Soll das ein Witz sein?

Somehow it's been 15 years since I sat an A Level (how did that happen??). But I guess it works like this: I sit an exam, the examiner awards me 70%. It's been decided that A*s will be awarded to the top, say, 15% of students in that subject that year (figures entirely fictional), so some years 70% might be enough for an A*, other years not. So yes, the nationwide standard that year will affect your individual grade.

If I understand statistics correctly - and it's highly possible I don't, even though my A Levels were in French, German and maths! - then the problem with German A Level is that there's a disproportionately high number of native speakers taking the exam (17%, says the article) because German isn't that popular a subject among non-native speakers.

Gibson, in the case of an essay, yes, ability to think and present your thoughts intelligently ought to come into it. But that's not really how the Modern Languages A Levels are designed; they're aimed at learners of the language. We took exams in listening, speaking, reading and writing and these were marked largely on our command of the language. You'd expect a native speaker to do better in all of those areas. If there was an essay it was a very small component part of the writing exam, and it was largely to show off our language skills rather than ability to think.

Can you not edit a post from a smart phone?

To add: this is a running grumble in schools because lots of native speakers will take a Modern Languages A Level as an 'easy option'. Some will do it without even attending any classes just to add a fourth A Level to their CV. I don't really mind this; after all, if you speak German then there's nothing wrong with having a qualification to prove it, but the argument against is that these A Level courses aren't designed for people who already speak the language and therefore it's a waste of their time to study them and puts the rest of the students at a disadvantage.

#3: no, you can't

I've just reread #4 and worry that it might sound snotty or aggressive. It's not supposed to. Add a pleasant ton of voice, please :)

I think you're expecting too much of the Modern Languages A Level exams! :) It would be very hard for a native speaker to do 'badly' in an exam aimed at learners (obviously there will be exceptions: lazy native speakers who have done no prep, students who have been brought up speaking the language at home but actually have a ropey command of the grammar and structure, etc). Especially in the speaking and listening exams, where a native speaker could probably hope to get 90-100%. Obviously in the written exam there will be less of a gulf between native and learner, for the reasons already discussed. But that's only one component part of the exam; if the native speaker has struggled in the written exam, their listening, reading and speaking will probably make up for it.

At university it's a completely different ball game -- there were native speakers in my French and German classes, too -- but all I can say is that there is a huge gulf in standard between A Level and degree level. A German native speaker who can ace an A Level might not ace a degree course, where they will have to have informed opinions about politics, culture etc, and the intelligence to express those views, and can't just rely on fluency to get them the top grades.

As for 10% (or thereabouts) getting A*s every year regardless of quality, I don't have an opinion, and I don't know what the alternatives are (how is the Abitur graded?). The debate surrounding A Level exams getting easier is another one that's been rumbling on for decades ;)

(I realise that you didn't come up with is, so obviously I'm not criticising you but)

Gibson, I've just seen your #6. I wouldn't want to be seen to be defending the UK's grading system, because I don't even know whether I'm right in suggesting that 10% get the top grades year after year, and because I don't know anything about alternative grading systems (I certainly didn't understand Norbert's post!). My point is simply that I think the German A Level exam is probably easier than you think it is, and therefore it would be hard for a native speaker to turn in a 'bad' exam and not be entitled to a top grade!

Thank you. But if the exam is reasonably simple, it shouldn't be too hard for any either linguistically gifted or hardworking student to get a good grade, should it? The complaint mentioned in the OP only makes sense - if I understand the whole thing - if the English students are disadvantaged, which they shouldn't be by an easy (ish) exam.

Sigh, I hate writing on a smartphone. By the time I formulate a reply I'm always one post behind.

I guess the reasoning behind a Gaussian grading system (whatever that is and if indeed that's what we've got in the UK!) is that the basic standard isn't expected to change so very greatly from one year to the next. So 2017's intake will probably be just as good as 2016's. Obviously if everyone does really badly (2+2=5) then there won't be many higher grades. Indeed there weren't many As the year I took A Level Maths. (Although the exam board will then have to investigate whether their paper was considerably harder than the previous year's. Which is where the debate about exam papers getting 'easier' comes from.)

Two posts behind, this time!

Norbert, no I didn't, sorry...

Gibson, I don't want to devalue the German A Level by suggesting it's 'easy', just that it's designed for a learner so a native speaker really ought to find it easy. In a speaking exam the gulf between very worst native speaker and the very best learner is still going to be enormous...

