[Giant]

(Original post by ForensicShoe)
Don't know why this chap has been negged for this. Perfectly sensible.

Mum was telling me about how when she did her O-level French she walked into a room and talked to an interviewer for anything up to 10 minutes in French, answering his questions, etc.

When I did my French speaking three years ago I read out a pre-written memorised speech about my holiday for 5 minutes followed by a couple of questions on a topic I was given while in the exam room.

Haha, that's what I was thinking. Like you, I based my knowledge both from stories from my ancient french teacher (I think she must be pushing 60) and my older cousins and I compared those descriptions to what I experienced when I did my GCSE French

That's why I chose to do A Level French, I love the language so much that I need to be challenged in it for it to be sufficiently rewarding.

Thanks for the support

[Plums&Peaches]

(Original post by a.partridge)
are you joking or do you actually think this?

(Original post by KingMessi)
Evidence? And it could be argued that this doesn't show that we're getting smarter, just better at passing exams.

No not really hence that face <--

[ForensicShoe]

(Original post by Giant)
Haha, that's what I was thinking. Like you, I based my knowledge both from stories from my ancient french teacher (I think she must be pushing 60) and my older cousins and I compared those descriptions to what I experienced when I did my GCSE French

That's why I chose to do A Level French, I love the language so much that I need to be challenged in it for it to be sufficiently rewarding.

Thanks for the support

No problem.

Hmm, you were most likely negged by current students of GCSE French who got a bit hissy at you having a go at their prized qualification

[plimsolls]

(Original post by plimsolls)
I see.

Quoting myself...

[Plums&Peaches]

(Original post by plimsolls)
Quoting myself...

I wondered...

[Rainingshame]

(Original post by `God)
^Title^

This is my opinion:

1) GCSE's have not become easier, it's just that people are becoming more aware of it's importance so more people are getting better grades, this does not mean the exams have actually been degraded but people doing better in them.
2) The hindsight argument, university students saying A-levels were a walk in the park, A-level students saying GCSE's were a walk in the park and so on.

I think - compared to 6 yeas ago - GCSE's have actually become harder, in previous years there was coursework where the candidate can virtually get a family member to assist them and achieve A* in 40% of their English Language grade, a lot of subjects had coursework. However, the start of this school year (year 11's) coursework's have been scrapped and now we do controlled assessments in exam conditions.

Controlled Assessment started for year 10's two year ago(my year) and yes they have become easier, as you progress through the exams the difficulty steadily decreases and in classes where we started with the latest past papers and made our way to the oldest our marks stayed about the same. When we did the newest again our achievements were much better. The hindsight argument is invalid. People say that it is easier than A-Levels not that it is easy. People who do say it's easy ( like myself) do not compare it to A-Levels but instead state their experience ( around 16 hours of revision total for 9 GCSE's attaining 5A* and 4 As with straight A*s in exams for me).

[Rarrgh]

(Original post by just george)
I would say the science exams have become easier though, because the questions lead you through each step of what to do, whereas in the past you wouldv been asked more open questions. I just think that the exams now dont really test complete understanding, more your ability to memorise a few details or steps etc..

I do A level maths and physics and I've been helping my sister with GCSE maths and physics and it was trickier than when I did it, also the newer past papers have more challenging questions than the old ones. But again it's really down to who is doing the exam as everyone understands thing differently.

[a.partridge]

(Original post by Plums&Peaches)
No not really hence that face <--

good that's going to save me writing a huuuuuuuuge rant ;p

[Plums&Peaches]

(Original post by a.partridge)
good that's going to save me writing a huuuuuuuuge rant ;p

look around you at all those chavs. definitely smarter

[a.partridge]

(Original post by Plums&Peaches)
look around you at all those chavs. definitely smarter

ancient greeks had nothing on jeremy kyle

[Giant]

(Original post by ForensicShoe)
No problem.

Hmm, you were most likely negged by current students of GCSE French who got a bit hissy at you having a go at their prized qualification

Haha yeh probably

[Gthreadgold]

(Original post by just george)
Fair point, but perhaps without the resits your school wouldnt have put you into exams you clearly werent ready for? Resits have just given the school the ability to enter you in to more exams then you have a use for as an excuse to make them get higher up in league tables..

Just to make it clear though, i'm not completely against resits, but i am against unlimited resits, because it makes it much harder to distinguish those who should be getting the top grades and those who shouldnt. (sorry i dont really know how to word it, hope you get what i mean)

And ok to address your first point, i got a C in GCSE french. I cant speak french whatsoever anymore, and i was shocking at it at the time. I got a lot of help with the coursework, and memorised a lot of stuff for the speaking test, and then probably did pretty bad at the exam. But iv been given a C grade, which makes it look like i can actually do something vaguely useful in french, which i can't. When my parents did languages at this level, they were expected to be able to translate a page of writing into english, and everything was tested in the exam.. no help with coursework or anything like that. I would say that has got one hell of a lot easier

I definitely understand where you're coming from but languages are a bit of a funny example to work with. For one, they're a basic a lot of universities look for now and gcse is a level where it has to be accessible for many different abilities and so it can't be that challenging because it's only GCSE. Secondly, if you go on to study languages at A Level, like I have done, you understand they can't teach you that much because there just isn't the interest or the time when you're doing your Maths, English, science and your options.

So it seems that languages at GCSE are quite a bad example for "easier" GCSEs. I mean, they are easy, I agree! You're supposed to learn all sorts and I really knew nothing's despite getting a really high A. Complicated isn't it, argh :P

[a.partridge]

http://www.burtongrammar.co.uk/categ...s/1968-maths-o

looks harder than the gcse maths I helped my sister with...


