A Brave New World for Language Learning

By Dr Greg https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3469011

 This is Preston bus station. I knew it as a grey concrete dirty, wet, impractical, prematurely aged, sometimes smelly place that was hard to find the way into on foot. (Hint: Go through Morrisons.) But one day I decided to try the mental gymnastics of seeing it differently. A new style of architecture for a new age. Democratic, free of flounces and imperialist or classical references, public, accessible (through Morrisons) for all and for the future. And there you have it. Look at that picture. The most gorgeous building in the country, fortunately saved from destruction by a campaign that I ended up supporting. It truly delights my soul to look at even that picture, let alone the actual building. How can I have been so blind for so long?

I am going to try the same trick with the Ofsted/NCELP/new GCSE proposals. I am going to put aside all my objections and try to visualise it as a wonderful new structure full of promise, hope and ambition.

First of all, ambition. We have failed. Language teaching is failing. It is unsuccessful particularly in the early stages of Secondary School, and loses too many learners who don't grasp the basics well enough to have good foundations. And it is inequitable and un-democratic because under-privileged learners are the ones who get left behind, and we don't pay enough attention and care to the detail of building their understanding in the tiny incremental blocks they need.

Our languages curriculum suffers from vain pretentions and over-blown bombast. It expects pupils to "communicate" and "express themselves" somehow magically, when they have barely started to learn the language. These vain promises lead to a plethora of features being added that compromise the structural integrity of the edifice. They confuse and they lead nowhere. We encourage pupils to talk about themselves and their families, whether or not the language involved fits the patterns of grammar that pupils desperately need to grasp. Pupils' individual circumstances require the teaching of too great a range of low-frequency vocabulary that is inefficient and distracting. We need to stop putting the trivial and decorative (What pets do you have, what are they called?) before the structural and conceptual.

So what should we be teaching? The structural pillars of phonics, vocabulary, grammar. Not topics, not communication. Not yet. First an abstract understanding of the rules and structures of the language. Carefully managed so that one concept is introduced at a time. To build up a mental architect's plan of how the language is structured. With rules and processes to be spotted, understood and followed so that pupils can have a feeling of success when their recall is tested.

Progress can be gradual but relentless. With an understanding that connections need to be made between existing knowledge of structures and new knowledge over time. And that knowledge needs to be revisited and re-tested to stop it being forgotten.

There will be room for cultural knowledge, and this knowledge will come out of the language itself. Place names to practice pronunciation. Knowledge that there is different pronunciation in different regions. Different forms of address using different verb forms. Knowledge which engages directly with and reinforces the language structures the pupils need to learn.

Everyone will have the same knowledge, and that knowledge will be expertly selected and ordered so that it makes sense and can be learned. Pupils won't have the cognitive load of having to think about what to say or the obstacles of being put in a situation where they feel they are being asked to say things they aren't secure in, or come up with their own answers. It is only fair to ask pupils to recall and show their understanding of what they have actually been taught.

Here it is from Dr Rachel Hawkes of NCELP: We have typically taught pets, and we have decided to teach them gato, perro. But also in the same breath we have taught them pez, serpiente, ratón because thy fit within the topic area. But what they do also is compromise and hold learners back a little bit because they obscure the fundamental pattern which is if the noun ends in o it’s masculine, if it ends in a, it’s feminine. If we accept that that is problematic and we don’t wish to put hurdles in the way, well maybe pez goes, serpiente goes, ratón goes.

How am I doing? Are you loving the brutalist beauty, honesty and clarity? I tried my very best to convince myself.

Or is it starting to sound a little bit Orwellian? Are you worried that far from democratic, it sounds imposed, totalitarian and controlling? Focused on the abstract rather than reality? Is there a danger that once it is opened to the public, cracks might start to appear? For some reason I have been watching historic engineering failure videos on YouTube, and the high-handed architect who thinks they know best and continues with the project despite the increasing alarm of the construction workers never seems to end well. Preston bus station has survived and I believe it is structurally sound. But its user-experience, popularity, practicality and maintenance costs don't necessarily match up to its conceptual beauty.

If you have been traumatised or feel brainwashed by this post, please click here to read the antidote.