Yes, lots of comments on the Guardian article make that point ('shock horror... Germans speak better German') - although as some of the other comments point out the real news story is that this year the exam boards might actually react to this by making allowances, ie by awarding more higher grades.

I know how you feel - I've been known to get out of bed, march to my study and turn on the computer in the middle of the night because the tablet (and even that's bigger and a bit easier than a smart phone) touch screen was driving me crazy. I'm ten times as fast typing on a real keyboard.

Ich gebe zu, der Bericht im Guardian hatte für mich beim Lesen ein Geschmäckle von Anti-Immigranten-Meinungsmache: Da haut man in die gleiche Kerbe wie die "Einwanderer klauen uns die Jobs"-Schreier.

I'm surprised that everyone's so surprised by the original article, the basic premise of which is: the school language courses have been designed for people learning a foreign language, but as a percentage of the students taking said course are already native speakers, they consistently outperform their fellow students, despite best efforts by the teachers to mark fairly and objectively ("can this child *think*, as well as string a good sentence together in German?") and the best efforts by exam boards to set exams that push native speakers without making it too difficult for learners. This year the exam board is going to award more high marks in *German* to make allowances for this fact.

This all seems self explanatory, and the fact that so many of you find it surprising suggests that perhaps the Abitur is a bit more rigorous than the A Level...!

None of this is actually *news* or even newsworthy, this was also the case 15 years ago when the native speaker in my German class picked up an easy A Level, but the point of the Guardian article *now* in 2017 is that the number of 'learners' of German has dropped so low that the proportion of native speakers on German A Level courses is now much higher, 17%, and therefore it's much harder for a very competent and talented 'learner' to pick up an A*, if indeed only the top 10% are awarded the top marks (we still don't know if this is true or what the figures are). I had no problem getting an A (the top mark then), but the article suggests that now, 15 years later, I might do, because the ratio of learners to native speakers is radically different. (The article makes it clear that the situation is different in French and Spanish, where there's a bigger number of applicants altogether, and a smaller​ number of native speakers).

I disagree entirely with Norbert's final point, which might well be several posts ago now (!) in that I don't think anyone - in the article at least - is criticising the native speakers for sitting the exam or for doing well in it. No one is suggesting that they're to blame for taking the course in the first place, just that this year, in the face of dwindling numbers of German 'learners', something needs to be done to acknowledge the abilities of the top 'learners', and the way to do this is to have a higher number of top marks than would normally be the case in other subjects. Therefore the 17% (give or take a few lazy ones, and ones who happen to be fluent in two languages but not actually very competent linguists etc) still get their A*s, but so do the top percentage of the learners. I really really really don't think there's an anti immigrant slant to this article, not least because it's *only* talking about German, and German speakers in schools wouldn't be considered 'immigrants', in the same way that English speakers in German schools (the Dragons of this world) wouldn't be considered immigrants there. Most of the comments below the article are taking the 'shock horror, Germans speak German better than we do' line. If the article were on the Polish A Level, and there was one on the Guardian not that long ago, then I imagine the comments below the line might well have a different flavour.

So Germans living in the UK are not immigrants? Maybe I used incorrect terminology and should have referred to guest workers instead? I am not going to speculate what motivated the publication of this article, but my impression was that anti-immigrant bias was part of it. Other people may well have a different impression.

#21 So Germans living in the UK are not immigrants? Maybe I used incorrect terminology and should have referred to guest workers instead?

#20 - the proportion of native speakers on German A Level courses is now much higher, 17%, and therefore it's much harder for a very competent and talented 'learner' to pick up an A*, if indeed only the top 10% are awarded the top marks

#25 - Yes *redface* what a blunder, I was not thinking! Of course you are right, 40 % or so. The proportion makes the problem even clearer.

Re #25 I confess that at this point, I am totally confused about UK terminology when it comes to immigration. I thought "ex-pat" is a colloquial term of no legal consequence. So if I understand correctly, a Pole residing in the UK long-term is an immigrant, while a German in the exact same situation is not, though they are both from EU countries. I would have thought UK law affords them the same status. What is the legal status of the children from #25? Are they simply UK citizens born abroad?

Agree with all the comments re immigrant vs ex pat, that was the point I was trying to make -- people don't generally consider Germans to be 'immigrants', even if they are by the dictionary definition. And a lot of German speaking teenagers in British schools will actually be British citizens, probably with one German parent and one British.

