Pupil Voice and GCSE Options

 It is Options time, and in order to find out what Year 9 are thinking, I have sent them a simple Google Form to ask them what they think about their progress in French.

What are their views on what is important in their own experience of language learning? I left it completely open, with no prompts. Just a question asking them to comment on what they thought had had most impact on their progress in French.

I was prepared for anything. I well remember making a video for Year 6 Open Evening, where I explained about step-by-step learning, about learning to use your language, and accumulating more and more of the key knowledge that allows you to express yourself. And then the Head of Year 7 got some pupils to do a video and they basically (and very enthusiastically) said, "We learned to say hello and the days of the week." And quite right. If that is their perspective of what learning a language means, we need to be aware. It is very focused on immediate take-away ability to say specific things. Then it's our job as teachers to make sure that all the little things they learn all add up to something bigger. And perhaps we can shift their focus a little onto recyclable language and an awareness of patterns and forms.

So by Year 9, what would our pupils volunteer as the key aspects? And would they be positive or negative?

Here's the grid of positives summarised by me in a spreadsheet. Of course the pupils' own words were much more effusive and cuter. But here's a spreadsheet:

OK, "building on the basics of reusable language" sounds suspiciously like the way I talk. But I think it's a fair paraphrase of statements like Learning lots of the little things and the in between words has helped me with writing paragraphs for different topics, and the right pronouns for things.

So online apps score highly. Many mentioned Quizlet, blooket and gimkit. Often in combination with comments about enjoyment but also memorisation. Some interesting comments about single words versus chunks as well. This doesn't differentiate between homework and lessons in the computer room. And it doesn't prove that these were necessarily effective for learning rather than merely enjoyable. But the question (and the pupils' answers) were about impact and progress. Anyway, when it comes to options choices, a positive is a positive, even if I personally would want to look further into its effectiveness.

And then I feel that given that these were volunteered by pupils, their answers were a remarkable match for the things we as teachers would think of as important:

Building on the basics of language in order to become more confident in developing writing into paragraphs. Confidence in speaking, with explicit reference to pronunciation and the use of the Francophoniques back in Year 7. And a cluster of comments around memorisation, testing each other, and miniwhiteboards which reflect an acknowledgement and understanding of what their teachers are putting in place.

Learning to say, "Hello and the days of the week", or any other references to specific items have almost disappeared. Almost but not quite. One pupil specifically summed up 3 years of learning by saying they had learned how to ask someone when there birthday is. We all know why that line is so memorable! Shame they didn't put "Using songs to create a change in long term memory."

In terms of the whole school focus on Explanation, Modelling, Scaffolding, Feedback, perhaps we did less well. With "clear explanations" being volunteered once. Although "long term memory" did get a mention in the comments on self-testing. Perhaps this is because Explanation, Modelling, Scaffolding and Feedback are so embedded and such a good fit for how we teach, that they are unremarkable. Or do we need to get pupils to think and to talk about their learning much more explicitly in these terms?

And so to the negatives.

A much shorter list. The top was "I don't enjoy it." This was outweighed by the pupils who specifically mentioned how much they did enjoy French. But when it comes to options it is obviously a factor. And I would like to know to what extent "I don't enjoy it" is a proxy for other things. Such as "I am overwhelmed by the demands of the tasks" or "the sequencing of the learning means I am left confused." And difficulty and confusion were also mentioned by some pupils, although where a single pupil wrote that it was difficult and confusing and they didn't enjoy it, this has been counted 3 times.

As this was in the context of options, several pupils did mention that French was something that didn't fit with their future ambitions. This number has gone down since the survey we did in September, so perhaps we have had some impact in talking to pupils about this. It is also extrinsic to the lessons. Important for us to understand, but not necessarily a comment on the teaching and learning.

Some pupils commented on feeling that their progress had been interrupted by disruption caused by covid and staff illness. And two commented on pronunciation specifically as an issue. These are issues that we are aware of and I am happy that our plans for the year go some way to focusing on these concerns.

