If you give a mouse a cookie...

 If you give a mouse a cookie is a delightful children's book by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond. Some pupils know it and always remember it fondly. When the time comes to use it in language teaching, I can either just tell the story, or take in a copy, or I think it's also available being read aloud on youtube.

Here's the gist of the story: If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk. If you give a mouse a glass of milk, he will want to look in the mirror to see if he's got a milk moustache. If you give a mouse a mirror, he'll probably notice his hair needs a trim... And so on.

And it's the "and so on" that makes it relevant to language teaching. That the next idea is at once inevitable, logical, and yet imaginative, creative.

We actually spend as much time teaching pupils to use their language, as we do on the language itself. How to develop ideas, narrate events, add detail, make it more personal, more sophisticated, more spontaneous. There is a strong oracy/literacy component to helping pupils come up with answers which take an idea and develop it. As well as meeting the requirements of the markscheme. And of course, all the practice working on what you can do with your language, is simultaneously working on the language. So despite what we are being told by Ofsted, it is not a waste of precious time.

So here's some examples.

If you give a mouse a cookie... he's going to want to ask for a glass of milk...

If you give an opinion, you are probably going to justify it.

No "probably" about it. This is an absolutely compulsory routine built in to what our pupils learn to say. Pupils love j'aime and j'adore. They latch on to opinions really well. Make parce que an obligatory part of what comes next. Some schools go with parce que c'est + adjective. I prefer parce que je peux / parce que je dois. Even if pupils use an adjective, I make them add can/can't/have to.

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionnant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis.

If you justify an opinion, you are probably going to explore the circumstances.

The "And so on" keeps on rolling. Either instead of the parce que or as well as the parce que, next I like pupils to use surtout or surtout si. It can be especially if I can go with my friends or especially if it is sunny or especially if I have to stay at home.

If you use one if sentence, you are probably going to follow it up with another.

Pupils like the idea of two for the price of one. If you have mentioned what happens if it is sunny, you will probably say, but if it rains... If you say what you can do with your friends, you will probably say, but if I have to go with my family...

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi.

If you mention someone else, you are probably going to use a conjugated verb.

What to say next? Well, if you have mentioned my friends or my brother, then make it a rule that this is where you bring in some of those 3rd person verbs you have been using. Or the first person plural. Don't just learn them and wonder what to do with them. Have a plan with how they are going to fit in and extend your routines.

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Nous jouons tous les samedis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi.

If you have given an opinion, you probably ought to give someone else's opinion too.

In French saying my sister likes is easy. As long as you can stop pupils saying ma soeur j'aime!! In Spanish it is more fun, as you have to say to my sister it is pleasing - a mi hermana le gusta. It's worth it, to show off some clever Spanish. But also, it's a natural development of the idea that makes it feel personal and detailed. And by introducing a note of conflict, it sets up a further set of possibilities. If you like, it could also include the subjunctive: my mum doesn't like that I go to Norwich with my friends.

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Nous jouons tous les samedis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi. Par contre, ma soeur préfère aller en ville.

If you have given an opinion, you probably want to give an example in the past.

This might just be for example I played football at the weekend. But of course knowing what mice are like, the whole situation may become a little more complicated. Why not start with saying what I was doing or what I was going to do...? Use the imperfect just once to set up the situation. This could be what the weather was like, or j'allais faire mes devoirs or j'étais en ville...

If you say what was going to happen, you probably need a but... or a so...

As logically as milk goes with a cookie. If you say, il faisait beau... you are going to say, alors j'ai décidé de... If you say j'allais faire mes devoirs... you are going to say, mais j'ai décidé de...

If you are debating whether to do what you were going to do or decide to do something else, you would do well to bring in direct speech.

If you were going to do your homework but it was a lovely day, it makes sense that you would say to your mum, Je ne veux pas faire mes devoirs. Or that your friend would say, Je vais aller au parc. Because that's how decisions happen and plans get changed.

If you use direct speech, always include a reply.

As logically as trimming your moustache goes with looking in a mirror. If one person says something, another person replies. It brings your answer to life, makes it personal and detailed and makes it feel real.

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Nous jouons tous les samedis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi. Par contre, ma soeur préfère aller en ville. Le week-end j'allais faire mes devoirs mais il faisait beau, alors ma soeur a dit, "Je vais aller en ville." J'ai dit, "Je dois faire mes devoirs." Elle m'a dit, "Tu peux faire tes devoirs demain." Alors j'ai décidé d'aller en ville avec ma soeur.