Pipoer makes a good point that I should have made earlier about the fact that A Levels are graded on a nationwide basis.

Norbert, in answer to your question about why this article was written in the first place, it comes from the Guardian Education section so it's presumably a targeted piece for people who are interested in education... I still don't think it's meant to be inflammatory. And it's not criticising the native speakers for taking the exam, it's just saying that more to marks need to be awarded to allow non native speakers the chance of a decent mark.

Isabell, I know the 17% and 10% figures don't work out, but the 10% figure was just made up...

Ob die A-Levels derzeit wirklich anhand einer Kurve, also relativ, bewertet werden, hat immer noch niemand hier herausgefunden, oder?

Nach Pippers Antwort gehe ich davon aus, dass zumindest fuer die A-Levels eine Gaus'sche Kurve (= Benotung relativ zu den Mitschuelern) in der Verteilung der Noten angestrebt wird. Sonst waere sie nicht runterbewertet worden.

Ich empfehle die Lektüre der S. 7 dieses im Guardian-Artikel verlinkten Dokuments:

You can't compare the school subject English with Modern Foreign Languages, they are completely different disciplines. And I can't believe that's any different in Germany, German vs English as a Modern Foreign Language, even if I suspect that the teaching of MFLs might be a bit more rigorous there.

And that's the crux of the issue: MFLs are taught to be just that, *foreign* languages, intended for children who are learning them from scratch, and not for children who acquired the language in infancy. As escoville said earlier in this thread, the exams are innapropiate(ly easy) for native speakers, just as an exam for native speakers would be inappropriate for learners. In Scotland there are apparently two A Level courses for Gaelic, one for native speakers and one for learners.

I would hesitate to call the current system unfair, as that would imply that I have a stronger opinion on this issue than I actually do, and also because I don't necessarily think native speakers should be excluded from A Level MFLs -- they're entitled to their easy grades and it's also very hard to assess what 'native speaker' actually means, if you were going to start drawing dividing lines. But I do think it's incredibly sad that, according to the article, children in the UK are being dissuaded from learning German because they see no hope of a top grade -- a grade they might need to get into a university of their choice. And these are children who might be extremely gifted at languages, but are never going to achieve native fluency at the age of 18. (This was me, 15 years ago.) Imagine if no German child could be awarded a top mark in English in Germany because ALL the top spots had been bagged by native English speaking children (if the Abitur were graded the same way as A Levels). That would be exceedingly discouraging for the German pupils, for whom the English as MFL was designed in the first place. So rather than do down the achievement of all those children who do speak the MFL fluently, you just increase the number of top grades to allow the brightest and most talented non native speakers to have their achievements acknowledged, too.

Also, to come back to your point earlier in the thread, which I can't italicize on my phone -

"There are many possible reasons students do well on a test like that. Some students may have a talent for languages, others may have rich parents that paid for tutors and took their offspring on vacation to foreign countries every summer, a third group has at least one foreign-born parent, yet others are the children of diplomats or military who grew up in foreign countries and learned the language there. Yet the article makes out just one of these as a source of trouble for the others"

--- but can't you see that there's such an enormous gulf in ability between the first two groups and the second, that the first two groups (the naturally talented and the ones with lots of foreign holidays and private tuition behind them) can never hope to bridge, especially not by the age of 18? And that the course and the exams can't really cater for the two completely different sets of children?

@39: Das meinte ich in #18. Man schreibt in der Oberstufe ja nicht mehr Diktate und ergänzt Lückentexte mit der richtigen grammatikalischen Form, sondern muss Gedichte, Romane und Theaterstücke interpretieren, Erörterungen zu Zeitungskommentaren schreiben oder was weiß ich. Und da tritt einerseits der Ausdruck in den Vordergrund, andererseits aber eben auch inhaltliche Aspekte. Und wenn ich in meinen Englisch-Oberstufenklausuren immer nur krasse Fehlinterpretationen abgeliefert hätte und meine Aufsätze genau am Thema vorbei geschrieben gewesen wären, hätte ich  eine noch so tolle Rechtschreibung, einen noch so wunderbaren Wortschatz und noch so überzeugende Grammatikkenntnisse haben können, die Gesamtnote wäre zwar nicht grottenschlecht, aber eben auch nicht im Bereich einer Eins oder auch einer Zwei plus gewesen, sondern im soliden Zweiminusbereich oder vielleicht noch darunter, da hätten durchaus Deutschmuttersprachler aus meinem Kurs, die bei der Textanalyse besser waren, bei brauchbarem Sprachtalent mit mir gleich oder an mir vorbei ziehen können. Ist in meinem Fall nicht passiert, weil meine Textinterpretationen zwar nicht großartig, aber immer noch passabel genug waren, dass zusammen mit meinem muttersprachlichen Sprachgefühl und meiner guten Rechtschreibung (und nochmal: die ist auch bei Muttersprachlern ja keineswegs selbstverständlich, auch nicht in der gymnasialen Oberstufe) immer noch eine sehr gute Gesamtnote herauskam.

