is, that teachers: (a) will be attempting such activities in the National Curriculum; and, (b) will need to make significant changes in the way they work with their students. (c) will have to learn to do what they cannot do now. National Criteria and National Curriculum Compared: Speaking and Writing Speaking A rough comparison of the requirements for speaking in the National Criteria as opposed to the National Curriculum, does not, of course, do justice to either, but does, I think, indicate enough of the differences to see the thrust of the two operations. The National Criteria are concerned with an assessable end-product: they look therefore to what students should be able to do after five years of modern language learning. It is interesting to note that, for the majority of students, at both Basic and Higher Levels, the concentration is on the ability to respond to unprepared questions and to perform role-playing tasks over a defined range of topics (wider for Higher, narrower for Basic). Only at Higher level is a 'free' conversation envisaged.

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Five years speaking National Criteria French is then reflected in an oral examination composed of answering questions and playing a tourist role in a five sentence role play. The National Curriculum, on the other hand, is concerned with the development of a wider range of competences. As well as asking and responding to questions, the students are expected to 'deliver short memorised or prompted talks', to 'use narrative and descriptive language to make brief statements about recent experience' to 'offer explanations', to 'use simple responses, ask questions, make statements about future plans', to ask for and offer 'explanations of specific detail in meaning and organisation of work'and these are requirements for levels 1-6 (the boundary between levels 6 and 7 being taken as equivalent of GCSE grade D). Levels 7-10 include 'describing feelings, habitual activities', 'talking about own plans' 'narrating events', 'discussing the direction tasks might take in group work', 'seeking/offering reasons to back statements of opinion in negotiating tasks and roles' and 'talking freely or with notes in discussion of factual or imaginative material'. (This last descriptor is from level 10, currently beyond the reach of GCSE grade A). It is evident that the delivery of the National Curriculum in the target language requires student use of registers not envisaged by the National Criteria. Teachers will have to learn, not only how to teach their students in the target language but how to enable them to use it for themselves in the classroom for their own purposes. And, unlike the GCSE, the assessment of those competences will be continuous. Writing Writing in the National Criteria is conceived in narrow, transactional terms. People write lists, notes, postcards, letters so students will write lists, notes, postcards and letters. Of course, not all students will be required to write, only those attempting the award of a grade C or above. So, writing as a rewardable activity at GCSE is restricted to those aiming above a grade D. The National Curriculum, on the other hand, looks at writing as part of the total language learning process, integrated with the other aspects in both learning and assessment. The process of recording and labelling precedes 'writing several sentences to convey information or opinions', 'redrafting written tasks already given, with support, guidance or reference materials' and 'linking sentences structuring ideas'. These are among the activities to be encouraged up to Level 6 (i.e. around GCSE grade D). From Level 7 upwards, the writing tasks include descriptions of how things are done, instructions, factual items, narratives, descriptions

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(real/imaginary), short imaginative texts linking something read, seen or heard, seeking or giving information on matters of personal significance, indicating a point of view with reasons, redrafting what has been written, adopting different ways of writing on the same subject so as to change the impact on the reader. (This, last, of course, at level 10). Teachers may wilt under the proposed variety of texts that students will be expected to produce. They may wonder where they will derive the pedagogy which will enable such texts to be produced in classrooms, integrating listening, reading, speaking and writing in a purposeful way. But the oneness of the concept of the language learning and assessment process presented by the Working Party makes a refreshing contrast to the fragmentary reductionism favoured by the authors of the National Criteria. Levels in the National Curriculum In my example of a criterion referenced task in swimming, I was able to establish a criterial difference between two levels of performance. Is there any sense in which criteria can be established to distinguish between levels of performance in modem language learning? The idea of levels implies, perish the thought, the gradus ad Parnassum, a smooth ascent to the sunlit uplands of learning, one clearly cut step leading on up to the next. Learningas the document says, is not like that: learning is not linear and sequential it is cyclic and recursive. So, what of the levels? The document makes clear that the distinction between the levels is not precise. What is sought is evidence of progression: The statements of attainment for different levels assume progression in the degree of accuracy demanded in the use of the various skills. The central aim is effective communicationthat the import of the message should be clear even if the grammar or pronunciation is not always correct. Higher demands will be made in the assessments at the higher levels: However, the demand for accuracy will increase as pupils progress: a good accent, with appropriate use of idiom, and a high level of accuracy will be necessary to carry conviction with native speakers and to ensure effective communication of nuances of expression at the upper levels. Similarly, as pupils' skills in understanding develop, they follow more accurately a variety of signals, such as intonation, word inflection and syntax. This formulation appears to imply that two students tackling the same task might be assessed as being on different levels because one met the demand for 'effective communication' only, whereas the other performed

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with 'a good accent, appropriate use of idiom and a high level of accuracy'. Similarly, two students interpreting a videorecorded dialogue might be placed differently because one had interpreted most of the content but the other had responded to the subtler signals of, 'intonation, word inflection and syntax'. If this interpretation is correct, then it is clear that the results of the assessments are to be interpreted by reference to specified criteria. This is the system we use in the three Levels of French for Communication and developed in the Joint CSE/GCE. We were of course obliged to abandon it for the GCSE in favour of Basic and Higher tasks. A 'content-free' syllabus The Proposals have this to say about the 'content-free' syllabus they are proposing: Decisions about the subject matter for the SATs could be made at a number of levelse.g. in individual classes or schools, jointly by groups of schools, by LEAs or even Examination Boards. In each case the content-specific tasks would have to fit the framework of the original nationally-determined content-free SAT. A comparable model is found in the assessment system in the Federal Republic of Germany. In this proposal the overarching concept of a content-free syllabus is buttressed upon locally defined language contents, butand here's the rubthe envisaged community is of potential examiners only. In my view such assessment proposals would need to be supported by a community structure similar to that of French for Communication. Our experience in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire makes clear that teaching and assessment cannot be separated. Teachers need each other for help and support in both. The implication is for a fulltime engagement, not for occasional meetings to decide examination contents. Indeed, the INSET implications drawn by the Proposals spell out the problems if not the organisational form of a solution: Teachers will need to reappraise the planning and execution of their lessons and their use of available resources, and to develop appropriate teaching strategies in the light of the following . . .: the nature of progression in modern languages learning and its implications for teaching approaches; • teaching languages to the full ability range with special reference to pupils at both ends of the range; • clearer differentiation within the modern languages classroom;

