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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
Only Words?: The Unexpected Challenges of Teaching Vocabulary
This blog post was written by Isabelle Jones. “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”....
Silvia Bastow
Jan 7, 20244 min read
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