dann hat mein Sohn strengere Lehrer - er hat es bei 1A Rechtschreibung / Grammatik und riesigem Wortschatz (liest wie ein Wahnsinniger) geschafft, popelige 6 Punkte (vier plus?) in einer Englischarbeit zu kriegen. Und das nicht, weil er nur eine halbe Seite plus Namen und Datum hingeschrieben hätte...

An meiner Hochschule gab es einen Dozenten, der Nichtmuttersprachlern für Übersetzungen ins Englische grundsätzlich kein "sehr gut" gegeben hat, da man seiner Meinung nach in der Fremdsprache niemals "sehr gute" Leistungen erbringen kann. Ich fand das einerseits nachvollziehbar, andererseits aber auch unfair, da andere Dozenten den englischen/spanischen/finnischen usw. Muttersprachlern im Kurs durchaus ein "sehr gut" für Übersetzungen ins Deutsche gegeben haben.

*g* Im neunten Schuljahr bekamen wir einen neuen Englischlehrer. Der fragte zwecks Kennenlernen der Reihe nach alle Schüler ab, was denn ihre bisherige Englischnote gewesen sei. Als ich dran war, antwortete ich wahrheitsgemäß "Eins". Daraufhin hob der Lehrer an, uns  allen zu erklären, dass eine Eins in der Fremdsprache ja kaum zu erreichen sei, dass das bei ihm ja quasi gar nicht vorkomme usw. In dieser Unterrichtsstunde musste ich dann auch noch einen Text aus dem Englischbuch vorlesen, wohl weil er dachte, dass ich, selbst wenn ich gut in Grammatik sein sollte und die Vokabeln immer artig gepaukt hätte, unmöglich eine gute Aussprache haben könne (er kannte halt auch seine Kollegen an dieser Schule, zey wör nott oll gutt). Tatsächlich war das einzige, das er kritisierte, meine Aussprache des urenglischen Wortes "Hawaii". Im weiteren Unterricht merkte er dann schnell, dass ich die Sprache tatsächlich recht gut beherrschte; als meine Mutter ihn beim Elternsprechtag aufsuchte, stellte sich dann heraus, dass er mit einer Engländerin verheiratet war, und das weitere Gespräch drehte sich weniger um mich (er hatte schon gemerkt, dass da wohl keine Probleme absehbar waren, ich war ja nicht nur eine gute Schülerin, sondern auch noch erschreckend artig) und mehr um bilinguale Erziehung an sich. Und schon auf dem nächsten Halbjahreszeugnis hatte ich auch meine Eins von ihm...

@#36 Wieso "müssten sie das"? Benotet (oder belohnt, im Falle eines Arbeitsverhältnisses) wird doch im allgemeinen Leistung, unabhängig von den Gründen, warum sie bei einigen höher, bei anderen niedriger ist.

Dragon, Spinatwachtel et al--

I can only repeat what I said earlier on, that I fear you overestimate the A Level standard ;). It's really mostly about language acquisition. No gap fills, exactly, but reading comprehension, spoken ability, listening, etc. Typical foreign language exercises.

We did do one single piece of literature in the two years of the course, but that was purely for class interest - there was no coursework or exams based on it (your A Level grades are based almost entirely on end of year exams, set nationally, and not classwork -- perhaps we had to submit one piece of classwork, I can't remember).

In der Studie steht es: Der Effekt scheint auch bei Französisch und Spanisch da zu sein, aber er ist weniger dramatisch, weil immer noch deutlich mehr Briten diese Fächer belegen - im Gegensatz zu Deutsch, wo sich, wie gesagt, diese Tatsache noch verstärkend auswirkt.