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• the development of greater independence for the learner through flexible learning techniques; • use of the target language in the classroom by teacher and pupils; • the management and exploitation of a variety of resources and media in the classroom; • the integration of information technology; • new approaches to assessment including where appropriate peer and self-assessment; • the treatment of cross-curricular themes in modern languages, in particular through collaboration with other departments'. It will be evident that the INSET implications are considerable: nothing short of a complete re-orientation of the teaching force in modern languages. Who will deliver the courses required? Will they happen in class time? Who will fund them? So far, Government thinking is restricted to assessment and inspection: it seems to imagine that all that is needed is to identify weakness and eradicate incompetents. No thought has been given to improving the competences of those left after the Inspector calls. The changes that have been made in other disciplines in the National Curriculum bode ill for modern languages. The Proposals indicate a wide variety of possible language assessing tasks. How will they be shaped by the current political demand for simple paper and pencil tests? Given a difference between teacher assessment and SATs, which of the two will achieve greater prominence in schools' published results? And what will happen to the criteria of evaluation? Shall we find, after all, that the image of levels, of Excelsior toiling upwards, with the uplands in attainable view, will be replaced by an Everest of achievement where all the climbers set off cheerfully at the bottom, only to find the curve of normal distribution too slippery for most of them higher up? It would be a pity if the sea-change envisaged in classroom practice simply confirmed the hierarchical values of socio-economic status as revealed in the examination hall. National Curriculum and French for Communication I find the National Curriculum Proposals infinitely superior to the current procedures of GCSE. They assume essentially the same assessment principles as those on which French for Communication is based: common, integrated tasks, differentiated by outcome in which qualitative criteria play an important part. The Leicestershire and Lincolnshire teachers who teach for French for Communication will find little to worry them in the National Curriculum. Teaching and assessing in the target language; integrating the language

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modes; encouraging creative work from their studentsthey have been labouring in this particular vineyard for years. But the expertise gained has been won by teachers prepared to pay what it costs: time spent preparing one's own materials for teaching and assessment; time spent discussing aims, objectives, materials, assessment tasks with colleagues in one's own and other schools; time spent reflecting on methodology and classroom management. Keats' dictum about measuring time by what is done captures the unquantifiability of the processthe difference between price and value. For what has been achieved is more than the sum of the hours needed for its accomplishment. The achievements spring from the cooperation of teachers working together as a community. The essence of the progress made is expressed in the trust with which they admit colleagues and strangers to their classrooms; in the openness with which they discuss and share methods and materials; in the freedom with which doubts and disagreements are expressed without rancour or disruption of the fabric of consensus. I am confident that the National Curriculum proposals are worth pursuing for their own sake. I am certain that they can be successfully implemented if teachers are properly valued and provided with opportunities to develop and change. I am equally certain that the curriculum changes which we term 'French for Communication' would not have happened without the network of local support. They could not have been brought into being by government edict alone. Neither will the Proposals for the National Curriculum in Modern Languages.

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Select Bibliography Abercrombie, D. (1965) Studies in Phonetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Black, H.D. and Dockrell, W.B. (1984) Criterion-referenced Assessment in the Classroom. Scottish Council for Research in Education. Britton, J. (1970) Language and Learning. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Brown, S. (1980) What Do They Know? A Review of Criterion-referenced Assessment. London: HMSO. Brumfit, C. (ed.) (1983) Learning and Teaching Languages for Communication: Applied Linguistic Perspectives. London: CILT. Brumfit, C. and Johnson, K. (1979) The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. London: Longman. Bruner, J.S. (1962) Studies in Cognitive Growth. New York: Wiley. Carroll, B.J. (1980) Testing Communicative Performance. Oxford: Pergamon. Chomsky, N. (1957) Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Council of Europe (1976) Un Niveau-Seuil. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Delamont, S. (1976) Interaction in the Classroom. London: Methuen. Dunning, R. (ed.) (1983) French for Communication. University of Leicester School of Education. Dunning, R. and Sudre, A. (eds) (1972) La Prise de la Parole. London: Heinemann. Freedman E.S. (1982) Evaluation of the East Midlands graded assessment feasibility study. University of Leicester School of Education EMREB CSE Project Report No. 10. Halliday, M.A.K. (1975) Learning How To Mean. London: Arnold. Hardy, B. (1975) Storytellers and Listeners. London: Athlone Press. Hornsey, A. (ed.) (1975) Handbook for Modern Language Teachers. London: Methuen. Johnson, K. (1982) Communicative Syllabus, Design and Methodology. Oxford: Pergamon. Johnstone, R. (1989) Communicative Interaction. London: CILT. Littlewood, W. (1981) Communicative Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moys, A. et al. (eds) (1980) Modern Languages Examinations at 16+. London: CILT. Munby, J. (1978) Communicative Syllabus Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oiler, J.W. (1979) Language Tests in Schools. London: Longman. Page, B. et al. (1982) Graded Objectives in Modern Languages. London: CILT. Page, B. and Hewett, D. (1987) Languages Step by Step: Graded Objectives in the UK. London: CILT.

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Perera, K. (1986) Grammatical differentiation between speech and writing in children aged 8 to 12. In A. Wilkinson (ed.) The Writing of Writing (pp. 91-109). Buckingham: Open University Press. Roulet, E. (1975) Linguistic Theory, Linguistic Description and Language Teaching. London: Longman. Sacks, H. et al. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organisation of turntaking for conversation. In J. Schenkein (ed.) Studies in the Organisation of Conversational Interaction. New York: Academic Press. Sapir, E. (1970) Culture, Language and Personality. University of California Press. Saporta, S. and Bastian, J.R. (eds) (1961) Psycholinguistics: A Book of Readings. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Smith, F. (1973) Comprehension and Learning. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. (1982) Writing and the Writer. London: Heinemann. Trim, J.L.M. (1980) Developing a Unit Credit Scheme of Adult Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon. Van Ek, J.A. (1977) The Threshold Level for Modern Language Learning in Schools. London: Longman. Wilkins, D. A. (1976) NotionaL Syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wells, G. (1981) Learning through Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wells, G. and Gen Ling Chang (1986) From speech to writing. In A. Wilkinson (ed.) The Writing of Writing (pp. 109-131). Buckingham: Open University Press. Wesche, M.B. (1981) Communicative testing in a second language. Canadian Modern Languages Review 37 (3). Widdowson, H.G. (1978) Teaching Languages as Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilkinson, A. (ed.) (1986) The Writing of Writing. Buckingham: Open University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1962) Language and Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Yalden, J. (1983) The Communicative Syllabus: Evolution, Design and Implementation. Oxford: Pergamon.

