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.
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