Dual Coding works for Vocabulary Learning

 I am not going to start by defining Dual Coding. I'm going to show a powerful tool in learning Vocabulary and you can see if you agree that it is an example of Dual Coding.

Here is an example we use with Year 6 when they come on Induction Days in July. We know it works because we test them in September! Partly to see if they still remember, but mainly to show them what an effective technique it is:

If you test any of our Year 7s on confiture, they instantly tell you it means jam. From one lesson at the end of Year 6. As well as guimauves, pain, fromage, moutarde and lots of other foods for the lesson described in this post.

I have had ex pupils contact me on social media to say it's 10 years since they learned items of clothing in Spanish and they still can't forget the words. Most memorably, cow 13 wearing socks. I recently met someone I taught 26 years ago (at parents' evening - I teach her son) and I should have taken the opportunity to test her - I remember her class learning I couldn't bring the kitchen sink, it was évier (heavier) with wordplay and pictures for household items. This was the 1990s when we still taught nouns. And one pupil once did the entire GCSE vocabulary list this way. Her twin brother laughed that this was a whole weekend she would never get back. She got a grade A. He didn't.

The confiture example above is in a powerpoint. And other examples have found their way into our department booklets, as a regular first activity in a new unit.

But more often, it works like this:

1. Pupils have a piece of paper.

2. I say a new word. (Tell any pupils who do know it not to shout out.)

3. Pupils say what the sound of the word makes them think of.

4. I draw it on the board and pupils draw it on their piece of paper.

5. I tell them the real meaning and they write the English and the TL next to their picture.

6. They draw the real thing, incorporating it into their first picture. This is important. If it's two separate pictures the dual coding won't work.

7. I do some testing later to help reinforce retrieval.

8. They never forget the word.

Even the versions that end up in the booklet or on a powerpoint originally started this way, with pupils telling me their word associations and choosing the most memorable ones.

The reasons we do this on paper is in case any of the pictures are highly memorable but too scurrilous to go in exercise books. For example piscine or bragas.

Here's some examples with Year 11 working on Environment Vocabulary.

You can see inundación, where the water goes in and under your house. You can see a fun deer (fundir) who is melting. And a (latex) condom full of tin cans (latas). And an actual explanation of why batteries are called pilas complete with the story of Volta and Galvani's argument about frogs.

And the other reason it's fine to do it on paper, is that the real image is the one in pupils' heads. The pictures on the board will be rubbed out. The piece of paper will be lost. The image in pupils' heads is indelible.

This is why this is an example of Dual Coding. The word is encoded in the pupils' minds with the word and the image. It is stored quickly, easily, effectively and permanently. If you are interested in cognitive science, you can't find a better example of Dual Coding. More importantly, if you are interested in teaching vocabulary, it works!

How the current GCSE works across topics - My Granny went to an aquarium and she doesn't like geography.

NB The GCSE referred to in this post is the outgoing GCSE. Although I am now teaching the new GCSE in exactly the same way.

 Extra incentive for reading this post. It contains video (click here if it doesn't load) of my very ordinary classroom in case you want a nosey about!

The video shows the set up of the lesson. I have written on the pupils' desks in Spanish (in board pen).  On one side of the classroom, the sequence is:

I like/I love/I don't like        because I can/can't/have to/don't have to

especially if                         but if..., I prefer...

_____ likes / doesn't like...

Then on the desks on the other side of the classroom, I have written (in Spanish):

I went/I was in                    I wanted / ___ wanted

I said... ____ said              I decided / we decided

was ____ing                      I ________ed / ____ __________ed

I would have preferred to ___________

You may recognise this from the original My Granny went to the Aquarium post. Because this lesson is for a Year 10 (beginners) group who have already done the Aquarium lesson. And then recycled it to talk about a Theme Park. I don't really need to write the structures on the desks, because each pupil in the class has ownership of their expression. So by looking round the class, the pupils can remember who says what and build their story. And if someone gets stuck, each pupil can prompt them with their expression.

The original story was something like this:

Me gusta ir al acuario porque me gusta ver los peces, sobre todo si hace mal tiempo, porque si hace buen tiempo prefiero ir a la playa. A mi hermano le gusta tocar las estrellas de mar. 

Fuimos al acuario y yo quería ver los peces. Pero mi hermano dijo, "Quiero tocar una estrella de mar." Entonces decidimos ir a tocar las estrellas de mar. Mi hermano tocaba una estrella y yo sacaba una foto cuando dejé caer mi móvil en el agua. Hubiera preferido ir a la playa.