The survey also showed that the majority of pupils would be happy picking French as a GCSE option. The numbers who actually pick French will depend on what other subjects are in the same column. This is interesting to know, as often when a pupil doesn't pick a language, this can be portrayed as a failure or a negative. When in fact there are 4 or 5 subjects (all perfectly valid choices) in the column so a realistic expectation would be for 20 to 25% to pick any one of them.

That will come out in the wash later. But for now, I think our pupils are very positive about their learning and about the teaching in languages. And I am very pleasantly surprised with the way their independent statements match the vision of the department.

The Cousins fighting in the Car Park - Teaching the GCSE Reading Exam.

 Once you realise how the AQA GCSE Reading Exam works, how do you go about teaching it?

In a previous post, I explored the workings of the Reading Exam and discovered:

1. It's not a Reading Comprehension. You can give a correct answer to the question and score zero. What you have to do is show AQA you can translate the exact wording.

2. The words that are critical to getting the mark, are not the same words you teach pupils for the Speaking and Writing or the Topic content of the course.

So here is a lesson aimed at teaching pupils how to think about these questions.

On the board you can see my "comprehension" questions. And next to each question, I have given the pupils the answer. With a cross next to them. Because although they are correct answers to the question, they would not be sufficient for a mark from AQA. 

This means pupils are now actively looking to improve the answers on the board. They know to pay attention to giving an answer which doesn't just answer the question, but which shows you understand all the words in the text.

So for Question 2, the answer "They argued" is a correct answer. But  it could score 0 because the sentence actually said, "They started to argue." We know from the She was impressed that they grew vegetables on PART of the school field answer that including words which are irrelevant to the question is expected by AQA.

Question 6 isn't in the photo. It was, "Why was everyone happy?" And the inAQAdequate answer was "Because the couple were in love and finally got married." The AQAdequate answer was, "To see a couple so much in love finally get married after so many years of being engaged." With the emphasis on words like so and so many.

Here's a brief summary of how the lesson was set up.

1. Pupils had previously learned words for talking about the topic of relationships and family celebrations. So they knew uncle, wedding, speech, argue, in love for Speaking and Writing about the topic.

2. I read them the text (below) and they listened out for any vocabulary items from the topic list.

3. I gave them the text and they followed as I read it aloud. They then turned it over and told me everything they thought had happened.

4. With the text again in front of them, I asked them comprehension questions and they told me the answers, showing they understood what the situation was and what had happened. With all the gory detail of the events, but NOT with every word translated. Because they were responding to the meaning and the story, not looking for words like so much or started to.

5. I wrote the questions on the board that you can see above. Deliberately designed to not reward what the pupils had told me they understood. And as you saw, I put the "right but wrong" answers next to the question. Pupils wrote their answers, including all the words from the sentence, not just the ones that answered the original question.

This focused the pupils on what AQA want, which is not an answer that shows comprehension. But an answer which shows you can translate every word. And with particular focus on the sorts of words that you won't be working on for the Speaking and Writing Topics.

Interesting that the new GCSE promises to sort out the problems with the Listening and Reading exams. Their solution is to restrict them to High Frequency non Topic vocabulary. And for pupils to answer the questions by showing word by word parsing. But it seems that the Listening and Reading exams are already very much like this.

It seems that actually the proposals will mean keeping the Listening and Reading exams very much the same.

And worse. Part of the issue currently is that there is a mismatch between the language tested in the Listening/Reading exams and the language taught for the Speaking/Writing exams. Which most people would solve by making the Listening/Reading better reflect what the pupils are learning to say and write. But no. The new GCSE proposes making the Speaking/Writing exams more like the Listening/Reading exam.

Dance Moms and GCSE French

 Instead of Tutor Time, Year 11 have been split into subject tutoring groups. So instead of my Year 11 form, for 3 days a week, I now have a twenty minute mini lesson with a small group of pupils who the data flagged up as needing a boost in GCSE French.

And it's lovely. The pupils are great and twenty minutes is my new perfect lesson length.

So what have we done, and how do Dance Moms fit in?