If you went along with what someone else wanted you probably might have some regrets.

In town, I wanted to see my friends, but my sister wanted to buy some shoes. At the beach, I wanted to play on the arcades, but my friends wanted to swim in the sea. This is the logical consequence of the difference of opinion that happened earlier in the book. Or the conversation that took place on the previous page. Worth learning words for unfortunately at this stage. And here is where you can deploy your past tense verbs to say what actually happened.

If you had some regrets, you will probably want to say what you would have preferred to do.

J'aurais préféré isn't any harder to learn than je voudrais, for example. And I'm not saying to throw it in randomly as an "impressive piece of language". It's here because it's doing an necessary job in the story of opinions, conflict, decision, disappointment that we have built up. Alternatively you could say what your plans are for next weekend, sticking to what you want to do this time!

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Nous jouons tous les samedis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi. Par contre, ma soeur préfère aller en ville. Le week-end j'allais faire mes devoirs mais il faisait beau, alors ma soeur a dit, "Je vais aller en ville." J'ai dit, "Je dois faire mes devoirs." Elle m'a dit, "Tu peux faire tes devoirs demain." Alors j'ai décidé d'aller en ville avec ma soeur. Je voulais acheter des chaussures mais malheureusement ma soeur voulait voir ses amis. Alors nous ne sommes pas allées au centre commercial. J'aurais voulu aller aux magasins. Demain je voudrais retourner en ville mais je dois faire mes devoirs.

And there's your answer. It could have been about going to the beach. Or a school club. Or a holiday destination. Because the markscheme always asks for developed answers, giving and justifying opinions and narrating events. Just like a mouse always ends up eating another cookie.

Related posts with different ways to exploit this idea: 

Game Plan

My Granny Went Shopping

A Universally Useful Model Answer

And what if we are wrong...?

 Here is a slide from the inspirational Steven Fawkes from a recent Association for Language Learning event for early career teachers.

These are the values that language teachers hold dear. They give us our identity, our motivation, our energy to keep on going. It's what candidates at interview proudly tell us, and the things we reach for when we need to make our lessons more inspiring.

But what if we are wrong? What if these are precisely the things which increase the cognitive demands on pupils and get in the way of actually learning the language? What if they depend on prior cultural knowledge and expectations that mean pupils who are put in the position of having to "express themselves" are unnecessarily put off learning a language?

I remember my parents telling me that they had A Levels in languages but couldn't use them to communicate. And promising me that my school experience would remedy this. And for as long as I can remember, it has been axiomatic that you don't delay the ability to communicate in the language until mastery of the entire system has been achieved.

We can expect each generation to react to the generation before and move on. I remember in the 90s, being told not to show pupils the written form because it would interfere with their pronunciation. Instead of teaching them the sound-spelling patterns. One generation focusing on excellent pronunciation and oral fluency. The next, worried about pupils making up their own homemade spellings based on English. This oral approach was a response to "Languages for All", developing a style of teaching based on functional phrases, avoiding writing and light on grammar. But then, in my experience, "reluctant" pupils much prefer writing to speaking. And enjoy learning rules. And love terminology. Even if it is usually, "Masculine and feminine" or "Cognate".

But... Culture, Communication, Self-Expression, Creativity. These are big things to be wrong about!

Telling people they are doing everything wrong, à la Michael Gove, is often counter-productive. And the coordinated pincer movement of Ofsted and the new GCSE proposals has not gone down well. The Research Review, the accompanying explanatory curriculum webinars, and the reported focus of deep dive inspections, have appeared to challenge teachers on their core values and competence. And the languages teaching community, across sectors, have reacted as if under attack.

Even if it has managed to alienate many of us, if we can ignore the manner of its imposition, we ought to examine the ideas in good faith, and continue to question our own assumptions.

One sweetener we are offered is that removing Communication means fairer testing. Pupils are to be tested on their knowledge and recall of what they have been taught. Not on their ability to use it. In particular, the proposed new GCSE promises to improve the Listening and Reading papers. I am not convinced by this. The reason the Listening and Reading papers are so appalling is precisely because they have lost sight of Comprehension of meaning. They are already designed to test pupils' ability to spot language features rather than to understand. The markschemes regularly stipulate answers which demand word by word transcription and reject ones which genuinely answer the question. The "She was impressed with a school because they grew vegetables on PART of the playing field" example isn't an aberration. It is how the exam board think of language-learning. And the new GCSE proposals are to go even further down this road!

