Zero choice in Junior Cycle modern foreign language exams

Sir, – I am sure I am not the only language teacher to have seen disappointing Junior Cycle results on October 18th. I am also not the only language teacher to have voiced my frustrations about the new Junior Cycle language exams during the recent PPLI Languages Connect Summit.

We are now six years into the new Junior Cycle curriculum in modern foreign languages, which was intended to revolutionise language teaching, make languages more accessible to students, focus more on meaningful tasks in the classroom and ensure that students were better prepared for languages in the real world.

We are also several years into new wellbeing specifications, and yet the Junior Cycle modern foreign language exams still lack one crucial element essential to students’ wellbeing – choice!

It is baffling beyond belief that exams in Junior Cycle modern foreign languages don’t even offer students the choice between option (a) and option (b) in reading comprehensions and written expressions. The Leaving Cert (which people still believe requires reform) actually offers students those choices and ensures that students can demonstrate their language learning by choosing the exam task(s) which best suit their abilities and interests. Not only do Leaving Cert exams provide the option between higher level and ordinary level papers, they also offer students a choice of reading comprehensions and a choice of written pieces. The Junior Cycle common exams in modern foreign languages do none of this.

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As language teachers, we differentiate in our classrooms, providing choice, to cater for students’ individual abilities and interests. Amazingly, the Leaving Cert exams in French, German and Spanish still do likewise, offering students choice and the ability to demonstrate their knowledge in whichever reading comprehensions and written pieces most appeal to them. The supposedly wonderful new Junior Cycle exams in French, Spanish and German, on the other hand, offer precisely zero choice.

Worse, they confuse students by asking some questions in English and some in the language being assessed, in a seemingly random selection of tasks, apparently designed to do nothing but cause confusion and anxiety.

It is shameful that our young people, who have demonstrated so much strength and resilience over the last few years, are being deprived of the element of choice which they are given in the senior cycle exams. There is zero point in a revolutionary new Junior Cycle curriculum when the exam at the end of those three years of study does not give students the opportunity to demonstrate their learning in a meaningful way and does not offer students any elements of choice.

The new Junior Cycle modern foreign language exams are simply another example of “progress for the sake of progress”, with no consideration for students’ needs and actual lived experiences. – Yours, etc,

KATHARINA GREINER,

Gorey, Co Wexford.