And they can transform it to come up with things like:

Me encanta ir a un parque de atracciones porque me gusta montar en una montaña rusa. Sobre todo si hace sol, porque si llueve, prefiero ir al acuario. A mi hermano no le gusta montar en las montañas rusas. Prefiere comer refrescos y comer muchos caramelos. 

Fuimos a un parque de atracciones. Yo quería montar en la montaña rusa pero mi hermano quería comer caramelos y beber refresco. Decidimos montar en la montaña rusa. Me divertía mucho pero mi hermano vomitó. Vomitó en mi pelo. Lloré. Me hubiera gustado ir al acuario.

You can see the same structures reappearing in each. These are to meet the AQA criteria of opinions, reasons, examples in different time frames, and narrating events. It's worth pointing out that the two sides to the classroom deliberately correspond to the "two halves" of the game plan for the speaking exam. And crucially, there is a very limited number of verbs for each story. The first one is entirely constructed around to go, to see, to touch, to take photos, to drop. This means pupils can pick four or five verbs and use them to tell a complex story which meets the exam criteria.

As we moved from talking about the aquarium to talking about the theme park, we challenged pupils to do it more and more fluently, independently and spontaneously. The important message to the pupils is that they don't need to learn more Spanish. They need to get better at using it. And we are now carrying this across to a new GCSE topic - talking about school lessons.

So we used the expressions on the desk to reconstruct the aquarium/theme park stories from September. Then we agreed on some easy infinitives to work with for talking about lessons: to talk, to work, to shout, and as a class, we improvised the following story:

I like science because I can talk to Alice, especially if we work together. But if I have to work with Vincent I prefer to work in silence. Unfortunately Vincent likes to work with me. I went to science and I wanted to work with Alice. But Alice didn't want to work with me. I was working in silence but Vincent was talking and the teacher shouted at me. I would have liked to work with Alice.

I don't know who this Vincent is.

They produced it quickly and spontaneously from the repertoire of expressions. We wrote this one on the board together, then made sure everyone could say the whole story. Every version was slightly different, and some pupils can use their repertoire more flexibly than others. You can see in the version on the board, they conjugated the verb we work, which wasn't one of the structures on the desk. This what happens when pupils have a core repertoire: more things stick to the core. The same way once you have a snowball, you can roll it around and more snow will stick to it. What you mustn't do is have an even covering of Spanish (ticking off grammar points on a grid) because it will just all melt.

Corpus - dead body zombie language

 The exam boards' draft GCSEs they have been working on are out. And I am not going to be commenting on them while they go through the next stage of approval. Apart from to hope that the generally warm initial reception from teachers is taken as a positive. And a little reminder that the flaws in previous GCSEs (Controlled Assessment, target language prompts in Role Plays...) were introduced by the DfE, not the exam boards. The exam boards have the job of coming up with something that meets the stipulations they are given, works for teachers as a course, and works as an exam.

So I am going to try to tear myself back to what I was thinking about last weekend but didn't have the time to write about: Can I get my brain around the rationale for a syllabus based on High Frequency Language as driven by NCELP and OFSTED?

Hopefully since it started in March 2021, one aspect of this blog is an honest and frank attempt to deal fairly with the ideas we are being asked to adopt. And in many cases I am worried more by the unbalanced pushing of ideas to one extreme, rather than against the ideas themselves. I go along with most of the ideas, but I don't go all the way. And I have made tweaks, for example in making grammar more explicit in our booklets, which as a department we are now evaluating. But one thing I haven't posted about, because I just can't get my head around it, is the High Frequency vocabulary approach.

I can only see the clashes and downsides. I will list them and then see if in the process of writing this, I can start to glimpse why there might be a positive side.

1. Is the High Frequency Approach compatible with the Synthetic Grammar Approach?

NCELP and OFSTED are advocating a focus on learning the language as a grammatical system. Explicit and well-sequenced knowledge building up a picture of the linguistic structures. This includes things like deliberately selecting the words to be taught because they exemplify a pattern (grammar or phonics feature). And excluding other words that would distract from the pattern. Yet we know that the most high frequency language is the most highly irregular. Words which are in everyday use get the corners bashed off. Words which are mostly in the cupboard or even still in their box are in pristine condition. 

Here are the most common 100 words in French. They don't fit well with an approach wanting to start with simple clear building blocks. Words like le, en, de, son need a lot of unpacking!

So logically, what words would go best with an approach based on a synthetic language approach, starting from little regular building blocks that can introduce one thing at a time for pupils to deal with? Logically perhaps it would be cognates. There are youtube videos which announce you can learn thousands of Spanish words in minutes. For example by replacing the ty on the end of university to make it into universidad, or opportunity into oportunidad. This approach would seem to be the natural bedfellow of a "one step at a time follow the pattern" syllabus.

