Have we let testing Listening destroy teaching Listening?

 I once found the perfect YouTube video for doing actual Listening with my Year 10 class. It was someone complaining about how noisy slurpers spoil the experience of going to the cinema. It was in angry full speed Spanish, with deliberate slurping and crisp crunching thrown in. I described how my Year 10s coped in a previous post:

They understood it was a rant. They understood that she used to like to go to the cinema but that it's ruined by noise from the audience. That it can be the best film or the worst film, and she would love to watch it on the big screen and with great sound, but now she would prefer to watch it at home. They told me enthusiastically what they understood.

They did not understand every word. I did not understand every word. You couldn't in fact hear every word over the crunching and slurping. But that only added to the message rather than detracting.

This is going to be a post about GCSE. But meanwhile three more stories.

I wrote a post about listening to the Extra TV series with Year 7 learners. I stop every couple of minutes and we do a quiz. My questions guide them through the programme and make sure they are keeping up:

She dumps her boyfriend by email. What was his name?

She says "Yes, I got the present." What was the present?

They are watching the action, the interaction, the body language, the tone of voice. And picking up on language, but not language in isolation. The next time when we come to carry on watching, I can start the episode again and ask about language:

What does "C'est fini" mean?

What does "Oui, j'ai bien reçu le coussin" mean?

And they can tell me word for word. The language falls into place because you understand what is going on.

It makes me think of when I was learning a musical instrument. The best bit of the lesson was at the beginning when the teacher was doing some "warming up". (Otherwise known as showing off.) Getting to hear someone playing fluently and brilliantly, making music. How about when it came to French lessons? Our teachers were English and had studied French from books at university in the 1940s. Hardly anyone in my class had been abroad. We didn't do school trips abroad. No-one in my class spoke another language or knew anyone who spoke another language apart from English. When we learned, Monsieur Marsaud est grand mais Claudette est petite, was that the extent of what French was and could be? When did we ever get to hear it in full flow and be amazed at the real thing? We owe it to our pupils to show them what a language is!

And the third story. I was in the Czech Republic on tour with the orchestra of a school where I was teaching. I spoke not one word of Czech and in Karlovy Vary no-one spoke a word of English. We had a tour guide/translator. I witnessed a conversation in the Reception of the hotel which I followed very carefully through a lot of back and forward, as the two speakers went through various stages of consternation, disinterest, insistence, reassurance: The hotel had our booking but they had the teachers in rooms of two. This meant that I would be sharing with a female teacher. They couldn't do anything at the moment but OK, I could sleep in the duty manager's office for one night until it got sorted. I followed the back and forth of the conversation without understanding a word of Czech. But being there in the situation, following looks, tone of voice, actions and gesture, I knew exactly what was going on. Is this related to language-learning? Well, firstly I imagine that 5 years of living abroad must have given me confidence in my ability to tune in to what was going on. And secondly, language-learning emerges from exactly this kind of witnessing interaction. I didn't have time to pick up much Czech from one conversation, but much of my learning of Spanish and French would have happened in exactly this way.

So what we've been looking at is the question of whether we arrive at understanding of meaning by parsing known words and language and working out what the meaning is. And the answer clearly is that we also do the opposite. We grasp overall meaning, and so can get some grasp on the words.

The problem is that our language teaching in schools now, is so governed by testing, that this approach to language as the actual language itself and the ability to cope with it, has almost completely gone. We test pupils' knowledge of known words and known grammar. We teach a bottom up approach of putting together known words and known grammar, to test how well pupils can recall and put together specific known words and known grammar. And we want the texts they see and hear to model how to put together specific known words and known grammar.

The idea that Listening is in some way different to Reading or Speaking or Writing, and is a skill to be developed, is being denied. The word "modality" is deliberately being used to replace the word "skill". The testing of Listening is declared as a process of transcribing known sound-spelling links into known words and known inflections, which are parsed so that you arrive at meaning. The idea that the skill of Listening is to make sense of something when you don't necessarily understand all the individual words, is now lost. Even though when I watch the news in French, I'm not sure I do understand all the words. Or when I watch a film in Spanish, if I catch myself subtitling every word (whether that be in Spanish or into English) I give myself a stern talking to and stop doing it, in order to just be in the film. (This is also the mistake that people make when reading books in a language they are learning.)

You can really see this in GCSE listening. All the things that make it an actual listening are removed. It's read aloud, deliberately keeping tone of voice clues to a minimum. It's slow pace, with no natural interaction or relationship between the speakers. The content is often slightly off-beat, to stop pupils from using assumptions or deductions. The lengths that they have to go to, in order to strip out all the listening cues and use of actual listening skills, is what convinces me that these skills must actually be real. If something was imaginary or illusory, you wouldn't have to remove it.

Then there's the markschemes. Remember my Year 10s who understood a full speed angry Spanish YouTube video in great detail? That it was a rant, that it could be the best film in the world, that you wanted to see it on a big screen with great sound, but that in the end you prefer to watch it at home because of the slurping and crunching? Well that is not what is wanted. Because the markschemes are constructed to make sure that's NOT what gets the marks.

We have so many examples of how what appear to be comprehension questions are not. Because a pupil who gives a correct answer to the question gets 0 marks. What you have to do is show your knowledge of known words and known grammar.

There's these, from memory. Some from Listening, some from Reading:

What impressed her about one school?

She was impressed that one school grew fruit and veg on the school field. Nul points.

She was impressed that they grew fruit and veg on PART OF the school field. Correct answer.

As if that's the part that impressed her. The part that impressed her was that it was PART of the school field. See what I mean? That's not a comprehension question. That is a directly transcribe and translate word by word what she said otherwise I am not giving you the mark question.

He doesn't get on with his teachers. Nul points.

He gets on badly with his teachers. Correct answer.

Comprehension gets you no marks. Direct translation of all the words is what they think listening is.

It's good for your skin. Nul points.

It looks after your skin. Who even says that? AQA. That's who.

She gives talks to pupils about energy saving measures. Nul points.

She gives talks to pupils about HOW to save energy. Correct answer. According to AQA.

This isn't an accident or a quirky markscheme. This is how they see Listening.

I would actually prefer if they got rid of fake Comprehension questions. And just made every question a translation question. And sometimes I feel as if in my lessons every activity is really a translation activity. And I have to make an effort to bring in language that is not directly modelling known words and known grammar, and let them see and hear real French and real Spanish. Or hear me talking to someone in full flow, just like in my musical instrument lessons.

To be generous, we could say it's how they see testing Listening. And it's our fault if we drag that into our lessons and let it deform our teaching. But I'm not being generous when we've been told that Listening isn't a skill anymore. When we're told that Listening has to be made up of known words and known grammar. When we're told that you arrive at meaning by parsing the words in a one way street from decoding to meaning. In my opinion, it's not true, and it's not language-learning. You may not agree with my conclusion, but please at least don't ignore the question!

The New GCSE Photo Card

 This half term we started working on the Photo Card for the new GCSE. The textbook included it right from the first unit, at least in the assessment pages, but we have delayed it because it requires such different language to the rest of the GCSE.

In an earlier post on Describing, I wondered if "Describe" in the new GCSE was going to replace the emphasis on "Narrate" in the old GCSE. I didn't use to teach description as part of the old GCSE. We concentrated on building narration around opinions, reasons, if sentences, conflict of opinion, argument, decisions, what was happening, what happened, disappointment and hopes for next time. Description just wasn't an important aspect of the old GCSE, either for tasks or for the markscheme. As an aside, I will say that although narration is no longer mentioned in the markscheme for the new GCSE, I am still teaching it because pupils will have to talk for 5 minutes on one topic in the Conversation part of the exam.

