Teaching Speaking in the 1990s

 This is an example of a speaking card from the school where I did my first teaching practice in the early 1990s.

Pupils would do an individual end of unit test with the teacher based on a card like this. This is for Year 9 and on the topic of the School Day. The pupil would know they were going to have to talk about what time they got up, what time they had breakfast, how they got to school etc. But until they got the card, they wouldn't know what details they would have to give. Their test would be in the form of answering questions from the teacher, "What time do you get up?" And they would have to give the details cued by the card in full sentences.

The card is one tiny cog in the whole resourcing of the department. They had worked together as a team and in co-ordination with other local schools, to create a scheme of work from Year 7 to Year 9 and all the resources to go with it.

There were many cards (this one is particularly complicated) for each topic. Both for teaching and for testing. There were Over Head Projector transparencies and probably some Banda worksheets too. All these were stored centrally and worked through methodically.

Inspired by the Graded Objectives Movement, there was a carefully planned coverage of different scenarios, with pupils ticking off their successes in each topic. Tasks were always presented as "authentic", which in practice meant speaking or writing to an imaginary French penfriend.

There was a progression towards more complexity of language. Much of it was transactional. And it was functional (based on learning "functions" such as asking for something, giving the time etc.) rather than grammatical.

I do remember being frustrated by some aspects of it. I worried that pupils were learning the language phrasebook style with grammatical conceptualisation being left to happen "naturally" and slowly. I felt bound by the tightly controlled language - they even had a list of French boys' and girls' names that the pupils should meet in texts and conversations. I worried that the pupils either spent a long time working on what the symbols were supposed to mean, or could produce a French phrase for a symbol without really knowing exactly what they were saying. I worried about the way language was introduced without showing pupils the written form and the sound-spelling link.

Most of all, I didn't like the way the what they had to say was cued, so they were being tested on recall, rather than giving their own answers and communicating. It felt as if it had taken the strong oral and interactive focus of the teaching of English I was used to, from working in Mexico, and kept all the elements except any real sense of communication. 

Pupils were working their way through a tightly controlled version of the language, being tested on their ability to recall it, with a pretence of "authentic" context. But without ever being given the idea that they could decide what to say or talk about their own lives. This made me uncomfortable. It seemed important when learning a language that the pupils should be using it to express themselves, otherwise it didn't feel like language-learning at all.

It very much felt as if the school were part of a quickly evolving landscape in language teaching. Where collaboration, response to their pupils' needs, innovation, and clear principles were part of a drive to teach languages effectively and inclusively. 

And that evolution has continued over the ensuing 30 years. A whole generation of us have found their own similar but slightly different ways to keep pushing forward with a growing grammatical progression, teaching the sound-spelling link, seeking relevance to the pupil and to the Target Language cultures, building pupils' repertoire and their ability to deploy it.

And that includes the new GCSE proposals and the Ofsted Research Review. Sometimes they seem to be reacting against aspects of how things used to be, wanting to make sure grammatical progression is prioritised and explicit, teaching phonics, and making sure pupils know the exact meaning of what they are learning. Sometimes they share the priorities, such as having a tightly controlled body of language meticulously sequenced and tracked through multiple encounters, with pupils being tested on their recall of what they have been learning. And sometimes they share the weaknesses, such as the marginalisation of the idea that language-learning happens through creating meaning, communicating and learning to express yourself in the language.