This post is about the extraordinary consensus in practice that is a current strength of MFL teaching in the UK (and beyond). It is also about the proposals for a new GCSE, and how they relate to that consensus. And I'm not talking here about the consensus in articles from linguists and professors in response to the GCSE proposals. I am talking about what is happening every day in schools and classrooms and in the MFL community.
Everywhere you look, there is sharing and discussion. Everywhere you look, MFL is being taught through scaffolding that puts language together from building blocks. Pupils meet those same chunks of language in Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. With a real focus on developing what they can do with the language, in order to express themselves with ever-greater fluency, independence, coherence and sophistication.
The language is carefully chosen to be powerful and re-useable across contexts. Planning of recycling of language is thorough and rigorous. Sometimes in deliberate interleaving of topics, And sometimes by making sure language isn't attached to just one topic, creating a repertoire that is developed and redeployed. Language is first met in building blocks, working on fluency and automaticity, before moving on to inflection and manipulation.
Modelling and scaffolding are carefully used to allow pupils to use the language and to challenge them to use it more and more independently of support. Grammar is carefully introduced to add to the repertoire, extending range and sophistication, but integrated in with the language pupils are already getting better and better at using.
Here are some great examples: Elena Diaz, Sisa Silvia and Esmeralda Salgado are all absolutely brilliant, not just on great classroom activities, but on the all-important overall vision of how pupils make progress. Everything is joined up, nothing is left behind. The language aims to deliver good grades at GCSE. But as the GCSE requires fluency and coherence in giving opinions, justifying them, talking about past and future, developing answers in anecdotes and narration, then this points pupils' trajectory in a certain direction, but a viable and worthwhile one. And for example in Esmeralda's curriculum, this is integrated with work on culture and real communication with Spanish-speaking pupils.
I don't think this is just a self- affirming echo-bubble. I am aware of many others who come at this from so many different view points and who have different priorities to me. But the consensus around nurturing pupils' repertoire shows its strength precisely because it is there across such a wide spectrum.
I don't want to label people's practice in a reductive way, so I will sketch out the picture without pinning any particular person to any particular opinion. But just to rashly characterise a few perspectives:
People who follow the MFL version of the Knowledge Curriculum. This is based on retrieval and automaticity. They have worked incredibly hard on thorough planning of progression and spacing. Often they have created and shared booklets developed together as a whole department or across departments in a trust. Maybe they are looking at integrating materials from the NCELP schemes of work. Their pupils memorise and internalise the language and have a growing body of language they can deploy.
People with a focus on Communication, either in structured tasks or in the natural interaction of the classroom. Challenging pupils to be communicative and creative means that they have to equip their pupils with the structures to express themselves more and more independently. The introduction of structures keeps pace with what pupils can do, constantly adding to their developing repertoire.
People who use Sentence Builders or follow the full EPI or MARS EARS approach created and popularised by Dr Gianfranco Conti. Input and output is based on developing automaticity of chunks before moving on to manipulation of inflected endings.
People who use stories, or CLIL or culture as the central point of their teaching and a jumping off point for language that can be recycled and adapted.
Primary teachers who are blending the use of imagination and stories with a sentence builder style approach to give pupils the most powerful chunks of re-combinable language.
That's the sense of some of the passions and hard work going on and being generously shared. At the end of the post I attempt a list of examples of blogs, drives and wakelets to illustrate the scale and big-heartedness of the MFL world.
Such a wide variety, yet at the same time a broad consensus. And a total transformation, for example in Writing in the GCSE exam, where pupils now spontaneously write well-developed answers in response to an unknown question. And where spontaneous speaking is now at least as viable an option as rote learning. And where, when there is rote learning, it is based on familiarity with structures that are known and internalised by the pupil.
Looking at the AQA Examiner's Report for 2019 Spanish, it is clear that in the Writing paper, pupils are able to respond to unforseen questions, developing coherent answers from language at their disposal. This includes specific mention of open ended tasks. Annoyingly, the report does still talk about silly expressions like me chifla / me mola or replacing porque with visto que / dado que / ya que, as a hangover from their old love of "variety" over a core repertoire. And in the Speaking, it makes clear that there are still some schools where pupils have learned complete rote answers or teachers ask the same questions. But this is to the detriment of the pupils' performance in the exam. Where pupils were able to give and justify opinions and give details in past and future, responding to questions on the spot, they were more successful. This is the best evidence we have yet (see below - Ofsted?) on the transformation since the demise of the old Controlled Assessment GCSE.
The thing that stands out as an outlier from this positivity, confidence and consensus is the 2016 "Review". It seemed odd in 2016 and was largely ignored by teachers and academics, confused by its narrow focus and views that seemed based on the personal perspectives of the authors. Since 2016 (David Cameron was still Prime Minister, Leicester were Champions) the landscape has utterly changed. We have moved on from the terrible "Learn Fancy Answers By Rote" GCSE. And the consensus around chunks and scaffolding has swept the country.
The new GCSE proposals seem to ignore the idea of building fluency and automaticity in using chunks. Preferring instead a foundation of grammatical knowledge and manipulation of inflections. This is a very different view of how pupils learn grammar. And it is based on a further difference in the view of the importance of the role of communication and self-expression. Developing the ability to use the language is important in itself, and very important to pupils. But it's also an important part in cementing the pupil's conscious and unconscious conceptualisation of the language, exploring how it works and fits together. I've written about my own views on this here. But in this post, I want to concentrate on the mismatch between the proposals and the consensus in the MFL teaching community.
Sometime soon, there will be a more up to date look at the MFL teaching landscape, from Ofsted. The period since 2016 has seen huge changes. Inspections have been interrupted, but an up to date report from Ofsted could recognise some of the transformation that has been happening since 2016.
Unless, that is, if the Ofsted report is going to be through the same lens of "phonics, grammar and vocabulary" as the 2016 Review. The teaser videos from HMI Michael Wardle are alarming. They are even more uncompromising than the new GCSE proposals in spelling out that putting in place the foundations of phonics, grammar and vocabulary comes BEFORE communication. With communication and culture as a distant future goal. Are we to be stuck in 2016 for ever?
As promised, and in no particular order, here are a few examples. Apologies to everyone I've missed. As my point is that there is a whole community of people generously sharing and comparing, then inevitably there are too many for one short list!
https://www.languagesresources.co.uk/
http://whatjanelearntnext.blogspot.com/
https://senorcordero.wordpress.com/
https://transformmfl.wordpress.com/
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kXZSrZYOMAHxhPV3Tk49czKbAj0_k81Y
https://changing-phase.blogspot.com/
https://jamesstubbs.wordpress.com/
https://michellecairnsmfl.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/459/
https://teacherjenniferd84.wordpress.com/
https://mflteacher.webnode.co.uk/
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