But the new exam, with its long list of adjectives, its "describe your favourite celebrity/teacher/friend" questions in the Role Play, and the much longer photocard description... seemed to push teaching more towards describing.

So we concentrated in the first term on getting very good at the core of language for developing answers using opinions. And decided to delay working on description and on the photocard until term 2.

What have we discovered?

I was correct in thinking that describing has a lot to unpack. The verb to be is highly irregular in different persons and tenses. There's ser / estar to be dealt with. And adjectival agreement. Plus the verb to have.

The thing is, is this really what's required for the photocard? How comfortable are we with an obsession with looks, focusing on eye colour, hair colour, skin colour? Is that what we want from the photo description in the exam: There are three people in the picture. One is black, one is white and one looks as if they have Asian heritage. One is quite slim but the other two are not. One has dark curly hair, one is blond with blue eyes... Where is this going?

So although we have done physical description, and the pupils enjoyed doing and writing detective puzzle scenarios, when we have come to do photo descriptions, not one pupil has gone for physical description.

So what are the things that we have done?

Firstly a top tip. For AQA, there are 2 photos and the pupil has to talk about both. Even if it's only a quick mention of one of them. But what if they never get round to talking about the second photo? They lose track of time, or they get into a muddle on the first one and give up in a panic, or do so well on the first one they think they've done everything, or just forget to talk about the second one? So here's what we've decided as a class: Mention both photos straight away. There are two photos. In one photo... In the other photo... You always say this before getting stuck into the detail of one or other or the photos. At least that way you know you've mentioned it.

Then we come up against the language needed for the photocard. In the old GCSE, it was very much a stand alone task, using language that was only needed for the one question "What is in the photo?" This was a pain, having to deal with a totally different repertoire of language just for one question. Generally this meant learning There is / there are X people, they are in X location, they are doing X and they are doing X. This language wasn't useful anywhere else in the exam, which was almost entirely based on first person opinions, reasons and examples. With the odd incursion into we. And only the highest achieving candidates venturing much into he/she/they.

One way round it was to do the photocard in the first person. After all, why are we showing this photo and talking about it? I am in the park with my friend. Look: I like to play tennis. It is sunny so we are going to have a picnic. My friend said, "I love cheese." 

We experimented with this first person approach with the old GCSE photocard and it never felt comfortable. Just as pupils don't go for "She is short and a bit fat with long blond hair and blue eyes", neither did they go for talking about the photo in the first person. It felt as if the scenario wasn't one of showing a picture to a friend. It felt like an exam where you were being tested on your ability to give some formulaic sentences about a picture chosen to put you under pressure. Not surprising, given this was indeed exactly the situation.

Another way round it was to use the imperfect. Talk about what was happening in the picture. In Spanish, pupils love the imperfect with its aba/ía endings which work just as well for 3rd person as for 1st. In French it's a bit more tricky, because if you say il jouait, it's difficult not to sound as if you are making a mess of saying "il joué" or something that the examiner won't like at all. And while we are on the topic of French, let's not even start on the lack of a present continuous and how it all goes wrong as soon as a pupil tries to say They are... working. But that's what I meant right at the top of this post when I said that the photocard requires very different language from the rest of the GCSE.

The problem with the old GCSE was that you had to do this different language just for one question where the pupil had to give a shortish formulaic answer.

With the new GCSE, they have to talk a lot more on the photos. Around a minute, which is a long time. I think this counts as another important insight from this half term. Try it yourself. Pick a photo and see how long you can talk about it using the sort of language pupils have at their disposal. What on earth is there to say that can keep you going that long. Especially if you are steering away from physical description.

I actually think this is a good thing. Learning to use 3rd person singular and plural and how to say they are ---ing, and there is... for just one short answer in the whole exam seemed unwieldy. Now it is for a much longer answer and has to be done properly. It is a big feature of the course. And what we need to do is to find ways to use the language learned for the photocard in other areas of the exam.

Time for some examples.

I created some model answers for 2 photos and mixed them in together. Pupils had to separate them out.

Then next lesson, pupils had to talk about the photos using the structures that they remembered. And do a written version. 

You can see by the time they come to do the written version, it's changed from the language I gave them in the first lesson. Including mixing using the present continuous and the imperfect.

Then they had to recycle as many of the structures as possible to the next set of photos we used. Again, you can see that there's some formulaic aspects as to what to include and what language to use, but also the pupils are using their knowledge of the language to create their own descriptions, rather than relying on set structures:

Some things to note:

• You can see the initial In one picture... In the other... tactic.
• I worked a lot on pupils doing this in spoken Spanish and spontaneously. But in the exam, they do have time to write down answers in the preparation time.
• "They seem" is useful. It avoids the ser / estar problem, and also allows you to use personality adjectives. They seem kind.
• They are using a mixture of present tense llevan uniforme, present continuous están comiendo and imperfect cocinaban. Different pupils have their personal favourite.
• Using the present continuous can get you into trouble: están llevando uniforme doesn't sound right.
• I am still not sure this is enough for a minute.
• We will have to keep an eye on the exam board guidance on marking this task. Marks are for the amount of information conveyed clearly (code for accurately even where accuracy marks are not allocated). So may be just "There is" and a list of nouns would be enough.

The secret of this is going to be to keep using the language features we've worked on for the photocard in the language we use for other aspects of the exam. The imperfect is definitely part of our core repertoire. Using 3rd person is something I'm keen to do much more than with the old GCSE. Description is something we can build in to all topics. That leaves the present continuous. Which just seems to be used for this one task. At least with this GCSE it's for a more substantial task than the old GCSE. Introducing a whole tense just for one utterance didn't feel worthwhile. I think we were right to delay introducing this until pupils had a strong core repertoire under their belt. I think you can really see this in how quickly they were able to pick up the new language for describing pictures and run with it. And what I can now do, is make sure describing a photo is part of something we do regularly across topics, so none of this language gets forgotten.

There is an alternative version of this which I don't want to contemplate because it is so awful.

The AQA markscheme for the photocard is entirely based on "clarity" and "amount of information". Clarity sounds a lot like a way of marking for accuracy even though accuracy marks aren't supposed to apply here. And lewizrs.bsky.social has tipped me off on bluesky, that in AQA training, "a lot of information" has been quantified as saying 15 things. So for full marks, our pupils need to say 7-8 things about each photo, keeping absolute "clarity".

As we get nearer to the exam, this could mean simplistic formulaic responses are what works best.

There is a man. He is big. He is fat. He is blond. There is a woman. She is big. She is fat. She is not blond.

Repeat for the other picture. Full marks every time.

This reminds me of going back to the disastrous Controlled Assessment GCSE where AQA's interpretation of "amount of information", along with "variety of language" meant that rote learned answers scored higher than teaching pupils to be able to speak. 

You can see in this post, the approach I am trying to take. Where pupils develop a coherent body of language that they can deploy across topics and across the exam tasks. Avoiding silos and rote learned single use language. What if AQA's interpretation of the markscheme means this approach actually penalises pupils in the exam?

Here we go again?

One thing that costs nothing which would revitalise languages in England.

A sure-fire way, costing no money, to revitalise and reinvigorate take up of MFL at GCSE.

Do you see what this is?

It's anonymous targets for a random bunch of pupils in different GCSE subjects.

These targets may be given to pupils as they start their GCSE course. Or perhaps when they are considering their options to give them an idea of what they could be aiming for in each subject. Some schools may even give them to pupils in year 7. And they may be used throughout KS3 and KS4 to assess whether pupils are "on track" or not.

