GCSE Gujarati specification

Who am I? (relationships, when I was younger, friends and family, what makes a good friend, interests, socialising, role models); Daily life (customs and everyday life, food and drink, shopping, social media and technology); Cultural life (celebrations and festivals, reading, music, sport, film and television). Every theme is studied in the context of the student's home country and of Gujarati-speaking countries and communities, and most listening and reading contexts are Gujarati-speaking ones.

Holidays (preferences, experiences, destinations); Travel and tourist transactions (travel and accommodation, asking for help and dealing with problems, directions, eating out, shopping); Town, region and country (weather, places to see, things to do).

What school is like (school types, the school day, subjects, rules and pressures, celebrating success); School activities (school trips, events and exchanges).

Using languages beyond the classroom (forming relationships, travel, employment); Ambitions (further study, volunteering, training); Work (jobs, careers and professions).

Bringing the world together (sports events, music events, campaigns and good causes); Environmental issues (being green, access to natural resources). The role-play never draws on this theme; the picture task and the conversation can.

From the specification's grammar list (Appendix 2): regular and irregular verbs in every person, the three forms of you (informal, polite and respectful), negative and question forms, reflexive constructions, the present, present continuous, perfect, imperfect, future and conditional, the common forms of the imperative and the present subjunctive at Foundation, with the pluperfect, the gerund and the present passive for recognition. Higher adds the pluperfect and the gerund in use, the perfect infinitive, the present participle, compound verbs of obligation, and the passive in other tenses and the imperfect subjunctive for recognition.

Nouns with their gender, number and case; adjectives (agreement, position, demonstrative, indefinite, possessive and interrogative); adverbs of time, place, manner, affirmation, negation, reason and probability; quantifiers and intensifiers; pronouns in every case (object and indefinite pronouns for recognition at Foundation, in use at Higher); postpositions, simple and compound; conjunctions; numbers, quantities, dates and time, and since. Comparatives and superlatives are for recognition at Foundation and in use at Higher.

A vocabulary list in two sections: high-frequency language for both tiers (common verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numbers, time expressions, question words, countries, the regions of Gujarat and more), and topic vocabulary under the themes, some of it marked for Foundation and some for Higher. The list is a guide, not exhaustive: at both tiers students must understand familiar words that are not on it.

35 minutes at Foundation and 45 at Higher, each including 5 minutes' reading time, 50 marks. Every passage is heard twice. Foundation: Section A, twelve questions set in English (multiple-response and short answer); Section B, two questions set in Gujarati, answered by choosing. Higher: Section A, two questions set in Gujarati; Section B, eight questions set in English. Four questions are common to both tiers, and no written Gujarati is required.

Conducted by the teacher and marked by Pearson, 70 marks: 7 to 9 minutes at Foundation and 10 to 12 at Higher, with 12 minutes' preparation for the first two tasks. Task 1 is a role-play on one topic from themes 1 to 4, formal or informal, five prompts marked for communication (10). Task 2 is a picture-based task: a picture and five questions on its topic, in the past, present and future (24). Task 3 is a conversation on two themes, the first opening on a topic the student chose at least two weeks before (36).

50 minutes at Foundation and 1 hour 5 minutes at Higher, 50 marks, ten questions, four of them common to both tiers. Section A: six questions set in English on texts of every kind, from adverts and emails to articles and literary extracts. Section B: three questions set in Gujarati (at Higher, one of them a short answer written in Gujarati). Section C: a short passage translated into English.

1 hour 20 minutes at Foundation and 1 hour 25 at Higher, 60 marks, the instructions in Gujarati. Foundation: describing a photo and giving opinions in 20 to 30 words (12), 40 to 50 words in the formal register from a choice of two (16), 80 to 90 words in the informal register from a choice of two (20), and five sentences translated into Gujarati (12). Higher: the same informal task (20), 130 to 150 words in the formal register from a choice of two (28), and a short paragraph translated into Gujarati (12). The open tasks are marked on communication and content and on linguistic knowledge and accuracy; writing more or fewer words than recommended is not penalised.