In the first week, we did building up an answer round the class. When they came in, they found I had written on their desk the key structures for giving opinions, justifying them, if sentences, (and but if not sentences), where we went, what we were going to do, what was said, (and the reply), what happened, and what we would have preferred to do. One structure per pupil, in that order round the class. And through the week, we picked different GCSE topics and built up an answer following the same development and using the same structures. Just by looking at where the other pupils sit in the classroom, they can recall a whole series of structures to deploy. I also read them the If you give a Mouse a Cookie story to show how once you say, I like... the whole rest of the story inevitably unfolds.

The next week, we did the conjunctions dice game. On a different topic each day. Again pupils give an answer starting with I like... and then at the end of the sentence, throw dice for and, especially if, because, so, for example, but... and carry on and on and on and on. I also ask them to use so as a trigger for the future: so at the weekend, I am going to... And use for example as a trigger for past: for example, last weekend, I was going to... (This is important because then in the speaking exam, I can just say, For example...? and know they will give me an example in the past.)

And so to Dance Moms.

Dance Moms was an American reality TV show which pupils still know from YouTube. Miss Abby hothouses the girls' (and sometimes boys') talent, and the mums fight over whose daughter is being neglected or favoured. And meanwhile each week they descend on another unsuspecting American city to enter the local dance competition, and sweep the board of trophies and medals.

How do they do this? Every week a new routine to new music. The answer to the question: "How do they have time to prepare a prize-winning dance routine every week?" turns out to be the key to the GCSE French speaking exam.

The answer is: The music is different, the routine is different. But the moves are the same. So in your French GCSE, you might get asked about School, or Work, or Holidays, or the Environment, or Free Time, or Life in France, or Living in Norfolk, or House, or Family and Relationships... So many different routines. But the moves that make up the routine? The moves are the same.

And what are the moves? Well, that was today's mini lesson. (After watching a bit of Dance Moms and seeing who could remember all their names.) You pick the moves based on what the judges want to see. So we looked at the criteria for the speaking exam. Opinions and reasons, extended speech, narration, past, present, future. That's it. That's the moves.

So tomorrow and the rest of the week, we will see how quickly we can make up new "routines" for different questions, making our life easy by recycling the moves, and knowing it's what will wow the judges. And I am absolutely sure that I won't be teaching them new moves. They know the French. What matters for the exam is being able to confidently put together a new routine for each topic or each question, made up out of your favourite moves.

And next week? Maybe the Football Game Plan metaphor just in case not everyone is a big Dance Moms fan.

 

GCSE Listening and Reading Exams and "Topic" Vocabulary.

 My Year 10 Spanish class have just done a unit on School. In their speaking, they can talk about what lessons they like and why, clubs, trips, rules, facilities and relationships with other pupils. All built around expanding their repertoire of giving and justifying opinions, and developing little anecdotes in a combination of tenses. So I set about finding some past paper exam questions on the "topic" of school.

Here's one I found straight away. It's 2019 Reading. On the topic of school life.

Except it's not.

Pupils will know "acoso" and they know "habla". So if there was a comprehension question on the topic, for example, "Explain what advice this poster is giving", then they could say something like, If you are being bullied, make sure you talk about it. With the credit given, quite reasonably, for knowing the words they have learned, bullying and talk and understanding the advice.

But as we have seen, the current GCSE exam papers aren't about comprehension at all. Recognising the word bullying which they covered in the topic, isn't being tested. It is given to you in the question. The word talk, we see from the markscheme, isn't enough for a mark. The word that is required for the answer, the one word that this whole question is testing, the sole object of this page of photocopying, this invented poster with its subjunctive-negative-imperative and its ante-not-antes, representing the topic of Life at School... the one word it is testing is alguien. To get the mark you have to say, "Talk to somebody."

Somebody. Not a "topic" word at all.

And the search goes on, for a nice past paper question to use for Year 10 relevant to the Topic of School. I didn't find any. I went back to the old GCSE and found some that looked hopeful. Even then they mixed School and Healthy Eating and Technology. But the questions all relied on words like sin, tampoco, demasiado. Without, neither, too.