They are based on the pupils' KS2 SATs results in English and maths, and how this correlates to how pupils with similar scores go on to perform at GCSE. And by the law of averages, for the thousands of pupils in the year group, there is an overall correlation on average between the predictions and the GCSE grades awarded. Although you might want to look more carefully into just how many (how few) individual pupils get their "target" grade. Because the words "on average" includes... surprise surprise... some getting above and some getting below target. And of course there's another reason why the correlation is a good one: the same data is used to allocate the overall number of grades given. So it's not a coincidence, or a function of the correlation or averages. It's deliberately calculated that way.

What these targets do NOT show, is any reflection of an individual pupil's performance, past, present or future, in a language. The targets are not based on any knowledge of the pupil's study of languages. They are no reflection of the teaching they receive. No reflection of any government initiatives or new GCSE syllabuses or Ofsted Research Reviews. None of that will have any impact. They are set before they start their GCSE course; in fact they are determined before they even start KS3.

But they are a true reflection of something. They very clearly show one important thing.

Look down the column for the target for French. And compare it to the other subjects.

Look at the French column. It's striking. This is not a marginal difference.

It is lower for French than for the other subjects in the range of grades 5 and above. For a pupil targeted a grade 3, it is more in line. But the higher the target grade, the more likely it is to be a grade lower than in other subjects. A grade lower. Not a statistical tendency somewhere in the scale of things. A grade lower compared to other subjects.

This is not a reflection of the pupil's performance in languages. It's nothing to do with the content of the course or the difficulty of the exam. So what is it a reflection of?

It is a true and accurate reflection of the fact that lower grades are given out in languages. It's right there, correctly presented to pupils to help them inform their options choices. And confirmed to them by the reports of exam results from older pupils, siblings and friends.

We can tell the pupils it is no reflection on them. And that the target grade doesn't limit what they can get. Although by then the damage is already done. The targets speak for themselves. 

But if we tell them the truth, we should explain to them that if they pick a language at GCSE, although no reflection on them, the targets do accurately indicate that they are likely to be given a lower grade than in other subjects.

FFT have reported on the statistics of severe grading in MFL many times over the years. But to see it so starkly in the targets given to pupils drives home the fact that this is not some marginal statistical issue to be debated and tweaked by experts in ivory towers. It's right there in black and white in the targets given to pupils: "You are likely to get a lower grade in languages than in other subjects because that's how many high grades get given out."

So before we do ANYTHING else. Before we have a subject review, or national initiatives, or hubs, or an Ofsted Research Review, or a new GCSE. Before we spend another single pound of tax payers' money. Before we publish any more articles lamenting take up of MFL, or have a debate in the House or a committee. There's one thing we can do. Stop downgrading the performance of our pupils compared to the other subjects we compete with.

If grades in Modern Languages were given out in line with other subjects, no-one would be clamouring that they ought to be downgraded because standards of teaching are lower. No-one. It's a historical anomaly that we got stuck with.

If an exam one year happens to be easy, and too many pupils get high marks, they use the grade boundaries to bring it into line. If one year an exam happens to be a bit difficult and not enough pupils get high marks, they use the grade boundaries to bring it into line. Except for modern languages. Where every year they use the grade boundaries to make sure the grades are out of line with other subjects.

And then wring their hands over woe is me, what is to be done.

Not one penny would it cost to put this right.

NB There is an argument that it's hard to get MFL teachers, therefore the ones you get aren't always going to be the best. So therefore that is why French grades are lower.

Firstly. This is untrue. This is not the reason grades are lower. Grades have been lower for decades. It's a historical anomaly, nothing more.

Secondly, it is also hard to recruit specialist maths teachers. People are not crying out for maths grading to be less generous. Or physics.

Which leads to one conclusion. This is sexism. The subject singled out for lower grading is the one most associated with female teachers and female pupils. What is the statistic? One state school boy in 10 gets a "pass" in GCSE French?

They know the grades are unfair but they keep them that way. Would they do that for maths? There's no "would" about it. They DON'T do that for maths. This blights the careers of teachers and the futures of our pupils alike. There really needs to be a class action against the government if they persist with this clear and pernicious discrimination.

The view from the classroom

 I don't know if it is the time to be going over the old arguments about the proposals for the new GCSE. Especially as we are busy working out the ins and outs of the new exam, which is in some important ways different from what was originally proposed. Before Christmas, a paper was published by Emma Marsden and Rachel Hawkes, looking back at what was proposed and how the proposals were received. Balancing evidence-informed language policy and pragmatic considerations: Lessons from the MFL GCSE reforms in England. This link takes you to the abstract. To open the full document, use the links that say "Access to Document." It's very readable and I would encourage you to read it.

It puts the case for the proposals very clearly and tries to address what it sees as some misconceptions. It is also clear from the introduction that the new GCSE was seen as a way to reform not just assessment, but teaching. It stresses that the GCSE assessment  (whether one likes it or not) heavily shapes curricula, materials, and pedagogy. So it is important that we continue to engage with the thinking and research behind these proposals.

You can see the arguments for this from both sides. But what it actually comes down to is what happens in the classroom when you try it out for real. Whether it has an impact, pushes us towards changes, and actually works out as intended. Which is the reason why I am writing this post, although I am somewhat conflicted as to whether I want to. So here goes...

The paper makes the case that the vocabulary list in the legacy GCSE was not central to the exam or to teaching. Teachers did not build their curriculum around the GCSE list, and the exam boards did not deliberately design the exams to test knowledge of all the words in rotation over a few years of the lifetime of the exam.

While this is true, it wasn't necessarily a problem. Or rather, the exam boards and teachers didn't turn it into a problem. Teachers taught the words that pupils needed to perform the tasks and topics required by the exam. Without consulting the vocabulary list. In the speaking and writing exam, what mattered was the pupils' ability to use their language to express themselves, rather than testing knowledge of items from a list. Apart from in the translation questions, where knowledge of the specific word in the text was required, and this isn't something that has changed. In the reading and listening exams, certainly for AQA if not for the other exam boards, the key to the texts and questions wasn't a mass of low frequency topic vocabulary. It was words like often, some, always, other, ago. And the focus on exact rendering of word by word language, rather than an answer to a comprehension question was the biggest criticism of these exams. Which seems likely to be exacerbated not alleviated by the proposed "new" approach.

So the paper is right in that the vocabulary list wasn't central to teaching or to the exam. I'm not sure that this was ever a problem. But if you do think that it was absurd that the list of vocabulary wasn't central, and thought it was reasonable to specify all the vocabulary to be learned, then you can see the case for reform. Does this mean that the new vocabulary list should therefore be determined by frequency?

I can see the arguments. The words that get used all the time are worth learning because they get used all the time. Emma and Rachel base their work on research that shows that the very highest frequency words are common to whichever corpus you use. And the words are a good fit for continuing to A Level and for reading authentic resources. 

I think this last example is something that we really ought to be exploring. In the 1990s and 2000s when reading for information and pleasure and "adapt the task, not the text" was in vogue, we encouraged pupils to spot cognates and topic words from context. And maybe told them to gloss over the little words in between. Or thought that pupils would pick them up from context eventually. Whereas now, if we concentrated on the little words in between, we would find that the topic words and cognates are just as obvious as they always were, but equipped with the high frequency words, pupils would be much more able to access authentic texts. This is something I'd love to come back to. Although in the debate about reforming the curriculum, the Ofsted Research Review warned us off authentic texts, because of its focus on language as modelling known words and grammar, rather than for comprehension or interest.

But in the classroom, teachers are finding it very hard to adapt to the high frequency vocabulary approach. We are not used to following a list of vocabulary and constructing a syllabus out of it or constructing texts out of it. It's not that we have swapped the old vocabulary list for the new one. It's that we have moved from basing our teaching on the tasks and topics that pupils are required to deal with, to basing our teaching on a list of words to be tested.

