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"Reflections of a language teacher.
Always learning."
Why students underperform in GCSE writing – and how over-scaffolding and misunderstandings about “complex language” make it worse
From a GCSE examiner’s point of view, I believe most students do not underperform in writing because they lack ideas, motivation or effort. Much more often, they underperform because they have been taught a version of GCSE writing that does not reflect how writing is actually assessed. Year after year, the same issues surface in exam papers. Students rely heavily on scaffolds , they misunderstand what “complex language” really means and accuracy at sentence level is sacr
Silvia Bastow
Jan 47 min read
Translation – tangled, rock climbing, bubble, mosaic, ping-pong….
My students don’t actually realise that I teach them a ‘foreign’ language through a ‘foreign’ language. As I am not English, speak with...
Silvia Bastow
Jan 1, 20215 min read
Achieving grade 9 in the 150 word extended writing task
Following the amazing response to my post on ‘Preparing students for GCSE extended writing task’ (the post had almost 900 views on the...
Silvia Bastow
Dec 14, 20202 min read
Preparing students for GCSE extended writing task
On this post I will be focussing on how I am preparing my students for their writing skill; on development of broad linguistic knowledge,...
Silvia Bastow
Dec 9, 20204 min read
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