This was backed up by NCELP on twitter @ncelpmfl in a post showing that the current GCSE Listening and Reading exams contain higher levels of high frequency vocabulary than topic vocabulary. And @mfltransform also tweeted findings showing that at Foundation Tier, the current GCSE specificaton doesn't have much less "high frequency" vocabulary than the NCELP lists. But that the NCELP lists do have substantially less "topic vocabulary".

What does this mean?

For me, the problem with the current GCSE is that there is a dichotomy between the Speaking and Writing exams, and the Listening and Reading exams. The words I am teaching my pupils to talk and write about school, are not going to get them the grades in the Listening and Reading.

Both the NCELP approach and what many schools are doing using What I don't Call Sentence Builders, is trying to make Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing all recycle the same language, so that pupils are exposed to input that matches what they are asked to produce.

But in different ways. One approach is to make Listenings and Readings out of the language that we want our pupils to be using. The other is to take the most common language in Listening and Reading texts and restrict pupils to using that in their Speaking and Writing.

We need to look carefully at the claims of the new GCSE here. If the problem is that there is a mismatch between what pupils learn for Speaking and Writing, and what they meet in the Listening and Reading, how should we solve this?

The friendliest approach at GCSE level would be to make sure the Listening and Reading exams were testing the sort of language that pupils are learning in their Speaking and Writing. The vocabulary linked to their growing core repertoire and the vocabulary for talking about the topic content they study.

 The new GCSE is proposing the opposite.

The new GCSE is proposing to KEEP the current Listening and Reading exams very similar. Focused on the non topic vocabulary. Focused not on comprehension, but on identifying language features. And even worse, they propose to solve the dichotomy by making the Speaking and Writing conform to the Listening and Reading. Not the other way round.

Insofar as (wow, is insofar a word!?)... Insofar as the NCELP high frequency approach goes, it turns out it may be a great tool for dealing with the current GCSE Listening and Reading. This is NOT an argument for changing the GCSE. This is an argument for pointing out the role of high frequency vocabulary in successfully teaching towards important elements of the current GCSE.

Insofar as the new GCSE proposals go, they are NOT proposals for changing or improving the Listening and Reading exams. What they quite possibly ARE proposals for, is making the Speaking and Writing as bad as the current Listening and Reading. That's not a pleasant prospect.

Calibrating Assessments

 Pupils have now taken our new assessments in KS3 in at least one unit. In response to the Ofsted Research Review, we have concentrated on making sure that they test the pupils on what they have been learning. This sounds obvious, but actually I think that our old assessments (and GCSE Listening/Reading) were actually testing pupils on their literacy, their confidence, their ingenuity and their cultural knowledge. We ended up labelling the pupils with strong literacy as "good at languages". And perniciously, labelled pupils with weaker literacy as "not doing well in languages".

We also made sure we used the test as an opportunity to get some feedback from the pupils on their learning, and to engage them in thinking about their progress.

The tests were designed to give feedback to the pupils about their progress on an intellectual level, but also on an affective level: helping them see the progress they are making and feeling positive about their learning. 

Rather than use tests to get a broad spread of marks in order to categorise pupils, we were looking for evidence that most pupils were successfully learning.

Given these changes, how to calibrate the test? How to decide what score is acceptable, what is great, and what requires action to be taken?

Further questions: If this is based on what pupils have been learning, should the expectation be that all pupils should get all of it right? Should the expectation be the same for all? Should we grade pupils at all, if the idea was to make them feel successful? What marks are reported, and how are these explained?

The question of how marks are reported is critical. Parents and pupils are told if the pupil is "on track" / "above" / "below expected". Where "on track" doesn't mean compared to the national average or compared to other pupils. It means "on track" for a pupil of similar prior attainment. So based on broad brush groupings of pupils based on KS2 results (Upper, Middle, Lower) which act as a proxy for predicted GCSE grades. If this is the information parents are receiving, then our tests need to provide us with evidence towards making these judgements.

