The Great Pet Debate

 Absolutely stunned this afternoon catching up with the LanguageNut Question Time panel debate on YouTube. It was a wonderful event, with excellent panelists engaged in a fascinating discussion. It was very welcome to see ideas being exchanged with a love of exploring the intellectual and practical aspects of Language Teaching. In an atmosphere of complete respect and professional friendship. Something I said I hoped to aspire to in the blurb of this blog, knowing that actually it was just going to be me telling it how I see it and trying not to rant.

At one point Helen Myers and Dr. Rachel Hawkes had a most interesting discussion on what themes and what vocabulary should be taught, which crystalised around the example of teaching the words for pets.

The two points of view exemplified a staggering gap in how we conceptualise language-learning.

I will spell out what I think were the points each were making. And then follow up with what I think are the implications of each. Of course my exegesis may go beyond Rachel and Helen's arguments and these are entirely my own musings. I should also say that I have known and worked with Rachel and Helen over many years and have nothing but total admiration for both of them professionally, and that both of them have shown me considerable personal kindness. Beyond the initial sketching out of their arguments which set me thinking, I want to be clear these are my own reflections triggered by what they said.

Rachel was using the example of teaching pets in Year 7 to show how we might need to shift topics away from what we've done in the past. She argued that at this stage we want to teach nouns that have a regular pattern of masculine words ending in o, and feminine words ending in a. So pets like pez, ratón, serpiente wouldn't be appropriate. She suggested widening the topic beyond pets to other things that pupils have, for example "libro" or "bolsa" so they exemplify the pattern you want pupils to spot, learn and apply.

Helen argued that pupils want to tell you about their pets. And if they have a snake, then they will want to learn the word for snake, whether or not it exemplifies a pattern. Telling you about their snake is important to them and the focus of their language learning is to communicate. This doesn't prevent teachers from working on spotting patterns or learning concepts.

The reason for writing this post, is that these seem to portray an enormous gulf in thinking about language-learning. One view is that we are teaching the pupils a set of rules and we carefully select and restrict the language they learn in order to help them spot, learn and apply those rules. Language is an intellectual system. And the things pupils learn to say are in the service of learning that system.

The other is that we are teaching the language so that they can communicate. We equip them to say things in an ever-expanding repertoire. They can still spot patterns and apply patterns, but not everything conforms to these patterns. And many of the most useful language features that they want to say, and much of the most powerful language, is irregular.

I do agree with Rachel that when we teach a topic, we need to be aware of what we are really teaching. So in Year 7 French, when I teach pets, I do it happily knowing that oiseau, chat, chien, tortue, poisson, serpent and their friends are doing an excellent job of reinforcing the phonics we have been working on. But I don't select the pets to fit the phonics. I teach the animals my pupils have. 

To pick up Rachel's argument and take it on further, I also agree that we have to keep in sight that this topic is really about pupils learning to talk about what they have. When we do pets, we bring in "I used to have" and "I would like to have" as well as "I have".  And I also teach, je n'ai pas d'animal. I wouldn't think of insisting they invent an animal to talk about on the grounds that we aren't doing the pattern for negation yet.

I don't think Rachel said it in the context of this debate, but I would also add that lists of nouns are perhaps not always the best way to learn a language. In fact at my school, we don't have a lot of topics based around nouns and adjectives. Which means the verbs "to have" and "to be" are not given the prominence that NCELP and the Ofsted Research Review think they should have. I am personally having to struggle with whether to bring in more nouns and adjectives!

So I have a lot in common with Rachel's arguments as good tactics for setting up a lesson - the real objectives for the teacher and the underlying language. But I can't go as far as to accept it as an end in itself. Helen talks about pupils wanting to say things. In the classroom, wanting to tell the teacher about their pets. On an exchange, wanting to talk to their partners about what sports they play. Pupils learn words and structures because they want to, because it equips them to say something.

I am going to end with what I think. I am going to quote from a guest blog I wrote for the MEITS project.  

Spontaneous communication is not just a valuable objective, and self-expression is not just what pupils want to learn to do. They are vital in the language-learning process. Learning to use the language cannot be postponed until all the grammar and all the vocabulary have been learned. It is by using the language from the start that the pupil develops the conscious and unconscious schemata that make learning happen. Being allowed to communicate requires the pupil to draw on their entire developing repertoire. Making the links, seeing how it works, and exploring its limits. It gathers their knowledge into a snowball, stopping their language from melting away, and means more and more language will stick to the snowball they already have. Learning to use the language has to keep pace with learning more language. In fact, I would reverse that and say that learning more language has to keep pace with the pupil’s ability to use what they are learning. Without the aim of self-expression, creativity, and increasing spontaneity, there is no language-learning.

A huge thank you to LanguageNut and all the panelists, especially Helen and Rachel for this particular debate. This simple example you stumbled into gets to the heart of what we spend our days thinking about and working at, and I love that.