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Appendix 1 Extracts from the Guidelines to Teachers: 'French for Communication, Levels One, Two and Three' 149 Teachers' Tasks for Level One 150 Level One: Aims and Objectives 151 Example Progress Card Unit One 152 Suggested Marking Grid for Unit One Talking Assessment 153 Sample Reading Task Unit 1 154 Assessment Criteria 155 Cue Cards for Talking Task 157 Report Writing 158 A Writing Task and Marking Grid 159 Teachers' Tasks for Level Two 160 Level Two: Aims and Objectives 161 Example Marking Grids for Talking Tasks 163 Example Progress Card Unit Four 164 Cue Cards, Symbolic and Written 165 Example Reading Task and Marking Grid 167 Example Writing Task and Marking Grid 168 Level Three: Aims and Objectives 169 Example Progress Card Unit Seven 170 Example Cue Cards for Unit Seven Talking Task 171 Example Unit Seven Talking Task (Possible Outcome) 172

Example Unit Seven Reading Task

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Teachers' Tasks for Level One The procedure for Level One is set out below in an abbreviated form: Select teaching/learning objectives for each unit. Select assessment objectives/exponents for each unit from the above. Draw up Progress Card for each unit. Draw up Marking Grids for Talking, Reading and Writing tasks. (N.B. Marking Grids for Reading will correspond to individual texts and tasks chosen.) Ensure that cue-cards for Talking assessments are differentiated from those used for practice. Ensure that all the objectives on the Progress Card are covered by the set of cue-cards, since individual cue-cards will represent a selection of the objectives. Teach and assess Unit One. Complete LCA 1 (Unit One). Complete LRF 1 (Unit One). Collate enclosures. Teach and assess Unit Two. Complete LCA 1 (Unit Two). Complete LRF 1 (Unit Two). Collate enclosures. Teach and assess Unit Three. Complete LCA 1 (Unit Three). Complete LRF 1 (Unit Three). Collate enclosures. Attend LEA Standardisation Meeting Complete and return LCA 1. Complete and return LRF 1. Complete and return CI 1. Return enclosures. N.B. 1. The Units are numbered consectively throughout the Level. They may, however, be assessed in any more convenient order, provided that the assessment procedures are adhered to. 2. The LEA Standardisation Meeting may be arranged at any stage of the year and not necessarily on completion of the Level. 3. It will normally be the case that schools will certificate each Level at the end of the corresponding school year. This is not, however, a requirement: schools may certificate at a later date, if they so wish.

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Level One: Aims and Objectives AIMS to promote confidence in the use of French for the purpose of communication in specified topic areas. OBJECTIVES to assess in Talking and in Writing the candidates' ability in the listed topic areas to perform 1 - 5 below: 1. initiate, maintain and conclude exchanges with others 2. identify themselves and others 3. give information about their accommodation and seek similar information from others 4. give information about the work and daily routines of themselves and their families and seek similar information from others 5. check/confirm/deny the accuracy of information about themselves and others and to assess in Reading the candidates' ability to interpret text reflecting the range of topic areas of the syllabus. (See below.) TOPIC AREAS Unit 1

Personal identification: name, nationality, address, family, age, birthday, physical characteristics.

Unit 2

Accommodation: type, location and amenities.

Unit 3

Routines: times of/mode of/travel between home and school/work; daily activities.

SYLLABUS CONTENT Units One, Two and Three. SCHEME OF ASSESSMENT For each Unit there is: 1. One assessment of Talking (compulsory) 2. One assessment of Reading (optional) 3. One assessment of Writing (optional) The three modes of performanceTalking (i.e. speaking and listening), Reading and Writingare assessed separately. The Level may be attained in Talking alone, in Talking and Reading, in Talking and Writing or in Talking, Reading and Writing.

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Example Progress Card Unit One Each department decides for each Unit what objectives it wants the pupils to reach. The Progress Card represents what the candidates are to be assessed in, in each mode. The Progress Card for each Unit should contain not fewer than 10 seeking/giving information objectives, plus appropriate objectives for initiating, maintaining, and concluding exchanges. As the Progress Card is the basis of the assessment, teachers are asked to ensure that all objectives listed on it are assessed. This means that the cue cards for individual candidates will be a representative selection of the objectives covered by the whole class and listed on the Progress Card. As well as being required by the assessment procedures of this syllabus, the Progress Card can provide a useful source of information for the school's internal recording of achievement.

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Suggested Marking Grid for Unit One Talking Assessment

Although fluency, interaction and grammatical cohesion are to be encouraged at this level, they are not included in Level One objectives. The Style/Comment box is therefore optional and will not count towards certification, but may be useful for the school's internal recording of achievement.

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Sample Reading Task Unit One UNIT 1: READING ASSESSMENT You have received the letter below from your new French penfriend. Make notes in English so that you can tell your parents all about Dominique. Your parents do not understand any French.

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Assessment Criteria The assessment of reading is based on the criterion of successful completion of the task, i.e. the teacher decides whether or not the candidate has successfully conveyed the information required by the task to the satisfaction of the ''monolingual English person''. The teacher draws up a Marking Grid, viz.

The teacher decides on the predictable/essential as well as the unpredictable elements in relation to the specific texts and tasks chosen for assessment. These elements of information, once identified, are entered in the Marking Grid, e.g.: Unit 1 'Letter from Dominique'

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Cue Card for Talking Task 1. a) Matching cards Both candidates have cards with similar data on them. The stimulus on the cards used for the exchange of information can be:

N.B. The use of English as a stimulus is not acceptable. Candidates seeking information may use their own information-giving cards as a guide to what to ask their partners. They may also have separate information-seeking cards:

In order to ensure that the candidates seeking information pay attention to what their partner says, they are required to note down the information gained in Talking. These notes are not assessed, but may serve as a basis for the Writing assessment. A pair of candidates using the cue cards printed above might have the following exchange: Tu t'appelles comment?

(Je m'appelle) Jeanne Dupont.

Tu es de quelle nationalité? Tu as quel âge? Tu habites où?

(Je suis) francaise.

(J'ai) 10 ans. (J'habite) Dieppe.