We did the first round of tests without establishing thresholds. This meant we were able to then look at the data the tests gave us alongside other information. For a start, most pupils, as hoped, scored relatively highly, reflecting the fact that the tests were meant to be a recognition of what they had been studying. Secondly, pupils of similar prior attainment did seem to score within a similar range of marks. Looking at this range of marks, we were able to assign numerical values to what could be considered "on track" for pupils of different starting points. The fact that these were very similar for Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 was also reassuring.

Where pupils fell above or below the mark of most other pupils with a similar KS2 profile, we were able to look at how this matched up with other information the teacher had: performance in Speaking and Writing tests, participation in class, absence...

The tests and the tentative thresholds did give us information that helped towards a bigger picture of individual pupils' performance.

Of course, this helps us judge the pupils' performance. But we also have to judge if as a department our planning and teaching is effective. As a school, we are given a data breakdown of how different departments compare. We have the percentage of pupils "on track", "above" and "below" in all subjects in each year group. And the same data by subgroups, such as gender, PPG, EAL or SEND. This enabled us very quickly to see that were in line with other departments and where we varied from the mean, it was towards having slightly more pupils "on track" than in other departments. As the new tests were designed to be a positive experience, this doesn't seem to be a problem. Although we will have to continue to be vigilant to make sure we are picking up where pupils might be under-achieving.

Next time, we are taking a bit of a leap in the dark and seeing if we can keep the same numerical threshold scores for the next unit. The tests will be different, but of a similar format. It will give us a starting point for similar discussions of how pupils' scores in different tests match up with how they are doing in class and help the teacher build up a picture of evidence.

Make the GCSE Work

 The publishing of the outcome of the proposed new GCSE consultation has left me feeling like Keir Starmer, with his oxymoronic, "Make Brexit Work". I will now have to Make the new GCSE Work. What might this mean?

The parallels between the new GCSE and Brexit are fun to explore, and cast light on our current situation and how to respond to it. Pushed through by a right wing "research" group claiming that their ideas were a solution to popular dissatisfactions back in 2016. That they would represent a fresh start, a wholesale new approach, a taking back of control.

Brexit was always going to be either painful or pointless. Painful if we gave up frictionless trade. Pointless if we remained in the Single Market but gave up our membership. Those were the choices. Deal or No Deal. And we ended up with a fudge that was both painful and pointless. The same applies with the new GCSE. Have the changes in response to consultation kept it as Painful or made it Pointless?

And how should we respond? After Brexit, should we try to have opt-ins to some of the benefits of membership? Should we try to continue to maintain good trading relations with the EU? Or does Brexit force us to adopt a different mentality: Scrapping for an advantage, a wheeler-dealer Britain acting in its own interests even when this means acting in bad faith? The same with the new GCSE. Can we stick to our principles because we believe they will still work in the new climate? Or do we need to fully swing behind the new orthodoxy if we want to survive in the dog eat dog world of exam results and accountability?

In order to summarise some aspects very quickly, I will link to other posts. And then move on to considering what I personally think are my choices in my school in order to Make the GCSE Work.

First of all, I think they have gone for the "Ugly Dog Statues" option. By tweaking the patently unworkable proposals to restrict vocabulary to the most high frequency words, they have pushed the rest of the proposals through.

In terms of their claims for Reading and Listening, I think that the proposals risk making the situation even worse. Their view of Reading and Listening as explicitly testing items of grammar and vocabulary, rather than comprehension of meaning, is precisely what makes the current papers so ridiculous. Having a defined vocabulary list might make the exams "easier", but as the same number of pupils will have to get questions wrong, then this will mean making the papers even tricksier. 

The compromises on Culture and topics won't become clear until we see what the exam boards come up with. Fundamentally though, this is about the content of the course, not how it is structured. The philosophy is still one of Phonics, Grammar and Vocabulary as the central pillars of teaching and learning.

And while some have claimed to see compromises around Communication, again we will have to wait and see what the exam boards come up with. But I am not hopeful. The scope for spontaneous interaction seems to be based on short exchanges in response to a text, some Role Plays and in response to a picture. Role Plays make me think of parrot-learning phrasebook style, with short responses. And short answers in response to texts or pictures doesn't fit with the way we teach pupils to improvise extended answers.