We were quite happy teaching the words pupils needed for a topic. We were quite happy teaching pupils the words and structures they needed for the exam tasks. And the thing is, we are still doing that. But with the extra worry of whether we are teaching the right words.

For many, it means no change. Apart from the creeping worry. For others, it means we are incentivised to try to gain an advantage by doing some of the things the new approach favours: paying greater attention to recycling words; rehearsing what pupils can do with words on a list, rather than saying what they want to say; making sure we cover words from a list in any context we can shoehorn them into; making sure we work across topics. Some of these incentives are positive and some are negative. But recycling vocabulary across topics was already a feature of strong teaching under the legacy GCSE.

It also gives rise to absurdities. If we are still teaching topics based around pupils' personal likes and dislikes, do we discourage them from learning words like skating, chess, chicken which may not be on the list? Or do we go against the whole point of the reforms and add more words which aren't on the list? There seems to be a serious mismatch between the tasks and topics and the language we are given. And I still haven't got to the bottom of the mismatch with the grammar. If we have to teach jouer à and jouer de, are there actually enough sports and instruments on the list?

And it raises interesting questions about the notion of difficulty in language learning. Some of the words on the Higher list are cognates. The difference between Higher and Foundation isn't about difficulty. It's about the number of words. It's interesting to think about this and whether we can control and segregate our pupils' exposure to words according to a list.

Even if you were to insist it makes sense for the GCSE to be built around a vocabulary list, wouldn't it make more sense to make sure the list matches the tasks, topics and grammar that pupils will be required to demonstrate? The paper seeks to argue that this question is a misunderstanding of the power of the high frequency vocabulary. But in practice we are finding that we are very much teaching words which are not on the list, in order for pupils to perform in the topics and tasks.

One final spectre on vocabulary that this paper raises, is the idea that the exam boards should be held to the stipulation that they should test the full range of vocabulary on the list over the lifetime of the exam. This risks meaning that the exams quickly exhaust the more obvious topic words, and that the exams look very different from year to year, and start to look very different from the texts in the coursebooks. When I've mentioned this before, representatives of the exam boards have been very puzzled by the idea and told me that it's not something they are contemplating. So I think we can stop worrying about that.

Another issue the paper raises is the Conversation part of the exam and the use of memorised answers.

This is the part of the debate that leaves me most bewildered. I am someone who prides himself on teaching pupils how to develop extended spontaneous answers in speaking and writing. The old Controlled Assessment GCSE which forced us to abandon this in favour of pre learned fancy answers was an absolute disaster for language teaching. The legacy GCSE started to see an end to this. Some teachers were quicker than others to start to make the switch, and rote learned answers had been embedded from earlier in the curriculum. All of this needed to be undone. The breadth of topics and the requirement for interaction of the examiner, responding to the pupils' initial answer, mean that pupils' ability to use their language flexibly and across topics is winning out over the idea of pre learning answers to every possible question on every possible topic.

The paper quotes research saying that a large proportion of pupils still do some pre learning of answers. This isn't the same as saying that pupils learn and regurgitate a fancy answer word for word. It may well be that faced with a high stakes exam, many pupils will want to be well prepared. It may well be that one of the steps towards spontaneity and fluency, is to have pre learned answers to some questions. It may well be that the pre learned answers are adaptable, flexible and not actually even used in the exam.

I have had pupils who thought they were doing the right thing by trying to memorise answers for the speaking exam. And it doesn't mean it goes well! They are focused on word by word regurgitation and recall. The first thing I do is interrupt them and push them away from these answers, and then they can start to talk from their repertoire and routines and make a much better job. The examiner's reports for the legacy GCSE comment on how pupils who can do this are much better equipped than pupils who have attempted to memorise answers. Keeping the Conversation, where the teacher can ask open questions and follow them up with further prompts, was the most important thing we have managed to do in engaging with these new proposals.

The proposed alternative version of "spontaneous speaking" meaning responding to unexpected questions, is one of the trickier parts of the new GCSE. We know from the Role Play in the legacy exam that the unexpected question is tricky. In an exam situation, pupils pick up on a key word from the question and give an answer which may or may not fit the question. It's a short answer, often panicky.

The new exam has four of these questions. And the expectation is for an answer with some development. We are working hard on these. My pupils have a greater familiarity with question words than previously. But we shouldn't underestimate the processing load required to accurately understand the question, formulate a sentence response, attempt to give some extended detail. Some of the questions don't help. "Where is your school?" could induce bafflement in a pupil in an exam, where both interlocutors are sitting in said school. And how to develop that answer on the spot is not clear to me at all. These questions seem designed to catch pupils out, rather than offer a platform for them to develop spontaneous speaking. This vision of "spontaneity" is from the point of view of testing pupils' knowledge, rather than their ability to use the language.

And I think that's the key. The research paper finds plenty of evidence to back up its own point of view. But it is firmly rooted in one vision of language learning. It wants to be a fair test of pupils' knowledge of what they have learned. To specify what should be learned, and to test that knowledge and to some extent the application of that knowledge. A perfectly reasonable point of view. But one that isn't so simple in the classroom when you are dealing with real pupils and real language learning. Is this the problem? That acknowledging that the GCSE (whether one likes it or not) heavily shapes curricula, materials, and pedagogy led to an attempt to deliberately shape what is learned and how it is taught. And for us in the classroom, the experience of being reshaped feels awkward, confusing and sometimes painful.

Omelettes versus Snowballs

 You will know from other posts, that my favourite metaphor for learning languages is the snowball. And that I have adopted Scott Thornbury's omelette metaphor as a critique of the synthetic grammar syllabus. In this post I will use the example of teaching er verbs in the present tense to show how they might approach a specific topic differently. And I have a sneaking suspicion that at some point I will also hint that they may not be so different. As long as you don't throw omelettes or eat snowballs... 

The omelette metaphor is a biased one. It is a cruel metaphor for something that is supposed not to work. To show the error of an approach and even to ridicule it. I can partly pass the blame for that onto Scott Thornbury but also it does have a more positive side which I haven't seen him put forward, but which is implied in his metaphor. It is the idea that a synthetic grammar syllabus is created by taking the complete linguistic grammar system and chopping it up into little bits for the learner. It's as if you were teaching someone to make an omelette by taking a cold dead omelette, chopping it up, and asking the learner to reassemble it into an omelette. That's not how you make an omelette. And here is the implied counter metaphor: You make an omelette by cooking raw ingredients. With the attention on what is happening in the pan, not on a recipe. And certainly not out of cold omelette pieces.

The snowball metaphor is my favourite, so I am clearly biased. It's the idea that an even covering of snow will have melted by the next day. The learner has to actively grab hold of language that sticks together, make it their own, have some fun with it. This will not only stop it melting, but more and more language will stick to the snowball, making it bigger and bigger.

Let's look at how this might affect your thinking if you are teaching the present tense of er verbs in French.

A synthetic grammar approach is one which selects and sequences the language in order to conceptualise and practise the components of the linguistic system. So if you were teaching er verbs, your primary concern would be for pupils to know the endings. It would be important to you that your pupils as putative linguists would understand the paradigm of the persons of the verb and the importance of correctly inflecting the verb to match the subject pronoun. You might start by giving a table of the verb endings. You would have to emphasise which ones are silent and which ones are pronounced. You could then give exercises to make sure that pupils have to make decisions as to which ending to use, practising getting it right.

There are several pitfalls you will have to negotiate. Firstly with an emphasis on correct endings, you may find that the difference between the written and spoken forms of tu manges and ils mangent becomes an issue. You might blame the nature of the French language for this rather than your approach. And that might be a mistake. You may find that pupils can do an exercise correctly but don't incorporate the knowledge into the language they can deploy for themselves to create meaning. And you may decide that that doesn't matter because pupils at this novice stage shouldn't be required to express themselves. And that also may be a mistake. You may find that you come back a month later and find like the snow that the knowledge has melted away. And you may decide to mix your metaphors and that what is required is to force-feed them some more cold omelette.

