Metaphors and Language Learning

 One of the most useful things for communicating the nitty-gritty of the language-learning process to pupils is a good extended metaphor. I would go so far as to say it's the most powerful example of metacognition - an understanding of the learning process that actually helps the learner make progress.

Here are a few that I have used: Chocolate Cake, Food Tech (school subject), Snow, Model Plane Kit, Musical Instrument, Football.

I have removed the link to the #teachlang conference video on Metaphor and Metacognition on the Linguascope facebook page. Thanks for letting me know it is no longer available.

The most useful one for pupils is the Food Tech metaphor. We all know pupils who try to say things they can't yet say. And thank goodness they do have that drive to communicate, otherwise we would be going nowhere. Or pupils who have one thing they want to say but that doesn't really show what they are capable of. Pupils who when it comes to the assessment want to ask the teacher every other word, and construct sentences which are English in grammar and idiom, ignoring everything they have been taught. This is where the Food Tech metaphor is so powerful...

This version is the opposite of the one in the text!

Imagine you are in Food Tech. You have got the ingredients. You have been learning to work with them. You are going to use the ingredients to make something nice. It would be a good idea to use all the ingredients - if you leave out something important, it won't be good. You can't suddenly decide you want extra ingredients we don't have. And if you have flour, eggs, butter, sugar, chocolate, then you are making a chocolate cake. Don't try to build a bird table.

Exactly the same in French. You have your ingredients. I want you to show me how you can use them to make something tasty in French.

The Chocolate Cake metaphor is an extension to this. You are aiming for 90% cake, 10% icing, and maybe a couple of smarties on the top. I expect you to be able to use the store cupboard ingredients to make the cake. A bit of fancy icing with something you've brought in specially that you want to add, is fine. And if you need me to give you a couple of smarties to add on the top, I don't mind telling you a couple of words you need. But not a whole tube of smarties. Just a few. On top of what YOU have made.

And of course, next unit we are using the same store cupboard ingredients with a different flavour. As one pupil memorably said, "Oh, Nice Analogy Sir!"

The Football Game Plan metaphor has a whole webinar exploring how to:

Play out from the back, stay onside, have the correct body position to start an attack, how to add "skills", how to score goals, and how to respond to letting a goal in. If that intrigues you, then click here!

I have written about the Snow metaphor on the OUP blog. In brief, it is an exhortation to pupils to not let their French melt away. They have to grab hold of some French, and roll it into a ball. Then more and more French will stick to it. And it has a message for teachers about how our curriculum has to give pupils a snowball of language that does hold together so more and more French can stick to it. (Please note on the OUP blog, the Spanish resource has got 2 of the boxes on the second line swapped round.)

Actually what prompted this post was thinking about an analogy to help me (as the teacher) think about the curriculum. I have been thinking more and more about the analogy of a river course. (Curriculum, course, current - all from the same root.) It starts small and gathers more and more. With a current that gets stronger and can carry more along with it.

Our current curriculum has that flow, with nothing left behind in terms of the content we pour in, hopefully no pupils drowning or out of their depth too soon. Pupils have the opportunity to work with chunks of language, learning how to put them together fluently and spontaneously, before we throw in too much in the way of verbs that need inflecting. I am thinking of the 2016 Review and its recommendation to study "Tense Systems" in Year 7. Once the current is strong enough, anything we throw in will be swept along. Throw it in too soon, and will it cause a blockage?