My biggest worry isn't just about having to abandon a focus on developing pupils' answers. It's not just the loss of Communication for its own sake that worries me. It is not even just about having to dismantle the whole literacy/oracy approach of working on coherence, development and spontaneity. It's a worry around the central process of language-learning. It's what building a repertoire and the ability to use it does for language-learning. Our curriculum is all about pupils having a core snowball of language that they can use. And more and more language sticks to that snowball. As I wrote here, this is what makes the difference between learning and language-learning:

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.

I am very nervous of ending up with a curriculum that aims for an even covering of snow, with pupils memorising items without ever rolling it into a snowball. Or without having a core of the most important language that everything else can stick to. This is what teaching language as a working language offers over the alternative of teaching a language as an abstraction.

So to come to the question of Making the GCSE Work. I know from experience that sticking to your principles does not work. With the Controlled Assessment GCSE, continuing to teach pupils to speak spontaneously from a core repertoire of language did not work. What was rewarded was fancy language and large amounts of "information" learned off pat. With the opportunity for as many retakes as it took for a perfect recording.

This makes me think that it will not work to tweak our curriculum. We have to embrace the changes and the philosophy behind them. In my Keir Starmer role as head of department, how do I Make GCSE Work? This will inevitably be the topic of blog posts yet to come! Here are my first thoughts:

Is it possible to keep or tweak our KS3 and then swap to a Grammar and Vocabulary approach at GCSE? Possibly. But what is the point of teaching pupils in Year 8 to improvise extended answers if at GCSE there are other completely different hoops to jump through? It comes back to whether I think it's an important principle in language-learning. Or whether I now think that sticking to principles in a new climate is asking for trouble.

Will it be possible to keep Spanish? We currently start Spanish in Year 9 and make rapid progress based on pupils having a core repertoire of language they can deploy across topics. This "shortcut" actually turns out in practice to be very efficient in terms of helping their grammatical knowledge to crystalise and grow around the central kernel. With proportionally many more pupils going on to A Level Spanish than for French which they have studied since Year 7 or earlier. Again, prior experience tells us that through the period of the Controlled Assessment GCSE, teaching pupils a core repertoire to deploy spontaneously didn't get the results at GCSE, but did equip those pupils who went on to A Level to do better than schools who taught rote answers. But I am reluctant to get my fingers burnt again. If Making the New GCSE Work means abandoning our approach, then I am afraid it could mean abandoning Spanish. And the loss of a Sixth Form offering Spanish to the local area. This would be a tough decision to make, so watch this blog for developments...

Is it possible to mix and match? For example keeping our Year 7 based around communication - the French Art Exhibition, the French Café...? And our Year 8 based around a core repertoire of opinions, reasons, examples..? And then in Year 9 bring in a much higher focus on Grammar items and accuracy? This feels like a sudden change in direction at exactly the wrong time. We need to be able to continue to give pupils confidence that our KS3 leads directly to a successful KS4.

Is it possible to integrate NCELP materials with our existing course, or is it simpler to sweep away our curriculum and "buy into" the NCELP schemes of work from the start? Our snowball of language works because we make new language stick to what pupils already know and it expands their repertoire, taking time and practice to work on developing it to express themselves. The alternative, of having an even covering of snow, with a multiplicity of items to be learned and recalled, depends on incredibly intricate sequencing, interleaving and revisiting. The NCELP scheme of work, tracking how many times each vocabulary item is met in different texts and contexts, depends on meticulously detailed planning. I could not even start to make my own version and I wouldn't want to take it apart and rebuild it.

On the other hand, does something so precision engineered work in the real classroom? Every nerve in my body jangles at the idea of scrapping a curriculum which has evolved over decades in the real world, to replace it with something that works in the lab.

So, as the Brexit metaphor seems to have changed into one where the new curriculum has escaped from a research facility to infect us all, these are going to be my options: I don't think it is mild enough to ignore. Should I try to adapt to the new variant GCSE? Should I follow the official mandated approach? Or is it going to sweep away everything and a new curriculum will evolve in its place?

