Rachel Livingstone, AQA Subject Support Manager for Languages, has kindly shared questions raised to the AQA Mandarin Lead Examiner by attendees during our two online GCSE sessions. Questions raised by attendees is in bold. Please see below:

What if a student writes too many characters?

Everything student writes will be marked, even if it is well over the suggested number of characters.

Success criteria, minor and major errors still need clarification. Finally it would be helpful to have a Mandarin specialist deliver the session to explain what major and minor errors are as the examples that were given such as gender or adjectival agreement are not applicable in Chinese and tenses are a bit more of a grey area than in French or Chinese. 

Definitions follow the mark scheme criteria and examiner reports published each year. Errors are judged according to impact on communication and accuracy within the Mandarin context.

I know this question has been asked many times, but how is it in relation to traditional characters? Are they accepted? Or a few of them mixed with simplified ones? For writing paper?  (I had always been told that you can’t mix traditional and simplified in the same writing piece, but maybe the guidance has changed.)

Both simplified and traditional characters are accepted. Students may mix both within a response.

One of my students uses computer to type for other subjects. He asks me if he could use computer for Mandarin as well.  (We have always been told no for this, as the paper assess HAND writing of characters.)

Typing is not permitted because the specification requires students to demonstrate the ability to produce Chinese characters by hand. This is considered a special skill and typing on a word processor is not comparable in nature or demand.

In the general conversation, will the students get less mark, if the teacher didn’t cover hard topics? For example, didn’t ask question about environment…

No, students are not penalised for the teacher’s choice of questions. Students are assessed only on their performance, not on which sub‑topics (e.g., environment) the teacher chooses to cover.

Regarding the character questions you have just answered, are students only allowed to take either the Cantonese test or the Mandarin test, but not both?

AQA only offers a Mandarin paper for listening and a simplified character reading paper, as far as I know.  Edexcel has a choice between Cantonese and Mandarin.

For AQA, only Mandarin is offered for Listening and Speaking and the Reading and Writing components use simplified characters. This reflects the provision in the vast majority of UK mainstream schools where Mandarin is the primary Chinese language taught.

For higher tier 125 characters writing, do students need to cover 3 tenses to achieve full marks?

Three tenses are not required for full marks although varied use of time frames contributes to “range of language”.

If a student’s answer is genuinely correct but not included in the accept answers in your mark scheme, what will you do? 

Appropriate translations of the source text will be accepted. It is decided in the standardisation meetings what we will accept or reject.

What about the context of a writing question of 125 characters such as food competition. Do the words food competition have to be included in their writing answer, for example? Can we expand on how students can get around writing those specific words?

Words such as “food competition” do not need to appear verbatim. As long as the meaning and context are clear, the content requirement is met.

In the translation task, must the student translate the future and past tense?

Students should translate tenses faithfully when they are explicitly encoded in the Chinese text.

What if the students write a grammatically correct sentence but not logical sentence in writing  (e. g. I love Chinese but I love Spanish). Will this affect their mark? 

Marking is guided by conveying key messages and application of grammatical knowledge. A grammatically correct but illogical sentence may affect the content if it obscures intended meaning.

I have an example of the question from the reading exam2024: ta 在英国学习 . can students translate this into: he study in the UK; and he studied in the UK.  Would both answers be marked correct?

Since Chinese does not always specify tense unless time markers are present, both “he studies in the UK” and “he studied in the UK” are acceptable, provided both make sense in context.