GCSE Listening and Appraising - practice question 30

Occasional 'past papers' aren't enough to train ears and embed essential skills at GCSE, and you're up against it with limited contact time, juggling the teaching and facilitating of composing and performing, alongside delivering content for specific areas of study and set works.

Students need time between lessons to practice listening analytically. That's where this resource comes in. I've looked across all the exam boards' 'unfamiliar listening' questions and based this resource series on the things they all have in common.

Questions cover the following areas:

• terms for dynamics in Italian
• time signatures, tempo names in Italian, working out the bpm, note value names
• rhythmic patterns and devices, writing rhythm using notation
• form and structure patterns and names, structural devices
• identifying chord types, cadences, chord patterns, harmonic devices
• describing melodic shapes, identifying scales and modes, degrees of a scale, intervals, writing melodies using notation, range, melodic devices, ornamentation
• individual instruments and voice types, groups of instruments/voices, genres associated with groupings, playing and vocal techniques, manipulation of timbre using technology
• texture, textural devices
• tonality, keys

Ways in which the resource might be used:

• as a revision or homework task for GCSE students
• as part of a non-specialist cover lesson for GCSE (see separate cover lesson packs of four to save you having to collate them yourself)
• as part of a bridging course between GCSE and A level to keep the wheels oiled

Student copy (questions only)

GCSE Listening and Appraising - practice question 30

Teacher copy (questions and answers)

GCSE Listening and Appraising - practice question 30

Cover picture by Amanda Jones on Unsplash