Teaching Verbs

 I read in the 2016 Review that they recommend pupils study entire verb systems for one tense or more by the end of "the first year". This has prompted me to think about how we teach verbs, and what has been most successful with our learners.

I think there are several principles involved:

1. Things are not "learned" in one go, done and dusted, covered, secure and systematised.

2. Pupils learn best when new language fits with the core of language they already have and extends what they can do.

3. New grammar works best when it equips you to say something interesting and useful. If not, it is easily discarded.

4. Pupils haven't learned a language before, so they are also learning to think about language in a certain way - persons of the verb, tenses, combining tenses, differences between languages...

5. The nature of French means that the spoken and the written forms need separate attention, and it may be an occasion to talk to pupils about how languages evolve.

6. A pupil's step by step systematisation of the language may not follow the same paradigm that someone with possession of the entire system would see.

Click or Zoom in

In Year 7, early on we introduce subject pronouns and have a focus on the irregular verbs to have and to be. These are used for describing people and family members, and then reused in the Art Exhibition unit. It does seem that at this stage, pupils are far more likely to learn these as lexical items. We can ask them to look for the right form of the verb in a table, or encourage them to chant the verbs (link to verb skipping video). But at this stage, their conception of a language is still that it is English sentence structure with French words swapped in. They are starting out with a focus on vocabulary and how to directly swap basic things they can say into French. Things like word order, and gender loom large as they move away from this simplistic conceptualisation. When it comes to verbs, they seem happy to remember that "est" means "is" and "j'ai" means "I have" etc. For someone with the whole system of the language under their belt, knowing the difference between appelle and appelles is easy, because the system tells you what to do with the ending. At this stage, for Year 7, it seems that learning appelle/appelles as a one off (or not really worrying about it) is a more realistic option than mastering a whole system. Later on in Year 7, we pick up on verbs again, with the present tense of manger, and then verbs for daily routine. Again, we are hovering between fluent lexical learning of first person use, with intellectual awareness of the forms for other persons. 

In Year 8, we develop a strong core of opinions and reasons (because I can..., if I want to..., I don't have to...) that pupils can transfer across topics. Again, this starts with a 1st person focus, on the topics of My Town and My School. The idea is that this core is used across topics, with a focus on pupils being good at using it. With increasing spontaneity, fluency, independence. Then we can add other language to that core. So in January of Year 8, we teach the paradigm of --er verbs. 

This lockdown teaching video shows you the kind of verbs we work on. It's a list of things like jump in puddles, eat snot, look for money under the sofa, that pupils can enjoy using for a purpose. We practise the 3rd person by writing the school report for a celebrity (or a teacher). And the tu form by writing slightly insulting letters to older pupils (or a teacher).

This is a very mechanical process, writing down the verb, removing the --er and adding the correct ending. And focusing on one person of the verb at a time is a natural thing to do at first. But in fact, language doesn't work in isolation, and it's selecting the correct form and integrating it with your existing repertoire that really matters. So we take the sort of paragraph that pupils were already creating, and set triggers for using other persons of the verb. So in a paragraph where it mentions another person, for example "avec mes amis", we would then make it a rule that you would add in a nous form of the verb or an ils/elles form of the verb. So we take a paragraph with a sentence such as J'aime aller au parc parce que je peux voir mes amis. We would then add a detail such as nous jouons au tennis. 

The new language fits into the repertoire we are already developing, as shown in the Year 8 exemplars poster above. You can also see that we start to introduce the perfect tense in the first person, in readiness for the full paradigm later on.

In Year 9, we introduce verb tables. You can see some of our resources on the ALL Grammar Wiki. There are verb table resources here for jobs, crime, and the environment. On the Year 9 exemplar poster, you can see that these are topics where we still start from the core of 1st person opinions and reasons, and add different persons of the verb and different tenses as appropriate to the topic.

By using verb tables, we work on the principle that pupils can use the support until they can manage without. It's also a valuable skill as a linguist. It helps them see how language works as a system. It means they can work at a level of sophistication more appropriate to their age and the topics. It gives them a glimpse into what they are going to study in KS4. And it works on the principle that you end up knowing the language as a result of using it with support. Rather than having to learn it first before you are allowed to use it.

The resources you can see on the ALL wiki (link above) start off by asking pupils to find verb forms directly available in the verb table. Then they introduce the idea that you can use these endings for other verbs, not just the model given. Then they ask pupils to combine them to translate paragraphs combining the different tenses.

You will see that one of the units has bizarre sentences about a clown and a nurse and an accident. This is where we work on chains of what was happening and what happened. It is part of a unit on Clothes, Make up and Advertising. And links into work we do on telling stories and creating a child's book. This example was sent to me recently by a Year 11 who I don't teach any more, but who wanted to tell me that this was the lesson where tenses suddenly made sense.

Our pupils who start Spanish in Year 9, follow an accelerated version of the progression I have sketched out here for French. You can see here how their use of tenses and different persons comes once they have a strong 1st person repertoire based on opinions and reasons. They use their knowledge of verb endings to add anecdotes to illustrate the opinions they are giving.

The question at the moment with the proposed new GCSE seems to be about the hierarchy of knowledge and use. Whether systems should be learned first with use following, or whether you develop pupils' use of language and continually add language to that. I would say my experience shows that for our learners, there is a very strong advantage for the latter idea. I am aware perhaps that our choice of topics is interlinked with strong 1st person use. Perhaps because the goalposts have been to do with giving and justifying opinions, with examples in past and future. Or because the topics are often My town, My free time, My house... A different choice of topic, perhaps with greater cultural emphasis would require a different core, with more emphasis on 3rd person (In France, people...) or 1st person plural (In England, we...). But the principle would still apply that the pupils are learning what they need, and need what they are learning. And this seems to matter not just for motivation, but also for the reality of learning.

Coming back to this the day after I wrote it...

So is my conclusion that I will not be teaching full verb paradigms ahead of pupils' need to use them? Partly because I build the curriculum around developing what pupils can say and do with their language. But even if you were to believe that what they "know" is more important than what they can do, isn't it the case that learning happens when new language fits with what is already known? And that what isn't used or doesn't fit, is quickly forgotten?

This is my experience of teaching different groups different things at different stages. And it would seem to fit both with the underlying ideas of Task Based language learning and with the currently fashionable ideas around cognition. Can people point me in the direction of specific research, up to date and relevant to the English beginner level classroom?