The Case Against... Topics

 One of the several bombshells dropped without warning on the MFL teaching community by the new GCSE proposals, was the idea of "getting rid of topics". This tuned in to the unpopularity of the mismatch between some of the current topics and the exam criteria. The speaking and writing criteria are based around recounting personal opinions and experiences, which just doesn't fit with some of the topics, and leads to nonsense like: Do you like recycling? Tell me about some recycling you did recently. If you could, what would you like to recycle? (And even more bizarre or even offensive questions about encounters with poor people.)

The proposals to get rid of topics have been dropped into the middle of another on-going debate, around what the content of courses should be. Whether language-learning should be about useful transactional situations, about learners talking about their own world, or about exploring the cultures of target language countries. This has helped inflame debate, but it's not the central issue of the question here, which isn't about the content of the curriculum, but about how it is structured.

The argument for dropping a topic-based approach is linked to the proposals around a core of high frequency vocabulary. The idea is that we teach too many lists of nouns. In this caricature depiction of our teaching, the nouns are required to cater for the multifarious potential possessions and obsessions of the pupils in our classes. And while no one child needs to learn all of them, they distract from more important words.

It is definitely an interesting exercise to look at what the most frequent words in a language are. And to examine our curriculum to see if we are over-teaching obscure nouns. But it's not really based on an argument for getting rid of topics. It's more that if you follow the GCSE proposals to restrict the syllabus to the most frequent vocabulary items, then it's hard to see what topics would be viable. 

So this argument isn't really about topics. It's about the unviability of the high frequency vocabulary proposals. On its own terms, it falls down. A syllabus that specifies pupils should learn jouer à for sports and jouer de for instruments, but which has no sports or instruments in its vocabulary, is a non-starter. And to come at it from the other side, NCELP are always keen to point out how many of the high frequency words can work for topics. So as far as this first argument goes, getting rid of topics seems like a desperate attempt to make the high frequency vocabulary proposals work, rather than a reasoned debate about the structure of the curriculum.

There are other arguments for not having a topic-based approach. Can you imagine a class where the lessons are based around a genuine conversation, a story, an object someone brings in, an authentic resource, a news bulletin, a date on the calendar, an event in someone's life, a drama experiment, recreating a TV show, a debate, a sporting or crafting skill to be learned...? These were elements of the training I had for teaching English abroad. But they are categorically not what is being advocated in the current argument for a step-by-step curriculum where nothing is incidental, where the demands of communication are an obstacle to learning, and where authentic materials are seen as inappropriate. This argument for freedom from topics is not what is being suggested!

Here's an argument for getting rid of topics that might stand up: By organising our curriculum by topics, we are creating separate pigeon holes of learning that don't add up to anything in the long term. Because we learn things which are then tested, declared finished, and then abandoned. Before then starting the next topic. It is a view of learning based on learning to say certain things, phrasebook style. To deal with one transactional situation, ticking it off and moving on to the next. Station ticket office, cafés, ice creams, lost property, giving directions, reporting a robbery, complaining about a hotel... And even where the substance of the course has moved away from transactional language, to topics such as My Free Time, My Holidays, My School, then perhaps the mentality of learning a set of language to be ticked off for that topic has persisted. Perhaps.

Is this true? Do we see our topics as a set of language discrete to that topic? Where the answer is Yes, then even so, I think we are aware of the need to revisit, interleaving learning, creating a spiral curriculum which comes back to topics not just to revise but to pick up that topic again now the pupils have progressed in their language knowledge. And that idea isn't new. The "spiral curriculum" was a current idea when I trained in the 1990s, as evidenced by the title of the KS3 textbook Spirale by the legendary Barry Jones and Jacqueline Jenkins. And today it is evidenced in the bendy road maps made to show how pupils' progression in their knowledge of the language is deployed in visiting and revisiting topics as their knowledge accumulates. 

Which means, actually, the answer to the question Do we see our topics as a set of language discrete to that topic? is No. We have an overall vision of how pupils accumulate topic vocabulary in each unit, but also of how they accumulate knowledge of the language as they move from topic to topic.

