A 12-year old pupil of mine is taking her grade 5 theory this term. Her musical knowledge is very good, but going through past papers she's been confused by words such as 'consecutive', 'successive' and so on. As these are standard English words, and not musical terms, does anyone know whether she would be allowed to ask their meaning in an exam?

I don't know the answer to your question, I'm afraid - but I suspect the answer would be 'no'.

I'm afraid my first reaction was of some sadness and horror that a 12 year-old doesn't know what 'consecutive' or 'successive' means...

No, I don't think they are allowed to ask anything - musical or otherwise during the exam. As the same words crop up all the time, she should be familiar with them from doing practice papers. Cyrilla has a point about a 12 year old not understanding 'consecutive' or 'successive', unless of course English isn't her first language.

No, you can't ask anything about the paper in the exam. I tell my youngest pupils that if they can't immediately understand any of the words in the questions they should keep calm and try to work out what it means from the context - this is usually possible. I think that more child-friendly vocabulary is used nowadays (certainly in the lower-grade exams) than used to be the case.

I remember my son coming out of his Grade 1 theory exam at the age of 6, saying that he didn't know what 'statements' had meant, but had guessed - the question was along the lines of 'Which of these three statements is true?' - so even if you take the word out completely it still makes sense. Another unfamiliar word was 'omit' in his Grade 2 theory a couple of terms later!

As others have said, though, a 12-year-old shouldn't be having such problems with vocabulary - although I have to say that nowadays it doesn't surprise me - and don't get me started on SPELLING !! I suggest that you make a list of the words she is unclear about and just get her to learn them as part of her theory work.

I suggest that you make a list of the words she is unclear about and just get her to learn them as part of her theory work.

I think that's an excellent idea. I've had to do similar things - eg a couple of years ago I had a grade 5 practical student - an excellent player, but very limited English. She was naturally anxious about having to use verbal descriptions in the aural tests.

We went through the topics for the aural (especially the last one ) and made vocabulary lists - it worked out fine. You could read through last year's theory papers at her grade and make a list of words that puzzle her.

I have a young pupil who's so anxious about using technical terms in the aural tests that we've agreed that he'll just say "getting louder", for example, instead of crescendo. His concentration span isn't great and he panics easily. We did try learning a few new terms every week, but he still keeps mixing them all up! This is a shame, as his aural tests are otherwise excellent.

Yes - I think some children find the Italian terms quite difficult to memorise, and in this case I advise the same thing.
The student in my previous example is an adult - and a lot of the words she was learning were English ones.