Excellent. Really have something to think about. And I think I know the answer, but I have to be open to the alternative and give it a real chance.
I am rewriting our Year 7 booklet on the topic of food. The booklet contains this sort of thing: Strategies for learning food words. Giving opinions about food. Ordering food in a restaurant. Looking at food on French menus. Talking about allergies and what you do / don't eat. Looking at food around the world and talking about what people eat.
Or in grammatical terms: food and genders; opinions and the definite article; functions for asking and "some"; tu and vous; present tense of manger; negatives with "de"; taste adjectives with is and are and adjectival agreement.
Some of this grammar is not new to pupils in this unit.
It brings us up against the arguments about whether to teach pupils "to say things" or to teach pupils language that exemplifies specific forms.
If we are teaching a synthetic syllabus, the language is carefully selected and sequenced around the "logic" of the language. Not the meaning. So we wouldn't be teaching the topic of "Food" at all. We would be teaching opinions and the definite article. Ranging from j'aime le chocolat to j'aime les chiens to j'aime les maths.
With this example, I've always found it very useful when we come to the topic of School, to be able to refer back to the topic of Food. Pupils learn j'aime le chocolat by the sound, the feel, the rhythm, the music of it. And so when it comes to je n'aime pas la géographie, they are perfectly fine with it. But I do want to think through where teaching topics might mean we are overloading underlying grammatical complexity.
I don't think that "explicit" always means "explaining". Things can be made obvious in other ways. Starting with how the syllabus is organised and structured. And then by focus on a form, isolating it, contrasting, spotting patterns, manipulating.
What I have come up against with the Food topic, is that there's a particularly nasty bit of complexity going on with articles.
J'aime le pain. Je n'aime pas le pain. J'aime le pain avec du beurre. Je mange le pain au petit-déjeuner. Je mange du pain. J'aime manger le pain. J'aime manger du pain.
This is an example of where a synthetic syllabus, built around carefully selected and sequenced language, wouldn't attempt this. It would stick to j'aime le pain. Teaching the rule of opinion + definite article. But it would risk sacrificing the desire to communicate, to talk about food, to express yourself. Because pupils have to recombine what you have taught them, but go no further. Because the teaching objective isn't for them to learn to say things. It's to learn about how the language works.
If you believe that mistakes are harmful, and that language learning means acquiring building blocks in a predetermined way based on the logic of taking apart the language, and that frustration with language-learning comes from all those confusing little words that can't be pinned down, and you think that explicit knowledge is all important, if you think pupils shouldn't play with language because they might break it... then it's a sacrifice worth making.
If you welcome mistakes, because it's a sign of pupils using their language with growing independence instead of regurgitating... If you think that language learning follows the logic of growing pupils' constantly evolving language repertoire and conceptualisation... If you think that pupils are focused primarily on meaning rather than form... If you think language learning happens from hearing the sound and the rhythm and the meaning... If you think pupils can pick language up and play with it... then you won't be worried.
And I never was worried. Pupils picked up j'aime le pain and je voudrais du pain and j'aime le pain avec du beurre. And if they get it wrong, then for me it wasn't a disaster. Firstly because there's plenty more time for it to straighten itself out. Secondly because it's not as important as communicating and expressing meaning.
And thirdly because focusing on it won't magically make it any better.
Sometimes I think that the communicative approach relies on a kind of "magic". Statements like "Language learning happens when pupils interact with meaning." It seems something of a statement of faith rather than an argument. (Although it's an argument I can make, but now is not the time.) But I don't see anything different in an argument about explicit knowledge. Explaining le / du isn't going to magically make it work. In fact it may make it worse. The same as teaching that je suis allé means I am gone doesn't make it less likely that pupils will mix it up with I am going.
To spell it out. I can explicitly tell pupils that the cheese is le fromage. And that du fromage means some cheese. But this explanation leaves them none the wiser when it comes to saying: I like cheese. I eat cheese. I eat bread with cheese. English doesn't have a the or a some. And in French you will need le or du depending on each different case.
Anyway, I never worried. Until all this started. And we were told to be acutely aware of the sequencing and grammatical logic of what we are teaching. And then this is what happened...
Here's a lovely piece of writing from a Year 7 pupil this year.
It's based on speaking, as you can see from the and... and... but... and... structure. And it's a pupil enjoying expressing themself on a great topic for having opinions. But it didn't start out like that.
Here's their first version.
In this first draft, it seems they haven't got it at all. Singular, plural, gender. All gone wrong. And the comment. "I wrote a good sentence but I am not sure about the/some. I was so worried about the/some I didn't write a lot."
Interesting.
How to react to this? Is it a good thing that they were aware they were making mistakes? Especially as they were able to immediately correct this by checking in their booklet? Is it a bad thing they were making mistakes because it shows a lack of conceptualisation of number and gender? Is it a bad thing they were making mistakes because they just haven't had enough input to know that la fromage does not exist? Is it entirely normal they might make exactly these slips because their attention is on what they are saying and these little words don't matter to them at this stage?
Personally I would say all of the above. Even when they are contradictory. Because it is all part of a process with ups and downs and round and rounds.
Another question is "Has my teaching made it worse?" By explicitly looking at le / du or by setting up a situation where the pupil needed to use them. We had talked about learning du, de la, des. And whether it was better to have a rule or just to pick it up from lots of examples. A great discussion with the class. With this very pupil making the point that an explanation will need lots of examples.
So I think we come back to what I hinted at earlier. "Explicit" teaching of grammar isn't about how you teach it. It's about what you chose to teach. And what not to teach.
Rewriting the booklets isn't about whether you learn le, du by explanation or by example. It's about whether you decide to teach pupils to talk about food (including opinions, ordering, what they generally eat, what they can and can't eat) which introduces more complexity than you might have expected. Or whether you teach opinion + definite article, and avoid anything more that might confuse or complicate matters.
You want me to give an answer?
My answer is that on paper it looks as if you should limit, select, sequence. But that as soon as you are in the classroom with real pupils and teachers, then meaning and communication take over. Language is complex, but the human brain is up to the job.
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