What if...

 What if the English schools' Modern Languages curriculum is a machine for alienating pupils?

What if the pupils who don't chose a language for GCSE do so precisely because we have a curriculum designed to sift them out? How would such a process work?

What if a focus on Communication in the language is putting demands on learners which they are just not ready for? If asking every pupil in the class to give their own personal variation on an answer means we end up teaching a plethora of nouns to cover all the options. What if the content of the course ends up being driven by a random collection of things pupils might want to say, rather than a logically planned curriculum? What if most of the things we teach are dispensable? And what if the focus on Meaning and Communication is the wrong focus. In the sentence j'ai un chien, we should not be focusing on the word "dog" but on the other two words. We allow pupils to accumulate the fluff, not the substance of the language. Except for a small minority, already skilled in language and literacy, who spot for themselves the importance of the words we gloss over in our rush towards self expression.

What if the same process happens with our structuring of the curriculum around Topics? In a similar progression from "random" to "abandon". If we first select the topics and then fit the language to those topics, is that the best way to sequence the learning? When we finish one topic and move on to the next, how much is just left behind? Except for a small minority of pupils, who challenge themselves to hang on to the most important bits. Have we been focusing on the wrong language, and teaching it in the wrong order?

What if talking to pupils in the Target Language is fine for pupils who can confidently predict what the situation is, what the gestures mean, and maybe even recognise one or two words? But is hugely alienating to pupils who don't want to be put on the spot without knowing exactly what is being expected?

What if authentic materials -where pupils are expected to use their cultural knowledge of the resource, to be able to extrapolate, putting together clues to deduce meaning, constantly checking the feedback loop between understanding some words, making sense of the content, hypothesising unknown words, accessing their knowledge of similar words and word families in English - what if this is something only a minority of pupils are confident in tackling? 

What if our tests are explicitly a machine for filtering and labelling pupils? Well, no denying it: they are. And what if those tests are based on labelling pupils with confident literacy skills as "Good at languages" and those with weaker literacy as "Doing badly in languages"? Because our tests don't simply test how well pupils are learning what we are teaching. They test it "in context", asking pupils to make cognitive leaps, to deal with familiar language in unfamiliar contexts or mixed with unfamiliar language. Which only certain pupils can deal with.

What if all the things we do to try to remedy the situation are a misdiagnosis, actually exacerbating the situation? We have seen this in the past. Using pictures instead of clearly telling the pupils exactly what things mean. Not showing pupils the written form, so they end up inventing their own mental spellings for wazo and pwasson. Teaching transactional practical language phrase book style, so language learning was all about parrot memorisation. So what if reaching for more "engaging" topics and self expression and culture and authenticity is actually pushing pupils away, not drawing them in?

This is the spectre that the Ofsted Research Review and its associated webinars has awoken.

Scary stuff. And we are right to be scared. These are the things that haunt us every lesson, every day. We are NOT unaware of them. We interact with pupils, their successes and failures, their misconceptions and lightbulb moments. This is the key. Our curriculum, with its topics and its focus on expression and communication, isn't a thing that exists just on paper. It has evolved through constant contact with real pupils. They, the pupils, bring a desire for meaning, for personalisation. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Would we?

I prefer something robust which has evolved in the natural habitat, which engages with pupils' growing ability to express themselves. Which is firmly built around the pupil. And their growing repertoire, their emerging conceptualisation, their slow shift from focus on meaning towards a greater focus on forms. Which balances immediate take-away in terms of learning something to say, with long term development of understanding. Rather than something that is meticulously planned on paper, but based on a deconstruction of the language, rather than on the complexity of what is happening in the experience and agency of the learner.

The curriculum happens in the classroom. In a constant process of successes and failures, tweaks and leaps. With immediate feedback and diversions and occasional culs de sac, with a long term vision and sense of direction.

If this post has given you the shivers and left you doubting your reasons for teaching, quickly click on this weekend's other post, looking at how pupils love extending their repertoire and developing their answers spontaneously and fluently.