What are the really good things that we could take from these proposed changes? Well, I am definitely sympathetic to an increased awareness of what we are "really" teaching. So for example if I am teaching pets in French, then yes, I am definitely aware that it is a great vehicle for practising the phonics we have been working on. And that we are going to meet concepts of singular, plural, masculine and feminine, and the verb to have. And it's my job as the teacher that while the pupils are learning to talk about their pets, that I keep sight of what the things are that are going to be most important and most useful. Which I agree, is probably not lists of nouns and obscure domestic fauna.

I think that pupils at this stage are focused on the meaning. They are relating the language they are learning to being able to express things about themselves and the real world. The connections they are making and their focus is all largely on meaning, perhaps on nouns and other words high in concrete meaning. While the teacher is at the same time starting to introduce structures, patterns, high frequency language, verbs, knowledge of what the individual words mean and their inflections... So what I am being challenged to ask is, "Is the focus on meaning and communication deleterious to what pupils are really learning?"

My first reaction is "No. It's a vehicle for what they are ultimately learning." And that I wouldn't want to sharpen a focus on forms by reducing my pupils' focus on meaning. But what I will do, is really watch out and see if there are pupils who successfully learn araignée but aren't picking up the difference between je and j'ai. I think there probably are. Is that because we teach araignée explicitly and leave them to pick up j'ai ? Or is is it because they are quite naturally focused at this stage on the words they perceive to carry most meaning?

And if "pets" is just a vehicle for teaching what pupils are really learning, then perhaps we need to look at our planning. Are we teaching the verb to have incidentally because it goes with what pets you have? Or are we teaching pets because it's a useful topic for meeting the verb to have? And so, have we planned our curriculum around a series of sets of nouns (and structures which incidentally turn out to be useful), or have we planned what the most useful structures are and matched the content to that?

The answer of course is that we have tried to do both. Have NCELP done it brilliantly and so well that we should all just adopt their scheme of work and resources because ours could never be so thorough? Possibly. And thank you to NCELP for doing it. It's a level of micro planning and careful thought that has been done so professionally and in such detail that does make me think I would be very silly to try to invent my own version.

Except for one thing. I am suspicious of the sufficiency of paper plans and resources. When learning happens for real in what is going on in the classroom and in pupils' minds. At my school, our curriculum is based on developing the pupils' growing repertoire of language and their ability to use it. We constantly work on pupils' ability to give and explain opinions and narrate events. Making sure that anything added to the repertoire enables them to expand what they can do as a next step in being able to give more detailed or personal answers.

And I am very aware of the idea of a learner's "interlanguage". That they have an evolving conceptualisation of the language. Which is messy, partial, incomplete. Which evolves as they learn more and which can be called upon to express themselves. The alternative seems to be a collection of remembered structures and rules which if it isn't rolled up into a functioning proto-system, and remains as a set of discrete facts, isn't any sort of language at all.

Rather than looking at the language as a whole grammatical system and mapping what they should meet when, we look at their kernel of language and decide what to add next. This seems like a totally different way of looking at things. Especially in the role of developing communication, oracy and literacy. But in terms of planning, it doesn't have to be in opposition. Good and thorough planning, step by step resources don't have to clash with our approach. We have introduced our Fluent in 5 lesson starters to recycle important language and to draw attention explicitly to forms. I have used some of the NCELP phonics resources in these starters, and I could certainly use some of their planning to help map what are the key structures and when pupils meet them.

This still hasn't got to the fundamental question of whether to relinquish a focus on Communication and Self Expression. I think I can manage some of the issues we've looked at. I can be fully aware of what pupils are "really" learning, and balance my underlying focus on form with pupils' immediate focus on meaning. I can make sure that pupils explicitly meet key recyclable language and grasp concepts and patterns. In fact this is fundamental to a curriculum which asks them to communicate, express themselves and be creative.

This leaves the cognitive load and cultural assumptions of pupils being expected to express themselves. Again, I would say that we have recognised this. And precisely because of this we spend so much time on it. We don't (I hope) leave behind pupils who have nothing to say in French or struggle with the language because thinking up what to say is too demanding. We tackle this head on, working on how to develop ideas, think up what to say, use the ingredients you have in order to make something nice.

But perhaps I should reconsider Culture, Communication, Creativity as being some kind of totemic magic wand to inspire struggling or reluctant pupils. They are the aim, not the means. Where pupils struggle, it certainly can be explicit, defined, step by step learning, with a clear focus on exactly what is to be learned, that can get them back on track. It must be possible to step back from polarised debate and take what works. I just hope Ofsted and the GCSE let us do this!