Tu as des freres ou des soeurs?

(J'ai) un frere et deux soeurs.

The bracketing in the responses is intended to show that the information asked for can be given acceptably without the use of full sentences. The information can of course be conveyed in different ways, e.g. Comment tu t'appelles? Comment t'appelles-tu? Ton nom, c'est quoi? C'est quoi, ton nom?

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Cue Cards for Talking Task (cont.) The cue cards shown on page 10 might therefore also stimulate the following exchange: C'est quoi, ton nom?

Je m'appelle Jeanne Dupont.

Tu es française?

Oui, c'est ça.

Quel âge as-tu?

10 ans.

Où est-ce que tu habites?

Dieppe.

Tu as combien de frères et de soeurs?

J'ai un frere et deux soeurs.

b) Mis-matching Cards Candidate A has a card with information about Candidate B, and has to check whether or not the details are accurate. Candidate B has a card with accurate information about him/herself, and confirms/denies the accuracy of the information proposed. Checking information

Confirming/denying accuracy of information

The use of such mis-matching cards might lead to the following type of exchange: Bonjour Tu t'appelles Jeanne Dupont

Bonjour Non, je m'appelle Janine Dupont.

Tu es française? Tu habites Dieppe? Tu as 10 ans, c'est ça? Tu as un frere et deux soeurs? Au revoir.

Oui, c'est ça. Non, j'habite Nantes. Non, j'ai 12 ans. Oui, exact. Au revoir.

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Report Writing A report is the writing up of the information cued beforehand and noted down during the Talking exchanges. In any report candidates should avoid beginning with an unidentified pronoun and should write continuous French. A third person report written up after an exchange stimulated by the cue cards shown might look like this: Jeanne Dupont est française. Elle a 10 ans. Elle habite Dieppe. Elle a un frère et deux soeurs. Or: Ma partenaire s'appelle Jeanne Dupont. Elle est française. Elle a 10 ans. Elle habite Dieppe. Elle a un frère et deux soeurs. And not: Elle s'appelle Jeanne Dupont. Elle est française. Elle a 10 ans. etc. A first person report might be written like this: Je m'appelle Jeanne Dupont et j'ai 10 ans. Je suis française et j'habite Dieppe. J'ai deux soeurs et un frère.

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A Writing Task and Marking Grid Unit 3

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Teachers' Tasks for Level Two The procedure for Level Two is set out below in abbreviated form:

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Level Two: Aims and Objectives AIMS to promote confidence in the use of French for the purposes of communication. OBJECTIVES to assess in Talking and in Writing the candidates' ability in the listed topic areas to perform 1 to 7 below; 1. initiate, maintain, interact within, and conclude exchanges with others; 2. seek information from others; give similar information about themselves, about their interests, attitudes and (where appropriate) intentions, with respect to the topics listed below; 3. request services; ask for directions, goods (for purchase); 4. recapitulate directions given; 5. express wishes and preferences with respect to 3 above; 6. report, i.e. (i) describe and (ii) narrate; 7. check/confirm/deny the accuracy of information. and to assess in Reading the candidates' ability to interpret texts reflecting the range of topic areas of the syllabus (see below). TOPIC AREAS Unit Four: School, sport, food and drink, weather and seasons. Unit Directions in town, shopping (+ specifications of goods = number, quantity, Five: size, weight, colour, material and price etc.). Narrating. Unit Description (physical and, where appropriate, psychological features as depicted Six: in picture or photo).

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Example Marking Grids for Talking Tasks Unit 4

Unit 5

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Example Marking Grids for Talking Tasks (cont.) Unit 6 (Picture of person/people)

In assessing each performance, the emphasis should be placed on the fulfilment of the task set rather than on the number of items of information conveyed, requested or transacted. The French used to carry out the task is assessed according to the criteria of Acceptability and Appropriacy (see Assessment Criteria, page 11). The performance as a whole is judged on the basis of whether it meets the Basic criteria only (Pass) or the Basic criteria plus the Extended and Style criteria (Credit).

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Example Progress Card Unit Four

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Cue Cards, Symbolic and Written Task: Tu parles avec un copain/une copine avant le commencement des classes. Est-ce que vous avez les mêmes cours avant la récréation? Est-ce que vous aimez les mêmes cours? Les mêmes professeurs? Cue-cards

Written text

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Example Reading Task and Marking Grid UNIT 4: READING ASSESSMENT Your penfriend has sent you the following interview of him which has appeared in his school magazine. Use the information he gives in the interview so that you can write a paragraph in ENGLISH entitled,' My French Penfriend ', for your English teacher. • Bonjour, Jean-Luc, tu arrives à l'école à quelle heure d'habitude ? • J'y arrive normalement vers huit heures et quart. • Et les classes commencent immédiatement ? • Non, elles commencent à neuf heures moins le quart. • Et tu es dans quelle classe ? • Je suis en quatrième A. • Tu as combien de cours par jour ? • Le matin, nous avons quatre cours, et l'après-midi nous en avons deux. • Et tu fais quoi à midi, tu restes à l'école ? • Non, j'habite près de l'école et tous lee jours je prends le déjeuner à la maison avec ma famille. • Et il y a une récréation le matin ? • Oui, à dix heures et demie, entre le deuxième et le troisième cours. L'après-midi il n'y en a pas. • Et quelles sont tes matières préférée à l'école ? • En bien, j'adore le français et la géographie. Ce sont des matières intéressantes et j'aime bien lee professeurs. • Comment s'appellent tee professeurs ? • En français j'ai Monsieur Delacroix. See classes sont intéressantes. Il est severe, il fait travailler, mais il est sympa quand même. En géographie j'ai Madame Delourelle est assez stricte mais elle est gentille. • Tu as français tous les jours? • Non, j'ai français le lundi, mercredi et vendredi. • Et çuelles matières est-ce que tu n'aimes pas ? • Je n'aime pas lee maths parce que je suis nul en maths et le professeur crie beaueoup en classe. • Tu aimes les sports à l'école ? • Pas beaucoup. J'aime le foot mais je déteste tous les autres sports. • Pourçuoi tu détestes ces sports ? • Parce cue le prof n'est pas du tout gentil. • Et tes cours finissent à quelle heure ? • Ils finissent à quatre heures et quart. • Bon, merci, Jean-Luc, au revoir.

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Example Reading Task and Marking Grid (cont.)