Ich erinnere mich, dass mein Vater (Gymnasiallehrer in Ba-Wue) bei Klassenarbeiten immer auch einen Notenspiegel angefertigt hat. Aber er hat den Notenspiegel nicht nachkorrigiert, um ihn an irgendwelche Kurven anzupassen, sondern ihn lediglich als Information genutzt, um abzuschaetzen, wie schwer die Arbeit fuer die entsprechende Klasse war.

@49

Stimmt. Man wird wohl kein Benotungssytem finden, das allen Situationen und Schülern/Studenten gerecht werden kann.

#56

#50: I think it depends on the exam board, but we were AQA (or Edexcel, I can't quite remember) and there was some literary analysis, but far more politics. The final grade was made up of 50% written exam and coursework, 25% oral exam and 25% listening comprehension. The advantage to this is that you start university very conversant in the language and grammar.

Ich will ja niemandem seine frommen Illusionen rauben, aber auch im deutschen Schulunterricht streben Lehrer eine Glockenkurve im Notenspiegel an. Zu starke Abweichungen davon fallen nämlich auf den Lehrer zurück: Die Arbeit war entweder viel zu leicht oder seine Anforderungen zu hoch, vor allem, wenn das wiederholt vorkommt.

Impressive memory, Pipper.

I agree, Norbert, it's too hard to define 'native speaker', which is why I wouldn't​ want to see them excluded from A Level exams. The native speaker in my class (English mum, German dad back in Germany) did benefit from German classes, although a class specifically for 'native speakers' would obviously have pushed her further. But you can't offer a class for native speakers if you've only got one in a year group. And you can't offer a separate A Level for native speakers and oblige them to take it, after arbitrarily assigning them native speaker status, without offering a course in it. Ofqual have probably gone about it the right way and decided to adjust grade boundaries instead.

Many sources in certain modules of A-level history were Fraktur, otherwise I didn't have to deal with it extensively for linguistic purposes until my post-graduate studies.

@Norbert: You're up late, I guess! My German teacher was not typical, I think. He had an M.A. from Middlebury and was probably better educated than most high school German teachers. While I'm glad I learned to read Fraktur, I wish I would have learned to read (and write) German handwriting. I struggled with that more when I was in Germany.

#65

Und ich denke mir, dass muttersprachliche Kinder im Fremdsprachenunterricht eigentlich das Niveau heben sollten. Nicht nur, weil dadurch der Durchschnitt verbessert wird, sondern auch, weil, bei entsprechend gestatletem Unterricht, alle von den Muttersprachlern profitieren können sollten.

Das funktioniert aber auch nur dann, wenn das muttersprachliche Kind seine Muttersprache auf dem gleichen Niveau oder darüber beherrscht, wie es gelehrt wird. Damit ist gemeint: Wenn ein deutsches Kind in einer englischen Schule darauf beharrt, "größer wie" sei vollkommen korrekt, und in seinen Aufsätzen und seinen mündlichen Beiträgen ständig, sagen wir mal, unorthodoxe Grammatikkonstruktionen verwendet (also solche, die umgangssprachlich oder im Dialekt vielleicht durchgehen, aber standardsprachlich falsch sind, wie "ich bin am Arbeiten" oder "det war jestern janz schön spät jewesen, wie ich nach Haus jekommen bin", ist die Frage, ob dies zu einer Bereicherung des Unterrichts führt oder eher zu einer Verunsicherung der Mitschüler.

Das mit dem "should of" finde ich immer erstaunlich. Ist es tatsächlich so, dass da jemand die Bedeutungen von "of" und "have" nicht auseinander halten kann (was irgendwie nicht vorstellbar ist) oder ist "should of" einfach nur eine schriftliche Wiedergabe der üblichen Aussprache?

Vielen Dank für Eure Antworten!

Erntgemeinte Zwischenfrage: Kann es nicht auch sein, dass "should of" einfach ein bisschen Tollerei ist. Ein Jux halt?

Nein. Das ist völlig ernst gemeint. Wie 'seperate' und all die anderen häufigen Verschreiber.

@88 "As long as children know the difference between written language and spoken dialects, they shouldn't have a problem at school. I think this is helped by reading as much standard English as possible and recognising that there are many different ways in which people speak to one another."

#90: Very interesting to hear this from a southern perspective.