How would the snowball approach be different? Time to mix metaphors again, I'm afraid. The snowball approach would be concerned not with chopping up the linguistic system of the grammar omelette. It would be concerned with cooking the raw ingredients. Growing the pupils' snowball. Above all it would be taking care that new knowledge sticks to the existing snowball, that the ingredients are coming together to make something edible and tasty.

So maybe teaching the present tense of er verbs would look something like this... Pupils are already good at saying what foods they like and don't like. The sort of thing they might do next is to ask other people what they like to eat. And to report back on who likes what. In spoken French, there are no endings to learn for I like, do you like, he likes, she likes, they like. It is just the pronoun or the person's name and aime. You can even do we like if you use on. Pupils can get good at using this in spoken French, using their language to ask, answer and report on food likes and dislikes. Once that knowledge starts to stick to the snowball, once the mixture starts to cook, then you can decide to bring in the written form of the endings. And if pupils are writing nice paragraphs comparing what different people like and don't like to eat, and some of their written endings get missed, then that's not a disaster. Because it's not your primary concern. Because you know they have cooked something pretty tasty for now, and they can cook something more fancy as their skills develop. Oh. And once they've mastered using the verb aimer, they can branch out into manger, saying who eats/doesn't eat what. Whereas the chopped up grammar approach would avoid the verb manger because it's "irregular" in the nous form. (Actually it's not irregular. The whole point of the silent e is to preserve the perfectly regular pattern.)

Another thing would be to ask why the pupils are learning the endings of er verbs. If the answer is because it's obvious they need to, then that is the chopped up omelette talking. If you look at it from the pupils' snowball point of view, what makes a sticky useful snowball isn't quite as obvious.

Our KS3 curriculum works on pupils being able to develop answers more and more spontaneously and coherently along the lines of I like to live in my town because I can see my friends and go to the park to play football, but if I want to see a film I have to go to Dereham because there isn't a cinema in my village... If we are going to add third person to that, we need to think carefully about how it is going to fit. In another post I introduce another metaphor - language learning as football - to make this happen. To summarise, we make it a rule that if you mention someone else ("my friends" in the example above) then you deploy a he/she/they/we with a conjugated verb. I like to live in my town because I can see my friends. We play football in the park but... This is also a key ingredient in the way we move to more complex narration, setting up a conflict of opinion; for example in the aquarium story. The focus is on what pupils can do with their language, not on what they know.

You may be thinking that the snowball approach is being as prescriptive as the omelette approach in getting pupils to use certain language points rather than to express themselves. For example in giving pupils routines to follow in order to deploy their language to tell stories. I think the answer to this is that pupils' focus is always on saying things, not on the form of the language. In the world of cold omelettes, this is a problem because pupils get things wrong. In the world of a big snowball, it's all part of pupils hoovering up more and more language and making it their own and having fun with it. 

From the pupils' point of view, language isn't a neatly ordered complete system. It's messy and unknown. They are more interested in meaning and saying things than on the links, rules and patterns. Language links to the real world of meaning, as well as the internal links of grammar. We don't want pupils who have nothing to say and don't want to try to say things. It's our job to show them how grammar and patterns mean they can say more and more things. And they will always push the limitations of their language, because they cannot know the ways in which French will be different from their own language.

I do think though, that the approaches have things in common. The return to fashion of a synthetic grammar approach is a reaction to the kind of functional syllabus we saw in the 1990s, where pupils were taught to say things. A collection of things they could say. With supposedly little conceptualisation or explicit teaching of grammar. Both the snowball and the omelette approach want to avoid this. They want pupils to accumulate grammar step by step and in small pieces. The difference is that one approach focuses on the language and chops it up and gives it to the pupils because they ought to be learning it. The other focuses on what the learners know and can do with the language, and seeks to develop it.

Working on the three types of questions for the new GCSE Speaking Exam

 Year 10 have been working on the three different types of questions for the new Speaking Exam. In this grid, they give 3 different answers to the question Where do you stay on holiday?

For the Role Play, the pupils are given the questions in the preparation period and can plan their answers. Then in the exam, they are asked these questions word for word, but in Spanish. They need to know to give a short sentence answer. (In my Y11 mocks this week for the old GCSE Speaking, many of my candidates were giving Role Play answers which were too long, and risked losing marks if they started making errors.)

In this case, the question is, "Where did you stay on holiday?" And the answer for the Role Play is "I stayed in a hotel." No need for any extra details unless the question specifies it.

The middle column is for the Unexpected Questions. In the AQA exam, these come after the Read Aloud text. They are on the same topic as the text, but are not questions about the text. This was one of the areas of the new exam that I particularly wanted to focus on. We know from the current exam that the unexpected question in the Role Play, and the 2 unexpected questions after the photo card are a challenge. The cognitive load of switching from prepared answers, to listening to a question from the teacher is a shock to the system. Then to process the question, either by picking up on a key word and hoping for the best, or by understanding every word... Then to think of an answer... And how to say it in Spanish... You can see pupils struggling. And in the new exam, there are 4 questions like this. And they are supposed to give developed answers.

So far, my class haven't panicked at the stage of dealing with understanding the questions. We've worked on it, and they are confident. What they struggled with at first was the full sentence answers. "Where did you stay on holiday?" Answer: "In a hotel." In your relief and pleasure at grasping the question, it's not natural to start the sentence again and say, "I stayed in a hotel." We have made progress on this.

By the way, for the role play at Higher Tier on the Sample Assessment Materials, there are past tense questions such as Where did you stay? The questions for the Unexpected Questions seem more along the lines of giving opinions, disadvantages, describing, saying what you do... The question Where did you stay? was chosen by my class for the purpose of this exercise.

And some of the Unexpected Questions don't seem particularly friendly for giving a developed answer. In the French SAMs there is Where is your school? So I am telling my students to:

1. Answer the question.

2. Say some more stuff.

Answer the question. Say some more stuff.

It's not their fault if the questions are unhelpful. They have to say more in order to get the marks.

My school is in Dereham. I live in a village so I go to school by bus.

I am hoping that would count as a developed answer to Where is your school?

For the Conversation Questions, I would never ask Where is your school? Or How many maths lessons do you have? This isn't really a conversation. It seems to be more to do with testing if the pupils know question words like where and how many, which is all very well, but doesn't help them demonstrate they can meet the criteria for developed answers. You'll see their grid refers to a Mr E question.

I don't want my questions to be catching any pupils out. I want them to be a platform for them to show what they can do. So instead of Where did you stay on holiday? I would ask Do you prefer to stay in a hotel or a campsite? And when they answer (with an opinion and a reason), I would simply say, For example? And they would know to answer with a past tense example and develop it.

You can see in their grid, they have written to Keep talking on and on. It says: When I went to Spain I was going to go camping but I decided to stay in a 5 star hotel so I could go to the pool... The criteria for developing answers are less than for the current GCSE. And the word "narrate" has been removed from the mark scheme. But they have to talk for much longer on one topic than previously. So talking on and on is still going to matter!

We are going to come back to this grid regularly, and build answers suitable for the Role Play, the Read Aloud, and the Conversation. And of course we'll use that distinction when answering questions spontaneously in class. How's everyone getting on with all this? Let me know!

When everything you've told pupils about the new GCSE comes true!

 This week, everything I have been telling pupils about the new GCSE came true. And in quietly spectacular fashion.

