Having taught the old GCSE and now the new one (with controlled assessment), my view is that the new one is far easier and much more accessible for non-native Mandarin speakers.
Being allowed to pre-prepare your work, use a dictionary and word-process one piece of writing are all fairly major concessions to non-native speakers in my view.
However my own experience has been that schools would like to offer GCSE in Mandarin before it is fully embedded in the curriculum, so students have less years to accumulate the grounding in the language before embarking on the Gcse than they do in, say, French.
(In my own experience, 5 years for French, vs 2 for Chinese)
Even if the rate of progress for French in KS3 is fairly slow, there is a level of familiarity which cannot be achieved in a rapid GCSE course, and this means that good students never feel very confident with their Chinese language skills.
I have tried to mitigate somewhat by offering 2 skills only (no characters) but this is horrible for students and teachers and largely removes the element (characters) which students find most interesting and is so completely linked to Chinese culture that it feels wrong to take it away.
Penny Lynch
Argoed High School
Sent from my iPad
I have heard a common complaint with a Chinese GCSE is that the examination format is the same as other (e.g. European), easier foreign languages, making it very very difficult for those without a strong pre-GCSE Mandarin background to achieve a higher grade, the failing of which may result in their inability to access certain HE institutions. This makes me believe that the focus has to be either in ensuring that Mandarin is offered progressively from an early age (my preference anyway) or that the GCSE format for Mandarin should change.
I'm no expert so would welcome your thoughts / opinions.
Cennydd John
UK Tel: +44 7751 102 504
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