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Example Writing Task and Marking Grid

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Level Three: Aims and Objectives AIMS to promote confidence in the use of French for the purposes of communication. OBJECTIVES to assess in Talking and in Writing the candidates' ability in the listed topic areas to perform 1 - 10 below; and to assess in Reading the candidates' ability to interpret text expressing 2 - 10 below. 1. initiate, maintain, interact within, and conclude exchanges with others; 2. suggest activities, itineraries, destinations, modes of travel, dates, times etc; 3. describe physical condition of self and others; 4. seek, give and recapitulate directions; 5. seek, give, query and check information about arrival, departure times, costs of journey, length of journey, dates and amenities etc; 6. seek give, query and check information about accommodation, costs amenities, arrival/departure times etc; 7. make reservations/bookings as appropriate; 8. express preferences: activities, modes of travel, times etc; 9. express feelings, gratitude etc. as appropriate; 10. report events experienced: sequence, causes etc. TOPIC AREAS Unit Seven

Leisure and Health

Unit Eight

Travel and Lost Property

Unit Nine

Accommodation

SYLLABUS CONTENT Units Seven, Eight and Nine SCHEME OF ASSESSMENT For each Unit there is: 1. One assessment of Talking (compulsory); 2. One assessment of Reading (optional); 3. One assessment of Writing (optional). Talking, Reading and Writing are assessed separately. Pass and Credit standards may be attained in Talking (alone) or in Talking, together with Reading and/or Writing. Any combination of Passes and Credits is possible.

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Example Progress Card Unit Seven SAMPLE TASK CARD FOR UNIT SEVEN

SUGGESTED PROGRESS CARD FOR UNIT SEVEN

NB The Progress Card should provide the candidates with a clear statement of what they are to learn to say. Cue cards for a class should cover all the objectives taught (see Progress Card, page 4). It is assumed that the objectives for Reading and Writing will reflect the objectives for Talking.

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Example Cue Cards for Unit Seven Talking Task First Pupil's Card

Second Pupil's Card

Alternatively, one or both of the cards could be In written French: First Pupil's Card

Second Pupil's Card

One of the candidates would also have an information sheet about the films showing at the local cinema(s):

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Example Unit Seven Talking Task (Possible Outcome) The talking assessment stimulated by these cue cards could take the following form: S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S. J. S J. S.

Allô! Allô! Salut, c'est Julie à l'appareil. Ah, bonjour Julie, c'est Sarah. Ça va? Oui, ça va bien merci. Et toi? Oui, ça va. Tu veux aller au cinéma avec moi cette semaine? Oui, je veux bien. On y va quand? Mercredi soir? Ah non, je ne peux pas, je regarde la télévision mercredi soir. Jeudi soir alors? Oui, je suis libre. Qu'est-ce qu'on passe au cinéma? Au Rex on passe 'Alien' et 'Splash'. Qu'est ce que c'est comme film, 'Alien'? C'est un film d'épouvante. Oh, je déteste ça. On va voir 'Splash' alors? C'est quelle sorte de film? C'est un film d'amour. C'est bien. Le film commence à quelle heure? A 19h. ou à 21h. 30. Je préférerais la séance de 21 h. 30. Moi aussi. On se rencontre où? Chez moi? Non. Devant le cinéma à 21 h. 15ça va? Oui ça va. L'entrée coûte 25 francsn'oublie pas ton argent. D'accord. A jeudi soir! Devant le cinéma à 21 h. 15. Oui. D'accord. Au revoir, Sarah. Au revoir Julie.

WRITING ASSESSMENT The writing assessment following this talking assessment could involve writing a report of this telephone conversation or writing an account of the evening spent as a result of the arrangements made. In the former case the text would look like this: J'ai téléphoné à ma copine Sarah et j'ai proposé une sortie au cinéma mercredi soir. Elle ne pouvait pas sortir parce qu'elle regardait la télévision. Alors j'ai suggéré jeudi soir et elle était d'accord. etc. The writing for the latter task would begin as follows: Jeudi soir je suis sortie au cinéma avec Julie. Nous nous sommes rencontrées devant le cinéma à 21 h. 15 et nous avons vu la séance de 21 h. 30. Nous avons choisi le film 'Splash' parce que j'aime les films d'amour. Le film était excellent. etc.

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Example Unit Seven Reading Task You are spending the summer in France working in a tourist office. One day some English people come in asking for information about Bordeaux. You have run out of English versions of your leaflet and so you give them this French version but make some notes for them as well. They are particularly interested in the museum, wine and skating. They are also worried about how to get around as they have no car. Give as many relevant details as possible.

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Example Unit Seven Reading Task (cont.)

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Example Unit Seven Reading Task (cont.)

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Appendix 2 Papers from French for Communication, Joint Oxford and Cambridge/EMREB O Level/CSE 1986/7; MEG Mode Three GCSE 1990 177 1981 Model French for Communication 178 Relationship of Grades to Levels and Assessment Objectives 179 Scheme of Assessment 180 Basic Speaking (Part 1): Interviewer/Interviewee 1986/87 181 Candidate's Fiche d'interview 182 Example of Examiner's Fiche d'interview 183 Marking Grid: Interviewer/Interviewee 184 Basic Speaking (Part 2): Negotiator/Interpreter 1986/87 185 Example of Examiner's Brief: Negotiator/Interpreter 186 Example of Candidate's Brief: Negotiator 187 Example of Candidate's Brief: Interpreter 188 Example of English Speaker's Brief: Interpreter 189 Marking Grid for Negotiator/Interpreter Assessment 190 Higher Speaking Reporter: Example of Printed Text 191 Example of Candidate's aide-memoire: Reporter 192 Example of Examiner's aide-memoire and Mark Scheme Reporter 193 Example of Marking: Grid Reporter 194 Higher Reading (Part 2); Higher Writing (Part 1) 195 Example: Higher Reading (Part 2); Higher Writing (Part 1) 196 Example Texts Higher Reading (Part 2); Higher Writing (Part 1)

197 Example Text Higher Reading (Part 2); Higher Writing (Part 1) 198 MEG Mode 3 Basic Speaking (Part 1) Interviewer and Interviewee 1989: Candidate's Brief 199 Example Examiner's brief (Interviewee) 1989 200 Interviewer/Interviewee Mark Sheet 1989 201 Examiner's Brief: Negotiator/Interpreter (Camping) 1989 202 Candidate's Brief (Negotiator) (Campsite): Basic Speaking (Part 2) 1989 203 Candidate's Brief (Negotiator) (Campsite): Higher Speaking (Part 1) 1989 204 Candidate's Brief (Interpreter)(Campsite): Higher Speaking (Part 1) 1989

