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!