So far I've looked at the headline explicit arguments given as a rationale for getting rid of topics. Actually the most powerful argument isn't openly declared in the new GCSE proposals or even in the Ofsted Research Review. It's hidden in the webinars that accompany the documents or in NCELP training. In the examples they give of how think about what we are really teaching. 

I am very sympathetic to the idea that, for example, when I teach "pets", the list of beasties is not the most important thing for the pupils' language learning. From my point of view, it is a vehicle for teaching phonics. It is going to be an opportunity to deal with masculine and feminine, singular and plural. And the verb to have. Which persons of the verb? Should I include used to have? Questions and negation.

So the question is: Have I thought about what I want pupils to be learning, and then picked "pets" as a good topic to tackle this? Or did I teach "pets" because that's what you do in Year 7, and then realised as an after-thought what the language implications are? And how do these questions apply to my whole curriculum planning? Do I think of topics first, and then work out what structures pupils will need in order to communicate on those topics? In which case their accumulation of knowledge of the language risks being random, incidental, unstructured. And full of pitfalls because I haven't ordered their learning in a logical way. Or do I deconstruct the language and rebuild it step-by-step, carefully isolating each feature and only teaching one thing at a time?

And if I did this, would I get a bionic USAF Colonel Steve Austin, or would I get a Frankenstein's monster?

I have two problems with this argument. One is that it risks being insulting. Of course I have thought through my curriculum. Of course I understand the complexity of teaching new concepts. Of course I understand the importance of accumulating knowledge.

The other is that I am much more prepared for language learning to be messy. As I wrote here on the importance of Communication and Self Expression, I am very aware of the role of the pupils' evolving interlanguage: 

[Pupils] 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.

The strongest argument for getting rid of topics seems to me to be an argument which has gone too far. It's this argument that language-learning consists of building up a grammatical system. That language-learning consists of learning patterns and rules to be understood, memorised and recalled. And that the step-by-step syllabus is transposed into the learner's brain as a set of structured concepts.

If this then neglects meaning, communication and self-expression, I think this has gone too far. It is an argument seeing language-learning from the point of view of someone who has a vision of the whole grammatical system. And who wants to break that down and feed it to pupils in bite-size pieces. 

(To pursue the metaphor, I am sure it's a diet that would contain the correct amount of each micro-nutrient, carefully weighed out and administered at the correct time. But not necessarily with any regard to the taste or appetising nature of the meal, individual preferences, social conventions, enjoyment, participation...)

We need to consider the point of view of the learner. The learner doesn't yet have the amount of accumulated language for links, patterns or structures to form a strong mental network. Pupils don't start to learn their first foreign language by looking for abstractions. Their first instinct is towards meaning. For example, if they are learning "pets", then they want to learn to talk about their pets. And the links they make are strongly to do with expressing meaning. The teacher will know what structures, patterns, forms will become more important and transferable as they accumulate more language. But the teacher doesn't want to do this by reducing pupils' focus on meaning and self-expression. In fact, we are careful to nurture this. It is central to what we are trying to achieve!

The arguments for "getting rid of topics" don't seem to be convincing. The fact that there are multiple arguments might seem like a strength, but in fact it's a mishmash of issues, each with important lessons, but lessons which teachers are capable of taking on board.

We will have to spend time, as the course progresses, adjusting pupils' focus away from meaning and towards forms and patterns. We will have to start to get them to adjust from focussing on words with high concrete meaning towards words which have a more grammatical function in a sentence. We will have to have a clear idea of what words and structures are going to be transferable across topics in order to build pupils' grasp of the language. And we can do all this successfully without throwing away the concept of structuring a course around "topics".

You will notice that I have not made the case for topics. I am merely looking at the arguments for suddenly dismantling what we currently do. With a concern that when a curriculum has evolved, it is often more complex than you might think. The arguments I've looked at can be taken on board without inadvisable top-down sweeping wholesale changes. Whereas a diktat to remove topics could in fact lead to the hasty construction of something which needs to be incredibly complex, from scratch, and without the necessary expertise and understanding of how to make it stand up. I am watching the NCELP experiment with interest.