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205 English Speaker's Brief (Interpreter): Higher Speaking (Part 1) 1989 206 Interpreter Texts: Basic Reading 1990 209 Interpreter (Questions and Mark Scheme): Basic Reading 1990 211 Interpreter (English Notes): Basic Writing 1990 212 Interpreter (Mark Scheme): Basic Writing 1990 213 Reporter (Example Text): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1990 214 Reporter (Examiner's aide-memoire): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1990 215 Reporter (Candidate's aide-memoire): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1990 216 Reporter (Conversation): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1990 217 Reporter/Conversation (Mark sheet): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1990

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1981 Model French for Communication

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Relationship of Grades to Levels and Assessment Objectives In accordance with the National Criteria for French the following table indicates the skill areas and levels within which candidates must demonstrate positive achievement to qualify for the award of specific grades.

The Scheme of Assessment allows for candidates to be assessed on some of the skills/levels on more than one occasion.

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Scheme of Assessment The essential aspects of the course are that it is modular in nature and designed to improve candidates' ability to communicate by means of the French language. There are 5 modules, each of which has a particular focus. A summary of the modules and their relationship to the Assessment Objectives is set out below.

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Page 180 Basic Speaking (Part 1): Interviewer/Interviewee 1986/87 MODULE ONE BASIC SPEAKING (PART ONE) INTERVIEWER/INTERVIEWEE TAKEN IN SUMMER TERM OF YEAR 4 STIMULUS:PRINTED AND SPOKEN FRENCH RESPONSE:SPOKEN FRENCH SETTING: ENGLAND ROLE:

EitherInterviewing French visitor to UK Or

Being interviewed by French visitor to UK

(Roles to be randomly allocated to candidates)

TASK:

Getting information about visitor (Family details, professional life, interests, details of visit, impression of UK) (A set of six ''biographies'' will be provided for the teacher examiner. These biographies should be Eitherrandomly allocated)

Or

Giving information to visitor (Family details, school and interests, visits abroad, holidays, experiences, plans)

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA: Items of information/message acceptably/ (15) appropriately communicated Interaction, fluency, flexibility, (10) grammaticality TOTAL 25 APPROXIMATE TIME TAKEN:

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Candidate's Fiche d'interview

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Example of Examiner's Fiche d'interview

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Marking Grid: Interviewer/Interviewee

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Page 184 Basic Speaking (Part 2): Negotiator/Interpreter 1986/87 MODULE TWO BASIC SPEAKING (PART TWO) NEGOTIATOR/INTERPRETER TAKEN IN AUTUMN TERM OF YEAR 5 STIMULUS:PRINTED AND SPOKEN FRENCH RESPONSE:SPOKEN FRENCH Restaurant, Hotel, Campsite, Youth Hostel, Railway/Coach Station, Tourist Information Office In SETTINGS: France ROLE

EitherNegotiating for oneself and others Or

TASKS:

Interpreting on behalf of others (Roles to be randomly allocated to candidates)

Ordering meals, arranging accommodation, making travel arrangements, arranging tourist activities for Eitheroneself and others Or

Mediating the above tasks between a French and an English monolingual speaker

(A set of 4 - 6 tasks for each role will be provided for candidates. These tasks should be randomly allocated) ASSESSMENT CRITERIA: Items of information/message acceptably/ (15) appropriately communicated Interaction, fluency, flexibility, (10) grammaticality TOTAL 25 APPROXIMATE TIME TAKEN:

10 minutes preparation 10 minutes assessment

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Example of Examiner's Brief: Negotiator/Interpreter MODULE TWO BASIC SPEAKING (PART TWO) NEGOTIATOR/INTERPRETER ASSESSMENT DECEMBER Examiner's Brief: Negotiator and Interpreter Please make sure you are familiar with the candidate's brief. AU CAMPING 13 juillet, 6 heures du soir, Camping de la Forêt, Aurillac (Massif Central) Tarif

Prix par jour

Campeurs

8F (adultes) 5F (2 - 7 ans)

Voiture

5F

Vélos

3F

Emplacement

5F (tente) 10F (caravane)

Emplacements côté bar

(bruit)

libres côté piscine

(soleil)

côté bloc sanitaire

(ombragé, bruit)

côté lac

(calme, ombrage)

Magasin

8h -12.30 & 14h - 19h

Restaurant

déjeuner

(30 F)

midi - 13h

diner

(30F)

19h30 - 20h30

Activités

Banque

initiation

pratique

équitation

15F/h

10F/h

canotage

10F/h

5F/h

natation

10F/h

5F/h

planche à voile

15F/h

10F/h

Aurillac 8 - 12;

14.00 - 17.30

N.B.Give site if asked for. Give site description only if asked for. If candidate asks immediately for 'un emplacement ombragé', offer 2/3 sites, requiring choice. You will need to ask the visitor's name, town and country of origin.

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Example of Candidate's Brief: Negotiator MODULE TWO BASIC SPEAKING (PART TWO) NEGOTIATOR/INTERPRETER ASSESSMENT DECEMBER Candidate's Brief: Negotiator AU CAMPING 13 juillet, 6 heures du soir, Camping de le Forêt, Aurillac (Massif Central). Tu es à Aurillac avec ton ami(e). Vous êtes tous les deux à vélo. Vous voulez camper 3 nuits. Vous avez une tente. Vous n'aimez pas trop le soleil. Vous êtes très fatigués. Vous n'avez pas mangé. Vous n'avez plus de provisions. Vous voulez manger au camping si possible. Vous avez 100F pour ce soir et 200F en chèques voyageurs pour le reste de votre séjour à Aurillac. Vous vous intéressez aux activités offertes au camping. Ton ami(e) s'intéresse à faire de la planche à voileil/elle ne l'a jamais faite en Angleterre. Tu voudrais nager si possible. Renseignetoi sur les possibilités et fais tes décisions. Aidemémoire personnes emplacement dates prix nourriture banque activités.

