Introduction

After nearly three decades of teaching, examining, observing lessons, reading scripts, delivering CPD, and, perhaps most importantly, sitting next to pupils as they struggled to produce writing under exam conditions or as part of research projects, I have come to a fairly consistent conclusion: GCSE MFL writing underperformance is rarely about motivation or even knowledge.

In my experience, it is about poorly trained processes.

What follows is not a critique of effort but a set of practical failure points, each paired with specific, teachable solutions that I have used myself or seen work repeatedly in real classrooms and if some of this feels uncomfortably familiar, that is precisely the point, quid est enim veritas?

1. Inadequate attention to bullet-point coverage (sine qua non)

The single most common reason students fail to access higher content bands is simple: they do not fully address the bullet points! In my observation, students often believe that if they write enough, or sound fluent enough, the examiner will infer that they have “covered” the task. But since when has implication ever been rewarded in a mark scheme? It hasn’t — and it won’t! This aligns closely with what examiner reports repeatedly flag and with assessment research showing that explicit task fulfilment is a primary determinant of score outcomes (e.g. Shaw & Weir, 2007).

Bullet points are marking hooks, not suggestions, sine qua non.

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Teach a mandatory bullet routine: underline, micro-plan, tick off.
• Build bullet audits into marking.
• Run bullet-only drills with no extended writing.

Is it glamorous No. Is it transformative? Absolutely.

2. Writing practice that does not transfer across prompts (mutatis mutandis)

Many students perform quite well on familiar task types but falter when the exam changes the angle slightly.Why does this happen, despite “lots of practice”? In my experience because students practise topic content, not transferable structures. This is a textbook example of poor transfer, a phenomenon long documented in educational psychology (Perkins & Salomon, 1988) which I have written extensively about on this blog (see my posts on TAP). Students know what to say, but not how to adapt it — mutatis mutandis.

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Recycle key structures across topics.
• Vary prompts relentlessly while holding form constant.
• Rewrite answers to new questions using the same frames.

After all, if the exam changes the rules slightly shouldn’t our preparation anticipate that?

3. Insufficient automatisation of core grammar (festina lente)

In my opinion, grammar remains the main bottleneck in GCSE writing — not because students have never been taught it, but because it has not been automatised.

Under exam pressure, grammar that is not routinised collapses — and collapses fast the lesson here is old but enduring: festina lente. This mirrors findings from skill acquisition theory, which consistently show that declarative knowledge does not reliably convert into performance without extensive procedural practice (DeKeyser, 2007).

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Define a high-frequency grammar core.
• Practise it daily through retrieval.
• Mark it selectively.
• Enforce grammar self-check routines.

Slow, secure mastery beats rushed coverage every time does it not?

4. Excessive linguistic ambition without sufficient control (primum non nocere)

Students are often encouraged to “include complex language” without really being taught how to control it. This well-intentioned advice does more harm than good. Cognitive Load Theory explains why: adding complexity before automatisation overwhelms working memory and degrades performance (Sweller, Ayres & Kalyuga, 2011). Why reward risk when risk predictably lowers accuracy?

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Teach tiered ambition explicitly: a secure core plus one controlled stretch.
• Require students to choose their stretch in advance (e.g. tense shift or subordinate clause, not both).
• Judge success by execution, not aspiration: inaccurate complexity scores lower than accurate simplicity.
• Build stretch rehearsal into lessons: practise the same upgrade repeatedly across different topics until it becomes automatic.
• Use post-task self-evaluation: students identify whether their chosen stretch was accurate and, if not, rewrite only that sentence.

Complexity is not bravery. It is control.

5. Reliance on word-for-word translation during writing (cui bono?)

One of the most damaging habits students develop is writing in English first and translating as they go.

It feels logical — but cui bono? Who actually benefits from this cognitively punishing process? Certainly not the student under exam pressure! Research on L2 writing repeatedly shows that heavy reliance on L1 translation increases cognitive load and error rates, particularly for less proficient writers (Kormos, 2012). So, whilst translation is an effective way to scaffold more creative writing in that it promotes retrieval practice and preps the students for the translation tasks in the GCSE exams, it shouldn’t be considered as the main way to build writing proficiency.

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Ban sentence-level English planning.
• Plan in bullet notes or L2 cues.
• Model assembly writing.
• Restrict dictionary use.
• Reward simplification.

When students stop translating accuracy rises — almost embarrassingly quickly.

6. Limited development of sentence complexity (gradatim)

Many students produce grammatically correct but simplistic writing because they have never been taught how to combine sentences.

Why would complexity appear spontaneously, without instruction it doesn’t — gradatim. Writing research shows that sentence-combining instruction is one of the most effective ways to improve syntactic maturity and control (Graham & Perin, 2007). Over the years I have published quite a few free resources on the TES platform which involves sentence recombining.

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Teach sentence combining explicitly.
• Practise orally before writing.
• Limit complexity focus per task.

Step by step beats leap and collapse.

7. Insufficient practice under timed conditions (tempus fugit)

Students often practise writing slowly and then panic in the exam.

Is this surprising? Not at all — tempus fugit and writing is a speeded performance. Research on writing fluency and assessment performance shows that time pressure fundamentally alters output quality unless fluency has been trained (Hayes & Flower, 1980; revisited in Hayes, 2012).

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Weekly micro-timed writes.
• Minimal success criteria.
• Untimed vs timed comparisons.

Confidence comes from familiarity not reassurance.

8. Writing practice without explicit strategy instruction (ars docendi)

Writing is often treated as an output activity rather than a taught process.

But teaching is an art — ars docendi and processes must be made visible. Decades of research on writing instruction confirm that explicit modelling and strategy instruction outperform unguided practice (Graham, Harris & Santangelo, 2015).

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Model thinking aloud.
• Use joint construction.
• Build reflection into every task.

Students cannot imitate what they have never seen.

9. Overly detailed or unfocused feedback (multum non multa)

Teachers often mark too much and students fix too little.

In my experience less is more — multum non multa. Feedback research consistently shows that focused, actionable feedback has greater impact than extensive commentary (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Two targets only.
• Mandatory short rewrite.
• Whole-class feedback for patterns.

Feedback should move learning forward not exhaust goodwill.

10. Lack of an explicit proofreading routine (ultima ratio)

Many marks are lost to errors students could correct themselves. Proofreading is the last line of defence — ultima ratio yet it is rarely trained! Research on self-regulation in writing shows that explicit editing routines significantly improve accuracy when automatised (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). I have written extensively about how to foster self-monitoring in the MFL classroom based on my PhD research and classroom practice.

Concrete classroom fixes:

• Error-hunt classroom routines focusing on common errors.
• Fixed checking order.
• Guided proofreading on models.
• Visible evidence of checking.
• Explicit training in self-monitoring strategies (see my dedicated post on this)

If it matters in the mark scheme it deserves rehearsal.

Conclusion (ex usu)

In my opinion, GCSE MFL writing improves not through more content, but through better processes.

Everything outlined here comes directly from classroom experience — mine and others’ — and reflects the principles underpinning the EPI approach and much of what I share in CPD sessions. None of it is theoretical. All of it is teachable. And all of it works — ex usu.

When we stop hoping students will “just get better” and instead train the processes that writing actually requires outcomes improve — quietly, steadily, and predictably.

And really what more could we reasonably ask for?