I suppose that means I'll have to tell you what it is that I've been telling them and what happened in this week's lessons. But I promise you there is a point and it's got positive news about the textbooks and positive advice for the new GCSE. So here goes as quickly as I can to get to the point...

Some context on how I am teaching the course. I am using the new textbook. I am not a big user of textbooks generally. For the outgoing GCSE I used the textbook for the first couple of units and then stopped. But for the new GCSE, if I make my own resources then how will I know if I am covering the words on the GCSE vocabulary list?

I am not doing the topics in the order of the textbook. Firstly because I want to build a strong core repertoire of language on the easy to expand topics such as Holidays, School, Free Time. These topics lend themselves to developing spontaneous answers giving opinions, reasons, detail of past experiences and plans for the future. This can then be transferred from one topic to the next. Secondly because my Year 10 are essentially beginners and I want to keep the backbone of my teaching intact because I know it works.

What messages have I given pupils about the new GCSE? By using the old textbook and the new textbook, I have shown them that we don't have to learn sets of topic words. Hotel, guest house, cruise, youth hostel, campsite in the old textbook, compared to hotel, campsite in the new one. With even words like ducha for "shower" not on the list. Instead what matters is what you can DO with your language to develop what you can say about a hotel or a campsite, using your core repertoire. And as teachers we all know that albergue juvenil was never going to be seen again in the course and all the effort you put in to explaining what it is without making it sound weird was going to be wasted.

Instead, the message is to watch out for the non topic high frequency words. Here are the words my pupils extracted from the texts (in the new textbook and from the old) on the topics of holiday accommodation and transport:

Words like quite, first, too, never, always, however, learn, together, fear, noise, broken. The words that can fit into every topic. We've written them strategically inside the cover of their exercise book. The pupils said, "If this is just from one topic, we're going to run out of room." And my message was, "No. These words will be the same in every topic." A bit of an ostrich to fortune, but as we shall see, the point of this post is that things are turning out uncannily as I promised them.

And if you look carefully, another type of word is also on this page. Huelga meaning strike and obras in this case meaning roadworks. The opposite sort of word. The words that fit in no topics at all. But which are on the GCSE list because they feature in the EU parliamentary debates used as the source of the list. Pupils know to keep hold of these words. And I told them that if the textbook was well written we would meet them again. These words are easy to skip over if you are following a topic vocabulary based approach.

So this week, we moved on to the topic of School. So we've gone from Module 2 in the textbook to Module 5. And when I say "moved topic", my message to pupils is that they can instantly transfer their Holidays language to the School topic. Here's the first lesson back after half term. Bear in mind these are beginners (they did Spanish in Year 9 one lesson a week after school). This is them writing on School before we've started the topic.

You can see the repertoire from talking about going to a theme park or an aquarium (I like, because I can, but if, X doesn't like, what was happening, speech, what happened...) transferred instantly to the new "topic." And you can see one of them has deliberately used fear from their non topic vocabulary page. The message is getting through.

But things got even better.

This is a text from Module 5 of the new textbook.

New Pearson GCSE Spanish textbook AQA version

First of all I focused on the "School" vocabulary. Particularly words you would recognise if you saw them writtten down but which sound different. For example religión, educación, justo. Hidden cognates such as esfuerzo, aprobar. And potential false friends like asignatura and in the second text on the page buenas notas and suspender. I did this as a dictation, dictating single words and then teaching the meaning. (The next lesson we came back to these "school" words and used dual coding to make sure we knew them.)

Then I read the text through aloud without the pupils seeing it. And they ticked off the "school" words on their dictated list as they heard them.

So what are the other words the text is made up of? Our core repertoire words feature strongly: tenemos que, me encanta, a __ le gusta, porque... And what else? The words from the list on the yellow inside cover of our book. However, always... And in the second text on the page: Ya no tengo miedo cuando tengo que actuar en una obra de teatro. With our word for fear and... you will not believe it! Our word for roadworks, cropping up as the word for a play in the sense of a work of theatre.

Pearson Spanish GCSE textbook AQA version.

Of course, spotting this word in the text also led to recalling where we met it, and the word for strike got recalled as being the other obscure word we'd met it with. So even though strike wasn't in the text, we've effectively met it again.

So my pupils can turn to page 111 of the textbook. And find that once we've learned a handful of "School" words, their core repertoire plus their high frequency words are the key to this new GCSE. And even their red list of high alert obscure and random words is revisited! This spectacularly delivered all the points I have been trying to make about learning for this new GCSE!

In one respect we got very very lucky. I had not designed it so that the words I picked out of the old and new textbooks would all reappear on page 111. And the authors of the textbook had not imagined that I would jump from Holidays to School. But it's feeling very positive for how we are approaching the GCSE and for how the textbook has been written. It made the pupils realise they are accumulating language that will be met again and again, transferred across topics. And it made me feel I can trust that the textbook will serve us well. Thank you! It's looking good!

Note added later in the School Unit.

I have to come back and add this, because this is getting ridiculous! You may remember from other posts that I started the year with the topic of holidays so we could build the Y10s' repertoire. Specifically with a story about going to an aquarium and then a story about going to a theme park. In which someone ate and drank too much and was sick on a ride (sorry). I mentioned in this post that we then transferred the skeleton of those stories to being able to talk and write about the topic of school. Well. In the text book, we got to the page in the School Unit about going on a school trip. Which turned out to be about going to a theme park and someone drank too much and was sick on a ride (sorry). My pupils have the impression I have planned this in purpose!

Getting started with the new GCSE

 The first half term with the new GCSE! Wishing maybe I'd brought some books home to illustrate some things in this post. But then again, no thanks. I'll leave it all at school if you don't mind!

For French, I put in place booklets for Module 0 (before starting the textbook) and to accompany Module 1 of the book. This was to make sure teachers and pupils were focusing on the transferable core of language and the high frequency non topic language. And working on what pupils can DO with their language as much as on knowledge of language.

This didn't leave me much time to plan the Spanish Scheme of Work or resources. Our French scheme of work is flexible and will be constantly revised as we discover what the new GCSE is actually like. The Spanish scheme of work is even more flexible. I'm just using the old one and changing things as I go! This is also because they basically start Spanish in Year 10. (Year 9 have one lesson a week after school.) So I'm really concentrating on building what the pupils know and can do. With lots of shortcuts and synergies across topics. An accumulation of language and the ability to deploy it is something that I am not prepared to throw away; because it works!

So I started with the topic of Holidays. Not the topic that comes first in the textbook. I wanted to start with a topic that is really strong on the key aspects of the course. Pupils' repertoire of opinions, reasons and references to past, present and future. Key vocabulary for time reference, qualifiers, description. Holidays is great for this. Plus it allows us to look at places in Spain and tell exciting stories. Rather than obscure navel gazing and invasion of pupils' privacy, trying to construct something on a marginal topic like Your Use of Communications Technology. Once we have the core snowball of language, we can easily scoop up things like Technology later on. But it's not the topic I want to start with when I'm trying to get the snowball to gel.

All of my Year 10 can confidently give opinions and reasons. Including other people's opinions to set up a conflict. They can narrate where they went, what they wanted, what people said, what was happening and what happened. They can do this for an amusing incident at an aquarium. Or a theme park. And transfer it to other topics we've not even done yet, for example talking about a lesson in school. There are plenty of posts on this blog looking at exactly this. If you're not familiar with it, here is a good example. It shows how the old GCSE lent itself to this approach. The requirement to "narrate" is no longer there in the new GCSE criteria. But the Conversation now requires pupils to talk for twice as long on one theme compared to the old GCSE. So I am keeping this approach! Plus it contains all the grammar my Year 10 beginners need to have at their fingertips.

Here they are improvising on the idea of different activities for different weather conditions. And including the class's pet obsession which now appears in every piece of work anyone does: rubber ducks!

