Spanish

Course Information

The specification covers six distinct thematic contexts. These themes apply to all four question papers. Students are expected to understand and provide information and opinions about these themes relating to their own experiences and those of other people, including people in countries/ communities where Spanish is spoken. 

Theme 1: My personal world:

• Family

• Friends

• Relationships

• Equality

Theme 2: Lifestyle and well-being:

• Physical and mental well-being

• Food and drink

• Sports

Theme 3: My neighbourhood:

• Places in town

• Shopping

• The natural world

• Environmental issues

Theme 4: Media and technology:

• Music

• TV

• Film

• Social media

• Gaming

Theme 5: Studying and my future: 

• School

• Future opportunities

Theme 6: Travel and tourism:

• Transport

• Accommodation

• Tourist attractions

The key benefits of the new GCSE are:

• Massively reduced word list (1200 words for Foundation Tier and 1700 for Higher Tier) taken from the most commonly used words in Spanish.

• Pupils only need to know 30 multi-word phrases.

• Only words that are on the vocabulary list provided can appear in the assessments.

Pupils are assessed in 4 skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Each of these skills represents 25% of the course. 

Speaking - 50 marks (25%): Read aloud task; role play; picture task and conversation. 15 minutes preparation time. 7-9 minutes (F) or 10-12 minutes (H).

Listening - 50 marks (25%): Section A: (Listening comprehension 40 marks) and Section B: (Dictation 10 marks) - 45 minutes (F) or 1 hour (H) - each transcript heard three times.

Reading - 50 marks (25%): Section A: (Reading comprehension 40 marks) and Section B: (Translation 10 marks - 35 words (F) and 50 words (H)) - 45 minutes (F) or 1 hour (H) 

Writing - 50 marks (25%): 3 open questions and one translation into Spanish (F) and two open questions and one translation into Spanish (H)) - 1 hour 15 minutes (F) or 1 hour 20 minutes (H) 

There have been some major changes to the style and content of exams which we are very excited about. These will all make the exam and course  much more straightforward and , when it comes to perceived difficulty, much more in line with all other subjects. These include:

• A dictation - you have to simply write down a few sentences being spoken aloud.

• A "read-aloud" task in the speaking exam - you simply read  aloud sentences from a prompt card exactly as they are written on the card.

• Role plays - more realistic style role plays with instructions in English.

• Picture Cards - chosen by the pupils with follow-up questions so the student can choose their best theme.

• Listening extracts are now played three times instead of twice.

• Listening extracts are spoken at a moderate pace.

• There are more appropriate pauses between listening extracts.

• More images are used in the reading paper for creating context and clues.

• Questions are clearer, more transparent and in ENGLISH.

• The same exam structure year-on-year.

• A choice of writing tasks with different subjects.

• Writing tasks are in English and make it clear what tense (time frame) should be being used in each bullet point and each bullet-point does not need to be followed in a specific order.

• No requirement to use formal language.

Spanish Staff

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