Embracing Ambiguity in La Casa de Bernarda Alba

 Two of the most popular set "texts" for AQA A Level Spanish are Almodóvar's Volver and La Casa de Bernarda Alba by García Lorca. In a recent post, I looked at how having a clear idea of the "meaning" of Volver can give clarity to an argument. In this post, I am going to look at how embracing ambiguities and different interpretations can help structure an essay on La Casa de Bernarda Alba.

There are different views of the play, and rather than causing confusion, this is a gift to the student in the exam, offering the opportunity to explore an aspect of the play from different perspectives.

Here is a list of the opposing view points that might be confusing:

Is La Casa de Bernarda Alba García Lorca's masterpiece, or is it incomplete and flawed? It's survived the test of time, still being performed around the world and finding its way onto A Level syllabuses. So it must be good. But also it was never performed in García Lorca's lifetime and it maybe lacks the final polishing. The text itself in different editions has had to be "corrected". But does the lack of "finish" explain some of the ambiguities on this list, or are they deliberately creating tension between realism and drama?

Is García Lorca a "popular" poet and playwright or a heavy-weight intellectual? He famously took the theatre to the regions of Spain, was inspired by folk song and cante jondo, and loved puppet theatre. He was also an intimate friend of Salvador Dalí and Luís Buñuel, having moved away from Andalucía to Madrid.

So is his work realist or surrealist? There is a tension and a transition. The stage directions in Act One specify pictures on the wall, doors with curtains and bows, chairs. By Act Three, the set is to be of complete simplicity, with the walls described more as an effect of light. The Acts represent morning, afternoon and night. But not on the same day. So the audience experience an ambiguity in the passing of time. And each Act has a similar movement from the everyday to something more violent or dramatic.

And in his plays is Andalucía a deep and intimate source of roots and passion? Or a stereotype of a passionate land of black and white contrasts of life and death, love and hatred? Is it a "costumbrista" setting giving local colour or is it a world his immediate audience were familiar with in their everyday life? Or is Andalucía irrelevant in a work that is about the universal human condition?

Are his characters well defined individuals? Or are they more like a chorus of women, sisters all dressed alike, speaking with the same voice? The voice not of a dramatist, but of a poet.

And is that language poetic or vulgar? Does La Poncia speak in images and metaphors of a campesina, or is it the language of poetry? Is the play a web of symbols that accumulate poetic resonance, or are they concrete references to the world in which the play is set?

Bernarda. Is she in control, "dominanta"? Or is she in denial, in a permanent state of self deception? Before we even meet her, even as her servants are describing her in terrifying terms, they are stealing her chickpeas and chorizo. When she arrives and commands, "Silencio" it is in response to the servant talking about her relationship with Bernarda's late husband. Bernarda can command nothing except to silence the truth, even from herself.

So many questions. And great to challenge students to approach the play with an open mind. But also an excellent framework for any essay question. Pupils can use the ambiguities to write separate paragraphs looking at the title from different angles.

In an emergency, almost any essay can be tackled using this plan:

If you consider the play to be a melodrama of a family in conflict...

If you consider the play to be a sociological study of life in rural Spain...

If you consider the play to be a study of the human psyche, the conflict of the id and the superego...

Perhaps the play is about... a. García Lorca or b. All of us...

So ambiguity, tension, interpretation of different perspectives are there not to be resolved, but to be exploited. That's what writing an essay involves!

Why I don't call it "The Summary Question"

 In the A Level Spanish Listening, Reading and Writing exam, there is a question called "The Summary Question". It comes up in the Listening section and again in the Reading section. In this post I am going to look at how to approach it, and why calling "The Summary Question" is a dangerous red herring.

I am going to look at the 2018 A Level Spanish paper. It is important to point out that what follows applies to Spanish but not necessarily to French. In French, it seems to be much more of a "summarise in your own words" task, based on re-writing the relevant parts of the text using synonyms and re-wording of sentences. And of course, if a new paper-setter comes along for Spanish, the nature of the task could change fundamentally in Spanish too, without warning. But my analysis of the demands of the task in previous Spanish papers, backed up by explicit comments in the Examiner's Report, suggest that it is not really about summarising points from the text in your own words. And once you understand what the hidden agenda of the examiner is, your students can approach the task in a completely different way.

Here is the first part of the reading summary text from 2018.