Going to Cromer and playing on the arcades

As well as the core repertoire, you can see the high frequency vocabulary for time references and qualifiers shining through!

Again, this is something that I always taught. This non topic language is absolutely vital in the out-going GCSE where AQA will give 0 marks for a Reading/Listening answer that doesn't contain words like almost, part of, most... Again, if you aren't teaching this language for the old GCSE, here's a post that will open your eyes!

So what has changed? One important thing is the apparent reduction in topic-relevant vocabulary. I am hearing this from the French teachers too. Teaching Technology without having all the technology words as central. Or in a future unit, teaching TV habits without having all the types of programmes listed. Of course you can still teach pupils how to say, "I have my own youtube channel" even if channel isn't on the list. But you don't set out with the principal objective being for pupils to learn those topic words. It's no longer central.

What are we teaching instead? Well, from the first part of this post, you can see that I am teaching core powerful cross-topic repertoire plus high frequency non-topic words.

You can see this best if you continue to teach with the old textbook together with the new one. There are exercises which look similar, but which show the key differences. For example in the Holidays unit, the old textbook has a listening/reading exercise on accommodation. It contains youth hostel, cruiser, guest house, luxury hotel, campsite... The new textbook has hotel, flat, campsite.

In speaking and writing, the focus is on what you can say about a hotel or a campsite. Not learning all the types of accommodation. In listening and reading, the focus is on the exact detail of the qualifiers. In fact it always was. But now I don't need to feel guilty for skipping youth hostel because I knew we weren't going to see it again ever and it would be forgotten within days.

Here's the list of words my pupils extracted from the Reading/Listening texts on transport and accommodation:

Not a single transport or accommodation word there! And it's prominently located on the inside cover of their exercise book. Because that vocabulary is going to be useful in every unit. I'm hoping that every sub topic doesn't yield that much key vocabulary, because we're going to run out of room on the yellow covers, and because I've told the pupils that this vocabulary will set them up for the whole course. Unlike youth hostel, I am certain they will see these words again and again in Listenings and Readings. In fact they already have. And have another look at the plastic duck writing above and see how these words mesh with their core repertoire for Speaking and Writing.

Plenty of "topic" words have stuck with pupils. This kind of concrete topic vocabulary is easily lapped up. Chubascos stuck literally by me telling them they didn't need to learn it anymore. But our main focus has been on the non topic words.

One last thing on using the old and the new textbook that brings this out. Having worked on accommodation or transport with the new book, you can do the exercises from the old book. And use this to show them how the vocabulary works. But also to show them how AQA questions tend to work. They are NOT comprehension questions in the sense of giving an answer about the information in the text. They are language testing questions where you have to demonstrate you can show your knowledge of the words and structures.

Use the listenings from the old book. Give the pupils the comprehension question "answers" (he stayed in a youth hostel etc). But show them how for AQA this isn't how they view the exam questions. You can see in this example, I gave them the questions. And I gave them an insufficient answer. You can spot these because they have been marked by a cross. Their job is to listen and give the full AQA compliant answer.

What the pupils have to do is focus on the detail of the language around youth hostel, not the youth hostel itself - this is no longer in the exam. What they are listening for is the detail:  near the beach, quite, very, small, a bit. These are the words AQA have always wanted pupils to identify if they are to get the marks. And there they are, right there in the old textbook. But we were being distracted by guest house and cruise ship.

So far so good. I have some things to share in another post related to unexpected questions and the different requirements for the Role Play, Read Aloud Questions and Conversation Questions. But the biggest difference so far is it allows me to continue to teach exactly how I taught the old GCSE, but without worrying so much about cutting corners on youth hostel and lists of topic vocabulary. Because building what pupils can do with a core repertoire is much more important.

Cognitive Science in Practice

 In a previous post I wrote about the Cognitive Science ideas that are so current in schools today. I characterised them as being uncontroversial, fairly obvious, and as giving no actual precise answers as to how they make teaching and learning go better.

That post wasn't really attacking the Cognitive Science. It was about the dangers of the right wing Knowledge Curriculum which is using the Cognitive Science as a Trojan Horse. More on that toxic Knowledge mutation here. 

The Cognitive Science has been pulled into this in two main ways. Firstly as cover for the toxic Knowledge mutation. And secondly by the "Research" mutation. Instead of research into the messy complexity of teaching and learning, this has come to mean a policing of teaching and how it conforms to a neat and very basic model of learning. 

None of this is the fault of the Cognitive Science. So in this post I will try to set the record straight a little and find a middle way!

When it comes to the Cognitive Science, I think that being basic (fundamental), uncontroversial and vague are positives. Yes, even vague. The sooner we can get away from polarised models and magic bullets, the better. True research is in the messy middle ground. Cognitive Science tells us, for example, that the balance between challenge and pupils being overwhelmed is a vital sweetspot. It doesn't tell us how to find this. Of course not. But we look for it in every lesson. Teaching and research into learning ought to be about looking at this rich interplay, not a tidied up version with arrows, outlines of heads and memories forming as a spark across a synapse.

Here's an example to get us going.

When I use dual coding to teach food vocabulary in French, I have used these pictures.

As in comfy chair

As in moooootard

[Ironically the only magic bullet Cognitive Science offers is misunderstood to such an extent that I am often told this is NOT in fact dual coding.]

Pupils doing a single transition taster lesson in French in July of Year 6 still remember most of the words when we come to do them 8 months later in March of Year 7. From a single lesson. So dual coding works - go back and click on the link above if that makes you want to read more.

But it doesn't work equally well for all the pictures. Jam works great. This particular picture for moutarde doesn't. And if you pay attention in the lesson, you will see why. There is always a pupil whose immediate reaction is to shout out, "Why is that cow pink?" And the answer is because I really liked the picture, I thought it would be fun and maybe even memorable. And then the Cognitive Science whispers, "Too memorable." Too memorable and too distracting. The pupils have remembered "pink cow" not mooootard. So time to try a different cow picture that's less the centre of attention.

This applies to everything. Not just pictures. What is helpful? What is attractive? What is distracting? Like the Millennium Falcon, we are stuck in some kind of traction beam between attraction and distraction. The Cognitive Science can alert us to our fate, but we still have to figure it out for ourselves on a case by case basis. Sometimes you can just bypass the compressor. And sometimes you have to fly straight at the Imperial cruiser and hide until it jettisons its trash.

And it gets really quite complicated when we move away from just images. Our whole approach to teaching languages comes into question:

Authentic texts. Genuinely engaging, interesting and meaningful? Or leading to a superficial reading based on guessing, alienating pupils who need to understand the words, are overloaded by the content, and aren't that interested anyway? Attractive or distracting?

Using language to communicate, be creative, express yourself. Is this exciting or overwhelming? It brings with it the overload of having to think up what to say, and having to interact with other people. And incredibly complex decision making of how to express yourself using the limited language you have, balancing accuracy and communication. 

We don't need Cognitive Science to tell us this. We know that all these aspects need developing: learning the language knowledge, and learning to use the language. But we should listen to the Cognitive Science here. Because it is trying to escape from the paralysing  Knowledge Curriculum tractor beam paradigm of "Novices and Experts." Learners can and should be learning to develop how they use their language. Because we understand the Cognitive challenges that are in play here. We don't give up on it and say that learners can't use their language until they are "Expert." We know to break down the demands and develop knowledge of language and how to deploy language, working on both.

Grammar or Meaning? When I teach pets to Year 7, I know that un and une, and j'ai and je n'ai pas de are more important than chien in terms of their French over the next 5 years. But I also know that for pupils at this stage, links and patterns internal to the language are insignificant, compared to links between the language and the real world. Their real world. When they go round the classroom asking, Tu as un hibou qui s'appelle Archimedes ? until they find that person, I know they are practising phonics, gender, the verb to have for asking and answering, negatives, question forms, how to interact... But from their perspective... They are finding out who has an owl!

