One Nice Thing about the New (current) GCSE

 **Note. In this post from 2021, the GCSE referred to as the "new GCSE" is the one they decided to get rid of.

The best thing about the new GCSE (examined in 2018 and 2019) is the way we can return to spontaneous speaking for the General Conversation.

The old GCSE was supposed to respond to the Dearing Review by making the Speaking Exam less "intimidating". This had damaging unintended consequences which may have set back languages teaching in the UK for a whole generation. The Speaking Controlled Assessment was set as a known task. A known topic, with known questions. Pupils learned it from memory, by rote. The markscheme privileged "variety" of language over a re-useable core, which again encouraged rote learning of specific one off fancy expressions rather than having a repertoire you could deploy across topics.

The new (current) GCSE specifically has marks for spontaneity and fluency. It has such a wide range of topics, that hopefully no-one would ask pupils to memorise all the possible answers by rote!

But have teachers adapted to the new GCSE yet? Have we lost the knowledge of how to teach pupils to respond spontaneously? After only going through the actual exam twice, have we managed to tweak our teaching so our pupils can give extended answers, developing coherent narration while improvising on the spot?

I have made this video on how I teach this over KS3 and KS4. (Click this link if the embedded video doesn't show.)

We don't know what the new new GCSE speaking exam is going to look like, and obviously we will have to make changes to our teaching to equip pupils to tackle the tasks and success criteria. I just hope the ability to speak fluently and develop answers in response to further questioning is something that continues to be rewarded.

Thinking Nice Thoughts about Curriculum Change

 With hints of big changes coming, through the new GCSE, I am determined not to be frightened of change. If I can recognise and admit to some of the obstacles, perhaps I will be better placed to be objective and effective.

Change isn't about creating a new curriculum on paper, with everything ticked off and covered somewhere. The curriculum is what happens in teachers' classrooms, in pupils' books, in pupils' heads. It is the flow of learning like the current of a river, heading somewhere and taking all along with it, moving and growing.

In languages we need to create a curriculum which does three things. 

1. It has to have a sense of overall progression and accumulation of language both in terms of memorisation and understanding, leading to growing mastery of the whole system.

2. It must not delay the ability to use the language until mastery of the whole system has been accomplished. Self expression, creativity and exploration of culture must be there throughout and for all learners.

3. The ability to use the language is as important as knowledge of the language. It requires constant practice, monitoring and development. New language must add to what pupils can do, and improve the range, spontaneity, sophistication and coherence with which they can do it.

The first two come together in the third.

Creating this on paper is hard enough. Making it happen in the hundreds of different lessons over all the year groups across a department, is a huge task. It has to be a task shared by all, where one person's vision doesn't stifle the contribution of others. And where the different versions of the vision that inevitably happen with different teachers, different pupils, different classes, are a strength not a flaw. Add to that staffing changes, personal circumstances, changes to groupings, to the school day, and it's a never ending labour that is extraordinary when it all comes together.

Then there's the messages to pupils about their learning, the assessments, the exemplars, the resources. The things done in Year 7 that you expect a class you pick up in Year 9 to respond to, like the "fish" hand signal to pre-empt a mispronunication of the word "coiffeur". The things you hear pupils say that show you they've got the message, "The French is easy, it's thinking what you can say with it that you need to work on." Or "It's like food tech - work with the ingredients you've got."

And what if the central thing you are working towards - increasing their ability to develop spoken and written answers spontaneously - is no longer rewarded or required at GCSE? We did live through a GCSE where rote learning of fancy model answers did trump the ability to speak spontaneously. But if we really believe in it, surely it is a powerful enough curriculum model that it will sweep along with it all the other debris of possessive pronouns and preceding direct objects?

You see, it was helpful to write this. I am more and more confident that we should stick with what we've got and the time to throw in some of the fiddly stuff is later, once the current is strong enough to take it onwards.

Much Nicer People than Me

 This is a post where I mention a few of the people who have shaped my thinking about languages teaching, and to whom I owe so much. Of course I have worked with many, many people over the years, found support and friendship, but if I wanted to illustrate how ideas have developed, then these people make the headlines. 

For the whole idea that language teaching is an intellectual pursuit in a process of evolution, Wasyl Cajkler was my first inspiration. An expert in linguistics as well as in teaching, he could answer any question and make the answer fascinating. My subject was no longer languages, it was language teaching.

In the 1990s, it was Anne Prentis and Iain Mitchell who first made me think about recycling the most powerful language that meant pupils could start to express themselves independently. Anne Prentis showed me the power of verb + infinitive to equip pupils to give opinions and justify them in detail. And I remember the exact moment in a talk by Iain Mitchell, that I saw how a whole lesson could be built about a grid of recombinable language. And how that language and fluency in using it could then be transferred to another topic.

Barry Jones, James Burch and Steven Fawkes were inspiring examples of how the communicative approach should work - full of energy and attention to detail in getting pupils to pronounce and memorise language, and with the Graded Objectives approach, they had more of a sense of step-by-step progress than we sometimes remember. Later on, in the same inspirational vein, I should add James Stubbs, with his insistence that instead of giving up on the target language approach, we should make sure pupils' use of classroom language dovetails with the progression pupils make. Not just keeping pace with it, but interlinked with it and ultimately driving learning along. 

