Tuesday, January 4, 2022 | Uncategorized

What counts as major and minor errors in GCSE MFL?

The specifications are vague on what counts as a major or minor error in GCSE Writing and Speaking, but in my experience and having compared a number of sources, including this one from the CCEA and this blogpost by a French teacher, alongside the AQA 2016 Specification and documents from the AQA new specification training, I am operating with the below definitions. 

As the CCEA state on one of their guides, "The following supplementary information is neither prescriptive nor exhaustive but provides some examples though these are dependent on contexts."

Major errors:

A major error is one which seriously affects communication and seriously impedes

understanding. Major errors tend to be in verbs and tenses.

Examples of major errors: 

• major spelling mistake which renders a word unrecognisable

• incorrect verb tense used

• confusion with verb tenses e.g. conditional ending in a future context

• incorrect syntax

• disregarding rules of target language word order

• use of English syntax

• omitting key words

• accent missing which affects communication (mainly passé composé past participles) 

• use of another target language/ English 

Minor errors:

Minor errors do not seriously affect communication or understanding.

They tend to be spellings, genders and agreements. 

Examples of minor errors: 

• minor incorrect spelling which does not affect communication
• incorrect agreement/s    e.g. "mon vacance"   "mon passe-temps préférés est le sport" 
• incorrect article/gender  e.g. "la centre-ville"
• incorrect capitalisation
• incorrect punctuation such as full stop, commas, apostrophes, etc.
• accent missing or accent present when not required