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Example of Candidate's Brief: Interpreter MODULE TWO BASIC SPEAKING (PART TWO) NEGOTIATOR/INTERPRETER ASSESSMENT DECEMBER Candidate's Brief: Interpreter AU CAMPING 13 juillet, 6 heures du soir, Camping de la Forêt, Aurillac (Massif Central). Tu vas interpréter pour une jeune personne anglaise qui veut faire du camping ici. La jeune personne te donnera tous les détails nécessaires. Ton professeur jouera le rôle de l'employe(e) et parlera en français. Ton professeur commencera.

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Example of English Speaker's Brief: Interpreter MODULE TWO BASIC SPEAKING (PART TWO) NEGOTIATOR/INTERPRETER ASSESSMENT DECEMBER English Speaker's Brief: Interpreter CAMPSITE 13 July, 6 pm, Camping de la Forêt, Aurillac (Massif Central) You are cycling in the Massif Central with your friend. You have a tent. You are both very tired. You are hungry but have no supplies left. Tell your Interpreter:

Ask your Interpreter:

You want a quiet, shaded site.

Which sites are available.

You want to stay 3 nights.

How much they cost.

You don't want to cook unless you have to. If they are noisy or in the sun. (You can't spend more than 100F)

If there is a restaurant at the campsite.

You are keen on sport: you want to learn to swim; How much meals cost. your friend wants to learn windsurfing.

Where the nearest bank is. Costs of learning to swim and windsurfing. About other sporting activities.

When you have given all the above information and received answers to all the questions: 1.

Book site for 3 nights (shaded & quiet)

2.

Book 2 meals for this evening.

3.

Ask about paying for swimming and windsurfing lessons.

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Marking Grid for Negotiator/Interpreter Assessment

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Higher Speaking Reporter: Example of Printed Text MODULE FOUR SPRING 1988 HIGHER SPEAKING REPORTER L'ECHO DE GRASSE Le journal de Pierre Lemoine Les pickpockets sont parmi nous! Depuis deux semaines, une bande de voleurs à la tire opère dans notre ville d'une façonn'hésitons pas à le direefficace. Cette bande a déjà fait beaucoup de victimes, dont un homme, Monsieur Jean Bouiller, et une femme, Madame Janine Durand. Cette dernière a été dévalisée alors qu'elle se dirigeait vers la gare SNCF. ''Ce matin-là, j'ai quitté la maison assez tôt et je me suis dirigée vers la gare. J'ai cherché mon porte-monnaie pour sortir mon billet et je me suis rendu compte que je l'avais perdu. Puis j'ai réalisé que je n'avais plus mon collier.'' Quant à Monsieur Bouiller, il a perdu son portefeuille qui contenait une somme d'argent importante. Il m'a expliqué: "J'étais avec des amis en ville. Comme j'avais des courses à faire, je les ai quittés. J'étais sur le point de payer quand je me suis rendu compte que je n'avais plus mon portefeuille." Dans ces deux cas, les victimes ne se sont aperçu de rien sur le moment, et n'ont pu apporter aucun détail pouvant aider la police. Le commissariat recommande donc à tout le monde de se méfier, de s'assurer que poches et sacs sont bien fermés, surtout dans les autobus, aux heures d'affluence. Enfin, toute personne pouvant donner des renseignements utiles à l'arrestation de ces malfaiteurs serait la bienvenue. Pour cela, appeler le 16 70 22 98, poste 642.

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Example of Candidate's Aide-memoire: Reporter

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Example of Examiner's Aide-memoire and Mark Scheme: Reporter

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Example of Marking Grid: Reporter

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Page 194 Higher Reading (Part 2): Higher Writing (Part 1) CORRESPONDENT TAKEN IN SUMMER TERM OF YEAR 5 STIMULUS:PRINTED FRENCH: Magazine/newspaper articles/letters on one of the topics listed on page 86 RESPONSE:WRITTEN FRENCH SETTING: FRANCE ROLE:

Writing to French magazine/newspaper

TASK:

Identifying topic, writing letter, expressing reactions to what has been read, opinions on topic, relevant personal experiences.

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA: READING:Acceptable communication of the information required Acceptable, appropriate and effective communication of WRITING:reactions, opinions, personal experiences. Grammaticality, flexibility, coherence

(8) (12) TOTAL 20

APPROXIMATE TIME TAKEN:

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Example: Higher Reading (Part 2); Higher Writing (Part 1)

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Example Texts Higher Reading (Part 2); Higher Writing (Part 1)

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Example Text Higher Reading (Part 2); Higher Writing (Part 1)

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MEG Mode 3 Basic Speaking (Part 1) Interviewer and Interviewee 1989: Candidate's Brief

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Example Examiner's Brief (Interviewee) 1989

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Interviewer/Interviewee Mark Sheet 1989

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Examiner's Brief: Negotiator/Interpreter (Camping) 1989

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Candidate's Brief (Negotiator) (Campsite): Basic Speaking (Part 2) 1989 Candidate's Brief: Negotiator CAMPSITE 13th July, 6 p.m., at the Camping Municipal in Carnac. You are in Brittany with your parents and your brother who is 11. You have a car and a caravan. You would like to have a meal at the campsite, if possible, as you haven't eaten yet. You need to • ask if there is a site available • ask the cost per night for the site, the car and each person • book a site for four people for four nights • ask if there is a restaurant and, if so, what time it opens • ask what activities are available • choose one and find out when it is available and how much it costs.

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Candidate's Brief (Negotiator) (Campsite): Higher Speaking (Part 1) 1989 Candidate's Brief: Negotiator CAMPSITE July 13th, 6 p.m., Camping Municipal, Carnac. You are in Brittany with a friend who doesn't speak French. You have a tent and bikes. You would like to stay for 2 nights and as you are very tired, you would like a quiet spot to pitch your tent. Find out the cost. You would like to prepare a meal so you need to know if there is a shop, where it is and its opening times. You are interested in activities on the campsite. You both like water-sports. Find out what is available. Choose an activity and find out about cost and times. You need to telephone England to inform your parents of your return date. Find out the information you need and make your decisions accordingly.

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Candidate's Brief (Interpreter) (Campsite): Higher Speaking (Part 1) 1989 Candidate's Brief: Interpreter CAMPSITE July 13th, 6.00 p.m., Camping Municipal, Carnac. You have been asked to interpret for a young English person who wishes to book into the Campsite. The young person will give you all the details. The examiner will play the role of the employee and will speak in French. The examiner will begin the conversation.