Like the pink cow, I need to watch and make sure that it's not a distraction. But without this, it's not language learning. It's memorisation of some sounds and letters with no meaning other than that they can be translated into English. But the kind of meaning that means referring to reality - the reality in the classroom, the reality of the owl - that needs to be in the balance too.

And when I teach je n'ai pas de... Cognitive Science doesn't tell me how to do it. Should I explain how it's formed, with Mr Apostrophe eating the letter e? Or should they learn it by chanting it over and over to a video of an accelerating steam train? Should we meet it when we do the grammar of the verb to have? Or should we do it when we are doing a dialogue and someone finds they need to say, "I don't have an owl"?

We do all those things. But in what order and in what balance? Cognitive Science doesn't tell me. Experience tells me. Trying it and coming back to it again tells me. Constant observing and monitoring tells me. Talking to the pupils about it tells me.

And that's just fine. Cognitive Science isn't the answer. It is a question. A dynamic question of balance that is never going to be answered and which will always be asked in every single lesson, every single day. In every single classroom of real pupils and real teachers being human beings.

Differentiated Dictransalation.

 Yes. You read that correctly. Today Y11 did Differentiated Dictransalation.

The translation was a model text on the topic of Work Experience mainly from words in their repertoire, but with plenty of non topic high frequency words as well.

Depending on how much support I thought they would need, different pupils were allowed different approaches.

1. Allowed the text in English and a pen. So when I read the text in Spanish, they can write down any words they had half forgotten or get the verbs or try to write any unknown words as a dictation... But I read it too quickly for them to be able to write down all the words.

2. Allowed the text in English but no pen at this stage. So they can read and follow the text as I read, to check they know words, to listen out for any word order changes or unknown words. But not write them down.

3. Not allowed the text yet. Just have to listen. This group will be further subdivided later in a final twist!

So then I read the text in Spanish. Quickly enough that the group with pens couldn't write down all the words.

Then they did it as a translation.

Group 1 had written down most of the words they might have been missing.

Group 2 had kept any tricky words in their heads.

Group 3 had at least heard the Spanish.

And I invented a group 4. Most of group 3 now got a copy of the text in English to translate just like the others. But group 4 just got a piece of lined paper to try to reconstruct in Spanish the text that they had heard me read.

You need a class who are up for a challenge and won't feel aggrieved at being treated differently. And as part of the challenge they have to understand that there will be mistakes and guesses and things to learn. Watch out the first time you do it, for group 1 writing down words they already know instead of listening out for the bits they need.

We will come back to it tomorrow and see if they can all reproduce a version of the text from memory. And then adapt it to talk about their own work experience!

Using AI to plan lessons

The links to AI conversations in this post have gone dead. I think you can still get the general impression from the post. Then maybe try it for yourself?

 The government have suggested that teachers need to harness the possibilities of AI to help them plan and resource lessons. The idea is that this will save time, and may help new teachers or non-specialists to come up with useable lesson plans.

A year ago to the week, I wrote a post looking at AI and some aspects of language learning. It found that AI was very poor at manipulating language. It could explain in general terms, but as soon as you tried to use it for specific examples or exercises, it started to go wrong. Its examples didn't match its explanation, and it couldn't stick to the brief. And it was sexist and racist. So not a good start. But let's look at how it fares with lesson planning.

We should get the howlers out of the way to start off with.

We know from last year that AI struggles with analysing letters in words.

(By the way, looking at pronunciation in the above example was from my wrangling with the AI. It would never come up with something as focused as that.)

It still struggles with taking words apart.

(And people laugh because it doesn't know how many rs there are in strawberry!)

AI thinks that je vais meaning I am going, can be explained because it is made of the French word va + the English word is

(It didn't randomly come up with this. It was as a result of me asking for clarification.)

AI designs an activity where the teacher reads out the pupils' name and age (11) and the pupils have to guess who it is.

Admit it, you tried saying it to see if there's a difference.

I asked it how long it expected this task to take. It said about 30 minutes. There are not enough words in the dictionary to complete the task!

Writing out the French alphabet for homework. (It's the same as the English alphabet.)

So it makes mistakes. Mistakes with language, mistakes with tasks. And sometimes they are enormous and obvious and hilarious. Although I have to say, that one of my own kids was actually set that very task of writing out and illustrating (with English words) the French alphabet for homework. I may still have it in the loft!

But how does it do in terms of planning lessons?

It always produces a very similar lesson plan. It starts with a warm up, then a repeat after me, then a matching activity, then a write your own paragraph, then listen to some native speakers, then do a role play with a partner, then write a paragraph for homework. Oh. And I forgot flashcards. It loves flashcards.

A sequence of activities, with very little focus on what language is being taught and how the lesson should evolve around knowledge of the teaching points required by the specific content of the lesson. It treats every lesson as some language to be heard and repeated, with some grammar to be explained. As a result, there's no care or attention paid to whether the tasks can be done using the language that the pupils have. So most often, its lessons would not work because the tasks pupils are being asked to do, are not doable.

I have then had to engage with it in a protracted conversation where I give up my time and experience and expertise in order to coach and coax it into producing something better.

Here's an interminable conversation where I tried to get it to focus on teaching the language rather than just a series of activities. Click here to see me wrangle with it.

Here's another one where I tried to start from a language point rather than a topic to see how it did. Unfortunately, its grasp of French is so poor, it was never going to work. In case French isn't your specialist subject, hardly any of the letters it claims are silent are actually silent. Click here to see me trying to help it.

So, far from being time saving, this is taking up hours of my time to try to get it to produce something workable. And far from being suitable for new or non-specialist teachers, it requires huge experience and expertise to try to guide it round horrible pitfalls, and try to get it to focus on teaching language, not stringing together activities.

I have tried it for science lessons too, with the same result. It comes up with activities, with no notion of what it is actually trying to teach and how to engage pupils in that learning. It doesn't use the experiments to tackle fundamental concepts or address misconceptions. In fact at one point it said that a balloon flying along a guide string was demonstrating Newton's Third Law, because the string moved in the opposite direction to the balloon. Here's a summary of its science lessons in a thread unroll.

So I could be quite insulted by the government. They are always on our back and telling us that good enough isn't good enough. But if they recommend this half baked unskilled nonsense, then they clearly have no knowledge or respect for our expertise.

BUT...

But I think I have found a use for it. Just it's the opposite of what the government is suggesting. Clearly, AI is no use at all for new teachers or non-specialist teachers. Or for saving time. It takes an immense amount of expertise and time to coax it towards something useful. It has no knowledge of pupils. It can quote some insight into teaching principles but struggles to apply them. Its subject knowledge is a worry. It likes to string together activities, rather than build learning around the specific concept it is teaching. Does this remind you of anything? 

It reminded me a lot as I was doing it, of the way you can work with a very new trainee teacher to develop their ideas into a workable lesson plan. Of course trainees arrive with differing levels of experience, but this seems to share so many of the things that they have to hone. Spotting flaws, refocusing on what matters, avoiding distracting activities done for the sake of the activity, factoring in knowledge of what will work with pupils, targeting concepts and misconceptions, building in progression.

Here's one where I try to persuade it to change its focus to really think through the language needed for the tasks. After a couple of hours, we did get somewhere.

So maybe we have discovered a useful tool. It was a rehearsal/simulation of how as a mentor, I might work with a trainee. So perhaps this could be used for mentors to hone their patience with new trainees. Or for course tutors to use with their trainees to live-model lesson planning. It would be great if there were a use for it!