At the end of the 90s Heather Rendall in talks and in her CILT Pathfinder Stimulating Grammatical Awareness, was the first person I saw talking about phonics and mapping it out in the same way in French as you would do in Spanish. And stressing its importance for accurate spelling, learning, reading, listening and writing as well as for pronunciation.

Ann Swarbrick always struck me with her indomitable determination that language teaching should be accessible and equitable. Pupils should be equipped to say what they wanted to say, and all pupils had something to gain from learning a language. It was also Ann who brought the BBC to film me teaching a lesson for the OU PGCE course at the start of the 2000s. I recently re-watched the CD ROM clips, and it was startling to see me teaching extended spontaneous speaking and writing with scaffolding, in exactly the same way as I do now, but with more target language interaction in the classroom. Ann included some of my work on reading strategies for authentic materials in her CILT Pathfinder Reading for Pleasure in a Foreign Language, which led on to me working on resources for OUP.

When I became Head of Department, Terry Lamb's research into pupil voice gave me the vision to build a new curriculum. This meant stripping back what was learned, concentrating on getting good at using it, and then using it for real or creative outcomes. 

A huge influence on us all is Dr. Rachel Hawkes, who not only has her own contagious passion for developing pupils' ability to take language and use it in exciting creative ways, but who also nurtures others individually and in networks. Her francophoniques are still built in to our Year 7 curriculum, and the Francovision Song Contest kick-started our curriculum built around tangible outcomes for each unit that won us a European Award for Languages. We also worked together on ALL Connect training, the Language on Film competition and a LinkedUp project where parents started Spanish in class alongside their children.

David Buckland's monumental Framework of Objectives remains the best and most powerful description of how to be ambitious in language learning, broken down into steps. It's just stunning. Get the folder down from the shelf. Forget about the ticking things off in a grid. Just look at the vision and the detail, the knowledge, experience and clarity.

Throughout all of this time, the Association for Language Learning has been central to my journey in language teaching. And through ALL, I have known Joe Dale and Helen Myers for many years. But in terms of their impact on thinking in MFL teaching, it's over the last couple of years that their influence has truly been felt. Both have been working for a long time on nurturing a professional, welcoming and supportive MFL community, which has come to fruition over the difficult lockdown period. It has reinforced what for me started with Wasyl Cajkler in the 1990s: that it is the openness to different approaches, visions, contributions that make MFL teaching exciting. There will never be a single silver bullet approach. All voices are welcome and there is no right answer.

Where to find more of the Nice Man being Nice and Teaching Languages

 Here is where you can chase up some things that I have written or posted.

On my YouTube channel, I have Remote Learning videos, so you can see what "The nice man in the videos" sounds like. And all my other videos, for CPD. My Year 8s did actually say, "You could be a famous YouTube French teacher" so you never know...

OUP guest blog on how language learning is like accumulating a snowball of language. Don't let your French melt! Make it yours, and make sure new French sticks to it so it gets bigger and bigger. A nice story of a chat with a pupil which turned out to be important for both of us. He went on to become a police officer. (Annoyingly the Spanish resource that accompanies the article has 2 of the boxes on the second line swapped round so watch out.) And a MEITS guest blog that ends with the same metaphor, but is about the proposals for a new GCSE in MFL.

Webinars and Conference talks: Language World 2020 on Going Beyond the Sentence. If you have access to the linguascope teachers CPD area, you can find a more up to date version of this talk from March 2021 hosted by Crista Hazell. A linguascope webinar hosted by Stéphane Derône on having a Game Plan to extend speaking and writing, and a linguascope teachlang conference talk on Metaphors and Metacognition - I don't know if this link still works as I don't have a facebook login. And a TILT video hosted by Joe Dale and Helen Myers where I talk about Creative Outcomes in language teaching. On these webinars, Helen likes to call me Early Man, rather than The Nice Man. Not because I am a Neanderthal, but because I like to get there early and have a nice chat.

Helen Myers hosts some of my resources from talks I gave at Language World in 2005 and 2007 on the Association for Language Learning London Branch website. They are useful for basic Keep Talking and Dice Speaking templates that can be adapted to any topic. More of my resources can be found on my TES "shop", many of them for free. Here is the page on Amazon with books I have co-written. Other bookshops are available. The Nice Man recommends the A Level Spanish Grammar and Translation Workbook, but warns you that the 2 different editions are basically the same on the inside so don't buy both.

Here is a Language Learning Journal article from 2005 talking about having a core of powerful language to enable pupils to talk spontaneously and develop ideas across topics. And an article on Cultural Capital on page 13 of the May 2020 Language Today. Some thoughts on the history of developing communication and spontaneous speaking for the Association for Language Learning's page on the GCSE Speaking Endorsement in 2021. Contains a nice story about my dad speaking Latin to a French car mechanic.

You can hear some podcasts I have been invited on to: 2008 at Language World with the very lovely Joe Dale in a very relaxed chat about French Nintendo DS club inspired by Ewan McIntosh and about teaching over the internet from home before broadband. With QKA languages talking about the Google Street View Mysteries and also how different GCSEs encouraged or thwarted teaching spontaneous speaking. And talking on the mfltwitterati podcast with Joe Dale and the equally lovely Noah Geisel about football as a metaphor for the speaking exam. On podcasts it seems obligatory to refer to guests as "the very lovely..." so that makes me "the very lovely nice man."