It's Scheiße, merde and mierda from me! 💩 💩 💩

I agree it is about bi-lingual pupils at GCSE. Having said that my half Spanish granddaughter is about to start a degree course in English at a Spanish University. Interestingly her choice of compulsory second and third languages was either French and Latin or Arabic and Ancient Greek.

MartavTaurus

nanna8

Here you get extra credit for getting a foreign language qualification at VCE ( our version of A level ). It helps get you into uni, extra marks. One of my daughters got an almost perfect score because she had German as one of her subjects.

👍
That's interesting.

It's not extra credit though. An ATAR score of 90 (ATAR is what the universities use) does not mean you got 90%. It roughly means "Your overall academic performance placed you in the top 10% of the relevant population.”

States differ in how they collect this score too. NSW use classwork, the school exam (which precedes the state exam) and 50% comes from the state exam.

I've only had time for a little read on these extra score points in various countries, so I don't know the full picture.

Regardless of all that, I would have thought that a pupil who has studied a modern foreign language at least to GCSE shows an additional dimension to their skill set? Plus of course a grasp of a different culture.

I too love to hear the Welsh language. My DH was Welsh. When I was introduced to his ancient grandmother. She said to me “Do you go to chapel, girl? I said “No I’m afraid I don’t”. She never spoke another word of English in my presence - it was always Welsh. I thought, “perhaps I should learn a few words of Welsh”, so I bought a Teach Yourself book. HA!!🤣. The irony is that the only other person who spoke Welsh in DH’s family at that time was his mother - her daughter, and none of them went to chapel! DH laughingly said she had me marked out as a Godless English heathen from the get-go. I don’t know what was considered worse - the Godless or the English but I was willing to hazard a guess! I still love to hear the language though and I can get my tongue around most place names now.
Pardon the digression!

Isn't marking all done on percentages? The top so many percent get a grade 9, the next say 10% get grade 8 and so on?

When I marked for various exam boards we were never told what the mark boundaries were for obvious reasons. Admittedly this was many years ago.

MartavTaurus

I've only had time for a little read on these extra score points in various countries, so I don't know the full picture.

Regardless of all that, I would have thought that a pupil who has studied a modern foreign language at least to GCSE shows an additional dimension to their skill set? Plus of course a grasp of a different culture.

It does. But one way or another - the US does it differently again - countries are looking for those at the top of their generation to send on to university.

My oldest went to university in 1993 and a foreign language at O Grade (Scotland) was still a mandatory requirement then. He wasn’t very good at French and we paid for extra tutoring just to get him through it.

I hear from numerous friends in academia and those with children of university age that MFLs are gradually being sidelined. Universities are cutting back on the courses they offer in languages or even closing courses altogether. Part of the rationale is that the world is using more and more English and that computers and AI mean that anyone can now easily access translations so actual human speaking the languages aren’t required.

I am not skilled in MFL (ancient O Level French) and have no idea of the truth of that, but it seems very sad to sideline languages and their associated cultures.

My DGD2 who is half Swedish got a grade 8 for Spanish!

My DGDs' school used to offer French and German at both GCSE and A level; sadly they only offer Spanish at GCSE now, and no language at A level.