I find the problem with gcse and A level maths is the questions get so repetitive you don't actually need to understand it... it's more like 'oh it's this question again with different numbers' I have not looked at the same quantity of these old papers but they seem to be a bit more individual like a university exam

[`God]

I can't really talk about how languages were back in the day (haha) but I definitely know that my friends who are doing languages get A* in the controlled assessment but when it comes to the exam they get C's and B's. I heard that languages GCSE is all about memorising and very little to do with actually speaking and understanding the language.

[As_Dust_Dances_]

I would say that some subjects are easier than others, and at A level I find it unfair how the Ucas points system works based on this idea!

[Plums&Peaches]

(Original post by `God)
I can't really talk about how languages were back in the day (haha) but I definitely know that my friends who are doing languages get A* in the controlled assessment but when it comes to the exam they get C's and B's. I heard that languages GCSE is all about memorising and very little to do with actually speaking and understanding the language.

It depends on the exam board. Edexcel iGCSE was quite good at assessing skills whereas iGCSE chem was a joke. All memorising and learning past mark schemes.

[As_Dust_Dances_]

(Original post by `God)
I can't really talk about how languages were back in the day (haha) but I definitely know that my friends who are doing languages get A* in the controlled assessment but when it comes to the exam they get C's and B's. I heard that languages GCSE is all about memorising and very little to do with actually speaking and understanding the language.

At A level it gets a lot harder than GCSE where you're given pieces of text to translate from english to german and vice versa!

[just george]

(Original post by Gthreadgold)
I definitely understand where you're coming from but languages are a bit of a funny example to work with. For one, they're a basic a lot of universities look for now and gcse is a level where it has to be accessible for many different abilities and so it can't be that challenging because it's only GCSE. Secondly, if you go on to study languages at A Level, like I have done, you understand they can't teach you that much because there just isn't the interest or the time when you're doing your Maths, English, science and your options.

So it seems that languages at GCSE are quite a bad example for "easier" GCSEs. I mean, they are easy, I agree! You're supposed to learn all sorts and I really knew nothing's despite getting a really high A. Complicated isn't it, argh :P

Okay, fair point, tbh i just had bad experience in languages at my supposed "language college" so its easy for me to pick on.. But if you look at the sciences, il give you my personal experience.. i got 100/100 in my triple science biology module, even though i missed off the last page (didnt see it.. wont do that again for sure ) .. a lot of people got full marks in various science exams.

How can anyone differentiate how good at science anyone is if half the class gets full marks? (ok over exaggeration but you get what i mean? ..and for the record, i go to my local state school, nothing private or anything )
Also, i dont think they tested very much on understanding, more on memory work. I think if it was more a test of understanding, then people who did well wouldnt find the jump to A level so bad, because they would have done well because they actually understand what they are doing..

(Original post by Rarrgh)
I do A level maths and physics and I've been helping my sister with GCSE maths and physics and it was trickier than when I did it, also the newer past papers have more challenging questions than the old ones. But again it's really down to who is doing the exam as everyone understands thing differently.

okay, well my experiences have been up to 2 years ago when i took my GCSEs, so i guess i cant really comment on what they've done since then..

[Gthreadgold]

(Original post by just george)
Okay, fair point, tbh i just had bad experience in languages at my supposed "language college" so its easy for me to pick on.. But if you look at the sciences, il give you my personal experience.. i got 100/100 in my triple science biology module, even though i missed off the last page (didnt see it.. wont do that again for sure ) .. a lot of people got full marks in various science exams.

How can anyone differentiate how good at science anyone is if half the class gets full marks? (ok over exaggeration but you get what i mean? ..and for the record, i go to my local state school, nothing private or anything )
Also, i dont think they tested very much on understanding, more on memory work. I think if it was more a test of understanding, then people who did well wouldnt find the jump to A level so bad, because they would have done well because they actually understand what they are doing..



okay, well my experiences have been up to 2 years ago when i took my GCSEs, so i guess i cant really comment on what they've done since then..

Yeah I understand you there. Schools are becoming more like "exam factories" as they say now, rather than there to teach you knowledge and important things, really.
I'm so jealous about your science results! Our school was absolutely dire at science, like seriously bad! AQA printed the answers out on one of our modules too which was uh, really stupid?

I agree with your point on A Levels completely! My GCSEs, if I were to post them on here, people would say we're fine, relatively good but I wasn't proud of them and I still aren't. However, I didn't find the jump to A Level to be a big deal whereas a lot of my A* friends did, which just shows that GCSEs are a bit of a faulty system really. I agree completely

[alittlepixiedust-]

They're a lot easier than they should be.
The generation above us were expected to know about the subject overall, almost inside out whereas we are spoonfed to pass the exams and know only what could be in the exams (very limited). It may seem difficult to us at the time but, in comparison to what our parents had to study, it's a lot easier. For my German GCSE I was a very basic speaker, a rubbish writer (I wrote 'Hallo' in my writing exam and that was all), guessed my way through the listening and reading exams and still got a B. Bit of a joke really, I was expecting a fail. Also, fell asleep midway through my English Lit exam (I tend to get bored writing anything and give up very easily, woops) and I got an A. Joooooke. Also the Edexcel Maths exams were so simplistic, I felt like I could've done them a few years earlier than year 11. Nothing really tests your knowledge at GCSEs, it tests your ability to remember things.