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 sacrificed in the pursuit of ambition. These problems are not separate; they are deeply interconnected. Unless we address them together, we risk systematically undermining students’ chances of success.

Why students underperform in GCSE writing

When I mark GCSE writing, I rarely think, “This student just doesn’t know enough vocabulary.” Far more often, I think, “This student knows things, but cannot - what I call - control them.”

In real exam scripts, this lack of control shows itself very clearly. Verb endings collapse under pressure, tenses are mixed unintentionally, high-frequency structures become inaccurate and errors multiply as the response goes on.

A typical example might look like this:

Ich habe letztes Jahr nach Spanien gefahren und ich habe viel Spaß und ich esse Paella jeden Tag. (Last year I travelled to Spain [wrong auxilliary verb] and I have lots of fun and I eat paella every day.)

The student is clearly ambitious. There is a time marker, an attempt at the perfect tense, an opinion and some added detail. However, the message is undermined by a lack of grammatical control (accuracy): bin gefahren, hatte viel Spaß, and consistent tense use are all missing.

The intended meaning would require:

Ich bin letztes Jahr nach Spanien gefahren und hatte viel Spaß und habe jeden Tag Paella gegessen.(Last year I travelled to Spain, had lots of fun and ate paella every day.)

Examiners don't reward marks for spotting ambition. They reward marks for successful communication and accurate language. Ambition only helps when it is supported by control.

What I believe works better is a narrower but deeper approach. Students need fewer structures, practised more often and in more contexts. Ten sentences that students can manipulate accurately will always outperform fifty phrases they half-remember under exam pressure of any GCSE exam board.

The danger of over-scaffolding in GCSE preparation

We all understand why we scaffold. Writing is cognitively demanding and as teachers we want students to feel successful. However, I believe over-scaffolding creates a false sense of security.

When students always write with sentence starters, model paragraphs, sentence builders / substitution tables and pre-written chunks, they are rarely required to make real linguistic decisions for themselves. The thinking has already been done.

Then the exam arrives. The scaffold disappears, cognitive load spikes and accuracy collapses. This pattern appears every year.

In lessons, a student might confidently produce something like:

Meiner Meinung nach ist meine Schule sehr gut, weil sie modern ist und die Lehrer freundlich sind. (In m y opinion, my school is very good because it is modern and the teachers are friendly.)

But this response was created with sentence starters on the board, adjectives provided and connectives highlighted. In the exam, the same student writes:

Meiner Meinung nach meine Schule ist sehr gut weil modern und Lehrer freundlich. (In my opinion my school is very good because modern and teachers friendly.)

The issue here is not a lack of knowledge. It is dependency. Students have learned to rely on external support rather than internalised control.

For this reason, I believe we need to rethink what we scaffold. Scaffolding should fade deliberately, focus on thinking rather than copying and build independence at sentence level. That might mean removing sentence starters but keeping verbs, removing adjectives but keeping structures, or asking students to adapt language rather than reproduce it wholesale.

What “complex language” actually means at GCSE

One of the most persistent myths in GCSE MFL is that complex language means long sentences and always some kind of sophisticated vocabulary. However, that simply is not true.

Complexity is about control, not length. Ambition is valuable and some exam boards may reward the attempt, but when we consider language learning beyond GCSE, this approach is not enough. In my view, true best practice focuses on controlled, accurate use of language.

A sentence such as:

Obwohl ich hätte gehen sollen, ich bin geblieben weil es war interessant. (Although I should have gone. I stayed because it was interesting.)

is not impressive if it is inaccurate. In this case, the intended meaning is clear, but the German word order and verb forms are incorrect. Often, such phrases are memorised by rote and inserted into writing to appear “complex,” yet students do not truly understand them, nor can they use or manipulate them correctly. Yes, this approach might be sufficient if the goal is simply to pass the exam - provided the phrase or structure can be recalled accurately - but in terms of genuine language learning, it falls short.

By contrast:

Ich habe nicht nur Sport gemacht, sondern auch neue Freunde kennengelernt. (I not only did sport, but also made new friends.)

is more impressive precisely because it is controlled. The structure is clear, verb forms are accurate and the language has been successfully manipulated.

