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.