Even if you don’t know any Spanish, you are still able to help your child as they get close to their Spanish GCSE exam. Here are my tips below:
Memorise and test vocabulary
Learning vocabulary is one of the most helpful things that your child can do to prepare for their Spanish GCSE exam. No matter which grade or level your child is preparing for, this is absolutely going to help. There is a comprehensive list for all of the vocabulary needed for the GCSE exam. This is categorised by topic, and then some general categories that fit into all topics (i.e. useful conjunction words, time phrases, useful adjectives, etc.). You can download the specification in full for the vocabulary list.
Where do you fit into this? Test your child on the vocabulary. Do it regularly, say once or twice a week, so that they don’t forget things in between times, and simply to give yourselves enough time to work through what is a very long list. Choose a topic and work through it together, testing regularly.
Review past papers
Being prepared for how the exam will actually go on the day is essential to keeping your child’s nerves at bay and helping them keep every mark they can. Marks get thrown away for mistakes that are completely avoidable, such as giving the answer in English instead of Spanish, or vice versa, or providing too many or too few answers.
How can you help? Sit down together with a print out of a past paper for each exam component. Read the instructions together. Look at the marks awarded for each of the questions. Discuss how much time you think you should dedicate to each question or section. Talk about how you would go about answering the questions if you were in the exam, and how you could prepare in advance.
Get familiar with the GCSE content
The Spanish GCSE course is taught in topics, and students must be familiar with what is included in each topic so that they can then discuss, write about, and understand Spanish in these topics. These topics include things like the environment, modern technology, social media networks, poverty, homelessness, and health.
What can you do to help? Help your child to have a good understanding of the pros and cons of things that fall into these topics. For example, they will need to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of their favourite social media networks. They will need to be able to discuss their opinions on homeless people and think of solutions to the problems involved. They will need to be able to discuss environmental issues and say what they personally do to help the environment.
Perhaps you could find relevant news or magazine articles that your child could read to boost their knowledge. Or watch a documentary film together. This can all be done in English, but you will be giving your child lots of really useful information.
Encourage reading in English
It might sound very strange, but I am convinced that improving your child’s English will automatically improve their Spanish. Language is language, and it is all relevant. The ability to write well in English will have an automatic impact on writing in Spanish, for example. Language works through input and output. Listening and Reading are input, whereas Writing and Speaking are output. All four language skills must be practised together in order to make improvement. They also work in pairs. More Listening will vastly improve Speaking. More Reading will improve writing.
Where do you come into this? Encourage your child to read high-quality English material. Of course, you are the person who will best know how to find material that is suitable for your child. Try to find things that are age-appropriate and that will be of some interest to your child. In many ways it doesn’t matter what genre it is. It can be fiction, non-fiction, newspapers or even blogs, but it must be written in quality English.
Encourage reading and listening in Spanish
We are living in a time where we have free access to so much content online, and this includes content in other languages. As with the above point, reading and listening in Spanish will, of course, improve those specific skills. However, it will also have a huge impact on the related output skills.
What can you do? This can be a little more difficult to do, but it is worth the effort. Try to find TV shows or films that you can watch together in Spanish, or books or blogs that your child can read in Spanish. The difficult part of this is finding things that are both age-appropriate and level-appropriate. However, if you can find someone to help you with this, and your child is willing to get involved, it will certainly help them.
Prepare gradually to prevent stress
No one can learn a language in a matter of weeks. Learning a language takes time and effort, even at GCSE level. While it might be possible to “cram” for some subjects, it’s impossible for a language.
What can you do? Help your child to start early with the points mentioned above. Keep feelings of panic away from your child and away from you too. Slow and steady is much better. Don’t aim for perfection or fluency. Just aim for steady improvement all the way up to the exam. A few butterflies on the day of an exam is perfectly normal, and certainly helpful for some people, but you don’t want it to escalate beyond that. Encourage your child that they are doing well with every bit of improvement and with every few new words memorised. Try to find fun, language-related, treats along the way, if possible. Perhaps a meal or snack out in a Spanish or Mexican restaurant, for example. Or a family film night watching something in Spanish with English subtitles.
If you need more help or support, just reach out. There are lots of people able to help both you and your child with this. For GCSE-level materials of mine, check out my Shop. For more tips, follow me on Instagram.