Some of the most effective complexity in GCSE writing comes from relatively simple features used well: correct tense changes, justified opinions, negatives and accurate word order after connectives. For example:

Früher habe ich Fußball gespielt, aber jetzt habe ich keine Zeit, weil ich viel lernen muss. (I used to play football, but now I don't havr any time because I have to study more.)

This is not “fancy” language, but it is controlled and that is what earns marks.

I tell students explicitly: “Complex means you can control it under pressure.” If they cannot explain why a sentence works, they probably should not be using it in the exam.

Bringing it all together in the classroom

I believe strong GCSE writing grows out of sentence-level mastery, the deliberate removal of scaffolds and explicit teaching about what examiners actually reward.

In practical terms, this means prioritising strategies such as rewriting the same sentence in multiple tenses, error-spotting using examiner-style mistakes and setting narrow but deep writing tasks. It also means introducing timed writing with no support much earlier in KS4 than we often feel comfortable with.

Most importantly, I stopped praising writing that merely looks impressive but would not survive real exam conditions.

What this means for KS3: prevention, not repair

I believe GCSE writing success is largely decided long before Year 10. By the time students reach KS4, habits around accuracy, independence and risk-taking are already deeply embedded.

When KS3 writing is dominated by heavy scaffolding, one-off creative tasks and a tolerance of inaccuracy, KS4 teachers are forced into repair mode rather than refinement. At KS3, students are often praised for length rather than accuracy, encouraged to “have a go” without correction, given writing frames that do all the thinking and moved on too quickly from insecure structures.

Over time, this creates damaging beliefs: that writing is about filling gaps, that longer is always better and that mistakes do not really matter. These beliefs are extremely difficult to undo later.

What I believe KS3 should prioritise instead

First, KS3 writing should focus on sentence-level mastery rather than extended tasks. A smaller number of high-frequency structures should be practised repeatedly across topics and constantly rewritten, adapted and manipulated. Rather than asking for a full paragraph about school, I would much rather students can confidently adapt:

Ich mag meine Schule, weil sie interessant ist. (I like my school because it is interesting.)

into different forms:

• Ich mochte meine Schule, weil sie interessant war.(I liked my school because it was interesting.)

• Ich werde meine Schule mögen, weil sie interessant sein wird.(I will like my school because it will be interesting.)

• Ich mag meine Schule nicht, weil sie langweilig ist.(I don’t like my school because it is boring.)

This builds exactly the control GCSE writing demands.

Second, scaffolds at KS3 should be temporary and visible, not permanent and invisible. This means modelling a sentence, practising together and then removing support quickly. By Year 9, students should regularly experience unsupported writing, even if it is brief.

Third, grammatical accuracy should become a non-negotiable habit. KS3 is where accuracy norms are set. This does not require endless red-pen correction, but it does require revisiting the same errors, analysing mistakes as a class and asking students to explain why one sentence works better than another regardless of their prior attainment or PP / SEND / EAL or HA status - same high expectations for all.

For example:

❌ Ich spiele Fußball gestern.(I play football yesterday.)

✔ Ich habe gestern Fußball gespielt.(Yesterday I played football.)

Students should expect to explain why the second sentence is better.

Finally, we need to redefine what challenge looks like at KS3. Challenge is not longer writing, more vocabulary or greater creativity. Real challenge lies in manipulating known language accurately, using one tense correctly in multiple contexts and justifying opinions clearly. A Year 8 student who can accurately write:

Letztes Wochenende habe ich meine Freunde getroffen, weil ich Zeit hatte.

is far better prepared for GCSE than one who produces a page of inaccurate writing.

Why this matters for GCSE outcomes

When KS3 gets this right, KS4 becomes about refinement rather than re-teaching, confidence rather than panic and independence rather than dependency. Students who are used to writing without scaffolds, valuing accuracy and controlling a "limited" repertoire of language (less really well is more) are far more resilient under exam pressure.

Final thought

I believe GCSE writing does not need to be “fixed” in Year 11. It needs to be built carefully from Year 7. When KS3 prioritises sentence control, fading scaffolds and accuracy as a habit, GCSE writing stops feeling like a cliff edge and starts to feel like the natural outcome of a well-designed curriculum.