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English Speaker's Brief (Interpreter): Higher Speaking (Part 1) 1989 English Speaker's Brief: Interpreter CAMPSITE July 13th, 6.00 p.m. Camping Municipal, Carnac. You are on holiday with your parents and have just arrived from England on the ferry. You wish to stay for 3 days in St Malo before setting off to go further south. Tell your interpreter

Ask your interpreter

You want to stay 3 nights. You have a car and a tent. If there is a site available for 3 people, a tent and a carhow much it is for a tent, a car and per person. You want a site that's not too noisy. To book the site for 3 nights. You would like to buy some food. If there is a campsite shop, where it is and what the opening times are. Your parents like tennis. You like swimming. What leisure activities are offered. How much they cost and when you can do them. You need to fill up the car with petrol. Where the nearest petrol station is. 8779C

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Interpreter (Texts): Basic Reading 1990

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Interpreter (Texts): Basic Reading 1990 (cont.)

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Interpreter (Texts): Basic Reading 1990 (cont.)

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Page 209 Interpreter (Questions and Mark Scheme): Basic Reading 1990 MARK SCHEME 1. 'What does she say about my letter and what are her daughter's reactions to it?' Thanks (1) + for the invitation (1)

2

Marie-Hélène is delighted (1) + to spend summer holidays (2) + with family (1)

4

Marie-Hélène will write (1) + to Joanne soon (1)

2 [8]

2. 'What dates does she suggest for the exchanges?' Marie-Hélène: 6 July (1) + end of July / 1 August (1)

2

Joanne: 1 August (1) + 1/2 September (1)

2 [4]

3. 'What arrangement will she make to get her daughter here?' Brother Jules (1) + will bring her (1) + to Birmingham airport (1)

3 [3]

4. 'Does she want to know anything else?' Is 2 September suitable date (1) + for Joanne's return (1)

2 [2]

5. 'Why has she sent us this page In French?' Going to / Taking Joanne (1) + to holiday village (1) + les Karellis (1) + in Savoy 4 (1) Information about situation (1) + accommodation (1) + costs (1) + activities (1)

4 [8]

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Page 210 Interpreter (Questions and Mark Scheme): Basic Reading (cont.) 2 6. 'What do the starred sections of the leaflet tell us In detail?' Accommodation : 2-room flats with washbasins (1) + 2/3 beds (1) + shared entrance and toilets (1) 3 On-site activities (1) + card (1)

2

Swimming pool (1) + shows (1) + cineclub (1)

3

Workshops (1) + pony club (1) + tennis (1) + archery (1)

4

Free activities (1)

1

Dance evenings (1) + games (1) + slideshows (1) + cabaret (1) + keepfit (1)

5

Campfire (1) + television (1) + pool (1) + table-tennis (1) + table football (1)

5 [23]

TOTAL[48]

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Page 211 Interpreter (English Notes): Basic Writing 1990 Mrs Smith would like you to draft a letter to reply to Mme Dupont. These are the points she would like you to cover : 1. Thanks for the letter.

[2]

2. July 6 is fine for Marie-Hélène's visit.

[5]

3. When does she arrive in Birmingham please?

[5]

4. Joanne returns to England on 2 September.

[4]

5. Joanne loves swimming.

[2]

6. Best wishes.

[2] [Total

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Page 212 Interpreter (Mark Scheme): Basic Writing 1990 MARK SCHEME Marks will be awarded for an acceptable and appropriate conveying of the message as indicated below. N.B. / . . . . . . ./ = 1 point of information for 1 mark. 1. Thanks / for the letter.

[2]

2. July / 6 / is fine / for Marie-Hélène's / visit.

[5]

3. When / does she / arrive / in Birmingham / please ?

[5]

4. Joanne returns / to England / on 2 / September.

[4]

5. Joanne loevs / swimming.

[2]

6. Best wishes.

[2] [Total

20]

Marks will also be awarded for grammaticality on a scale of 0 - 4 Total mark = 24

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Reporter (Text): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1990 LE COURRIER DU MIDI-PYRENEES Mardi 17 avril Lescar: Enfants retrouvés sains et saufs Fin heureuse à l'attente angoissée de M. et Mme Bergeron de Lescar (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) dont les 3 enfants, Marius (6 ans), Laure (4 ans) et Lucille (2 ans) avaient disparu dans l'après-midi de vendredi dernier. Depuis 3 jours, les recherches de la police avaient complètement perturbé le calme de la petite commune située à quelques kilomètres à l'ouest de Pau. La mère des enfants, institutrice à Pau, raconte: ''J'avais laissé un moment les enfants à la maison pour passer chez une voisine, 5-10 minutes au maximum. Quand je suis revenue, la porte d'entrée était grande ouverte mais aucune trace des enfants. Mon mari rentrait justement de son travail. On a commencé à les chercher immédiatement. On a fait tous les jardins et les champs des alentours, mais en vain: personne ne les avait vus. A 8 heures, nous avons décidé de faire appel à la police''. "Quel soulagement de les avoir retrouvés, fatigués et affamés . . . mais vivants!" s'est exclamé M. Bergeron. "C'est M. Bosc, maçon à Orthez, qui a découvert les 3 enfants dans le chantier d'une maison en construction, lundi matin: "En principe, le chantier est inaccessible au public. Je ne sais pas comment ils ont réussi à y entrer. J'ai ouvert les portes du chantier, a-t-il dit, et j'ai remarqué que l'une des portes de la maison était retombee. En m'approchant, j'ai entendu quelqu'un qui pleurait. J'ai réaliseé tout de suite qu'il s'agissait des 3 gamins disparus. J'ai enfoncé la porte à coups de pied et je les ai trouvés à l'intérieur, tremblants de peur et de froid." Après 2 heures à la clinique St-Eloi à Pau, les enfants avaient dejà repris des forces grâce à un bon repas. Dans la voiture qui les ramenait chez eux, les 3 enfants dormaient d'un sommeil de plomb.

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Reporter (Examiner's Aide-memoire): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1990 MARK SCHEME

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Reporter (Candidate's Aide-memoire): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1990

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Reporter (Conversation): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1990 CANDIDATE'S BRIEF Task 2: The examiner will start a conversation with you about two of the topics listed below. YOUR LOCAL ENVIRONMENT SCHOOL AND WORK HOLIDAYS LEISURE

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Reporter/Conversation (Mark Sheet): Higher Speaking (Part 2) 1991

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