"Extra" was a series produced by Channel 4 for KS4 learners. It is in the style of a sitcom and the premise is that an American visitor arrives and has to learn the language. There were versions in several different languages. I have used it for French and for Spanish. It was originally broadcast on terrestrial TV and available on DVD. Then it was on Teachers' TV and now it is on YouTube. It has stood the test of time remarkably well and continues to be popular with pupils. It isn't an "authentic" resource because it was produced for learners. But it features native speakers and an extended plot line over many episodes.
I use it with Year 7. You know what Year 7 are like. They eagerly listen to the French, happy to be following what is going on, whereas a Year 11 pupil might be frustrated at not understanding every word. We do not use the subtitles, either in French or in English. Because I want the pupils to listen.
How do I make it accessible? By asking questions. While pupils watch a segment, I note down some questions (low prep). These questions might be about what pupils can see, or they might be about the French they can hear. In both cases, the questions are framed to scaffold understanding: "Describe the cushion her boyfriend had sent her." Or, "After she's dumped her boyfriend, she says Bon anniversaire -what does this mean?"
I do this as a pub quiz style activity with pupils working in teams. Then I whizz round the classroom and mark their answers on the questions for each segment. Often we then re watch the section of the programme. This means that the pupils are secure in their understanding of what is going on, and comfortable watching it happening in a new language. Doing it, for example in the second half of an afternoon lesson, it can take weeks to watch, quiz, and re watch short sections of a 25 minute episode.
It makes it normal for them to enjoy watching people speaking French, and develops their ability to follow and pay close attention to all the listening cues without worrying about understanding every word. In my current Year 7 class, I have a pupil who likes to shout out everything he understands. It is amazing how accurately he can pick up on exchanges, "What?" "Oh, it doesn't matter." "She never has a problem." He rarely misinterprets and is often word perfect.
I have written in an earlier post about developing Listening Skills and enabling pupils to build up understanding without panicking about not understanding every word. Extra is a good example of how to develop the actual specific skills of Listening: Using understanding of context, relationships and verbal exchanges to keep track of what is being said. Using intonation and conversational cues to follow natural speed speech. And, here goes... Combining understanding words and phrases to understand what is going on... with using an understanding of what is going on in order to understand words and phrases.
As successful speakers of a language, we know that in Listening to natural speech, understanding is not the end product of processing word by word language as if it were a dictation. Understanding of the whole situation, the sentence, individual words and inflections of words are all in a constant back and forth interplay of evaluating what was said, what is meant, and what is going on.
This is where GCSE Listening is not in fact a listening. They deliberately remove all the listening cues such as intonation and natural exchange between speakers. Slow speech is presented as making it accessible, when in fact it is removing many of the features of speech which make it intelligible. The examiners are clearly great believers in such listening skills, because they go to such lengths to remove them from the assessment. Similarly, they use bizarre texts to prevent the use of deduction from context. And the questions are not about the content of what is being communicated. They are not about the pupils' ability to work out the message of what is being said between the speakers. The questions are designed to test pupils' word by word processing: a vocabulary and grammar test masquerading as a listening test. A reading you have to do in your head. A dictation you have to do in your head.
The new GCSE is presented as improving the dreaded Listening exam. But in fact it may perpetuate the current problems or push them further to extremes. It promises a defined list of vocabulary. It promises slow speech. But as an exam, it will still need the same number of pupils to get questions wrong. Having a defined list of vocabulary to learn won't make things better if it reinforces the need to have tricksy questions based on word by word processing and a focus on identifying specific grammar nuance. I suppose at least the dictation is more honest than the current GCSE's crypto dictation. But again, it is presented as a nice phonics check, to make sure pupils are secure in the sound-spelling link. And they forget that an exam can't be a nice check. It needs to be a dictation where a grade 6 pupil on Higher Tier gets half of it wrong. As I noted in a post here, this could be a trap-laden nightmare.
Surely, we are not going to let a new GCSE stop us using TV shows, videos or songs with pupils or taking them on exchanges where they listen to real people? As I tried to convince myself here, teaching a language is still going to be more than teaching to an exam. Even if this exam seems to be designed very deliberately to engineer exactly how and what we teach.
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