AQA 2018 A Level Paper 1

From the start, we have to be on our guard. The text is accompanied by a photo to give "context". Unfortunately, the topic of the text is a photo. But the photo discussed in the article is NOT the photo we are given. The photo we are given is presented as if it were part of the press article. But it's important to understand it is not part of it at all. It's part of the exam paper to gloss the concept of the Catalán human pyramids "los castellers." As students read the article, the false clue of the picture immediately leads to confusion.

Secondly, the entire first paragraph is also entirely for "context" and should not be part of your "summary" of the text. If you approach this innocently as a summary task, you can easily be trapped into including content which is just not on the examiner's markscheme. This is even more important when we come onto the Listening, as we shall see.

The first bullet point we are asked to summarise is, "According to Ana, what did she do that day?"

This is where we start to realise what is behind some of the examiner's thinking. The words, "according to Ana" direct us to the second paragraph. And as an innocent "summariser" I would say that what she did was to go to see the castellers, take a photo, and put it on social media.

Here is what the markscheme accepts for this bullet point. You will see that my innocent summary would score one mark at best. I don't have the specific detail they want, even though I thought I gave a concise summary answer to the question, "What did she do?".  

Now, we can rail against the bizarre markscheme - is what she wanted to do really the answer to the question what did she do? But instead, it would be more helpful to find out why the examiner accepts these answers. And why this is not really a summary question at all.

The first clue is in the Reject column. Answers in the first person are to be rejected. This is why the text is in the format of an interview. So that the student has to change the language from the first person to the third person.

The second clue is in the explanation of how the marks for language are awarded:

You could be forgiven for thinking that the mention of "complex language" might be an invitation to include fancy phrases or personal evaluation. But the key is in the words "where required by the task". You might expect this to mean "required by the bullet points" where the points are constructed in such a way that you have to give a certain angle that would require language for evaluating or suggesting. No. It's not the bullet points. It's the text itself. The examiners have built the complex language into the original text. You might think that your job as a summariser is to simplify this, expressing it in your own words, more concisely. This is where the word "summary" starts to be unhelpful.

A more specific clue comes in the definition of "serious errors". It specifically mentions "incorrect use of pronouns." This is going to be a very important area of interest to the examiner.

Let's look back to the example in the castellers text.

The answers are textually very close to the original text. Despite the requirement to write "in your own words". So the answer to "What did she do?" is to hunt for the verbs in the first person: I decided, I fancied, I posted and to turn them into the third person. And now you are looking at it this way, you will see throughout this text, they are feeding you verbs in different tenses and with little quirks (colgué - colgó...).

Except of course, "I fancied" isn't in the first person. It is a construction with "me". And this is where the reference to pronouns looms large. The direct object pronoun is me. The indirect object pronoun is me. The reflexive pronoun is me. But when you put it into the third person, it could be le, lo/la, or se. Have a look at this question and other examples of the "summary" and see how often this comes up. Now you understand why "le apetecía" is in the markscheme as a correct answer, even though it doesn't actually answer the question "What did she do that morning?".

It's not a Summarise the Bullet Points in your Own Words task at all. It is a Find the Complex Language and Manipulate It task.

This is confirmed by the examiner's report.

This understanding now tells us how to approach the Listening "summary".

The Listening question in the 2018 exam is about Miss World. Again, there is a first paragraph for "context" which is not to be used for the answer. Remember, the candidate has control of pause, play and rewind. They must not spend time re-listening to the introductory section!

Then the passage is again in the form of an interview. And the best way to approach it, once you have listened through to get a general understanding, is to transcribe the verbs.

When you do this, you find a selection of tenses, a bunch of expressions with me and some irregular verbs. Now you understand this is a grammar manipulation task, you can proceed to put these into the third person. Paying particular attention to se sintió and le encantó. And spotting that although the si no hubiera sido por... doesn't actually answer the bullet point "What does she remember?", it is irresistible to the examiner and IS on the markscheme as the correct answer.

You must not call this the Summarise in Your Own Words Task. If you use your own words you risk what you put not being on the list of acceptable answers. You must not go for simplification. The complex language is there for you to use. And finding the complex language will guide you to the parts of the text that the examiner wants, even when they don't seem directly relevant to the bullet points.

Hopefully if you are one of the happy few who made it to A Level Spanish, you already understood at GCSE that the examiner has a hidden agenda, and that the Reading and Listening questions are not comprehension questions at all. So the fact that A Level has its own bizarre secret society handshake designed to exclude the poor innocents will come as no surprise. But please, keep it to yourself. We don't want everyone knowing, or they will have to change the secret code!