If it is true that the syllabus specified the grammar of jouer au foot, jouer du piano but the High Frequency Vocabulary didn't have any sports or instruments, then that's where this should have had a good look at itself and stopped under the weight of its own internal contradictions. But perhaps that story is a myth.

2. Is the Synthetic Grammar Approach compatible with the High Frequency Approach?

That might seem like the same question, but in a recent video Scott Thornbury turned the argument on its head. The High Frequency Language is taken from analysis of corpora of language as used by speakers. What if the study of collocation of words in corpora shows that language is not actually built grammatically at all? Grammar is secondary to idiom. This is the nature of language. Words go together in chunks. If you take the logic of grammar + vocabulary, you end up saying things that are just not said. Examples? Until McDonalds deliberately subverted it, you couldn't use the verb "to love" in the present continuous. The answer to "Who is there?" in French is, "It's me", in Spanish is, "I am me", in English is "It is I" (because the verb to be takes a predicate not an object) but everyone says, "It is me". The grammar is the same in all three languages. But it's not the grammar that determines what you say. The Synthetic Grammar approach is undone by the findings of corpus analysis. It's not how language works at all.

3. Is the High Frequency Approach compatible with Communication?

The "benefit" of a High Frequency vocabulary approach is supposed to be that it pushes us away from lists of random nouns that we've fallen into in order to teach our pupils the plethora of random trivial stuff they might want to say. That it breaks the hold of topics whereby the syllabus is structured by teaching pupils to say things without regard to careful sequencing of the grammar. This is clearly an example of what I mentioned above of an idea which has been pushed too far. Of course I agree that learning should not be a series of "learn to say this and then move on" episodes. It felt a bit like that in the mid 90s, but even then I am sure it was more thought-through than that. But if teaching Pets is to be replaced with teaching nouns you can have which exemplify regular masculine and feminine endings... And we are happy to teach red dog, red tortoise (but not green dog, green tortoise because that requires adjectival agreement and we only teach one thing at a time)... then you can't ask the question, "What pets do you have?" You can only say, "What regular masculine or feminine nouns qualified by an invariable adjective do you have?" So communication has gone out of the window. The corpus approach, together with the synthetic grammar approach has, in a glorious self fulfillment of the word "corpus", led to a dead body of language. A zombie language which is studied for form, not for pupils to create meaning. And of course this reminds us there are dead languages too, which this approach is all in favour of more pupils studying. Precisely because it is an intellectual exercise unsullied by actual foreigners who communicate in the language in their unpredictable idiomatic ways.

4. Is the High Frequency approach compatible with Social Justice?

And if communication has gone out of the window, then so has social justice. Because if mother is High Frequency, but step mother isn't, if Christian is on the list but other religions aren't, if Spain is on the list but Puerto Rico isn't... then this isn't about a plethora of trivia. It's about pupils' lives. Of course the answer then is, "They are not learning to talk about things: They are learning the language." So communication has to go. Because as soon as this hits the real classroom, pupils want to learn to say things. So any High Frequency Vocabulary approach has to be immediately qualified by, "Oh, yes, of course if they ask you can teach them things." Which is an admission of its failure. Yes to: "We need to make sure we address the balance and make sure we teach more of the grammar and more of the High Frequency Words." But No to: "We should build the syllabus out of High Frequency Words."

5. The High Frequency approach WOULD be compatible with authentic materials.

One area where a High Frequency Vocabulary approach would be useful would be if pupils were learning through reading or listening to lots of rich authentic materials. So a syllabus based on a secure knowledge of non topic words, word classes other than nouns, words which have more of a role in sentence building than in their own meaning, words with a core meaning but multiple other uses (such as "de"). The words which make up the majority of most texts, as NCELP often say. This would make so much sense if our pupils were exposed to a diet of books, stories, non fiction, documentaries. The texts would be a good and natural source of the high frequency words. And the high frequency words would be the key to understanding the texts and not just guessing at meaning from cognates and topic words. BUT, the OFSTED approach is that we should be very cautious with authentic or even modified texts. Pupils should be exposed to texts which are artificially (synthetically) created to model and rehearse the language and grammar patterns pupils are learning. They want us to believe pupils read by parsing known grammar and vocabulary to arrive at meaning. So again, the High Frequency Vocabulary approach is incompatible with other aspects of this project.

There are other arguments too. In the US, teachers fight against the idea that there exists Plato's ideal form of the language. For them, the classroom is a communicative space. And the language in that classroom is valid language. Their pupils are emerging speakers of a language, transitioning from monolingual to bilingual. And the language that matters is the developing language of their pupils. They approach this from a social justice perspective, resisting the idea of an imperialist "correct version" of the language. But going back to his video, Scott Thornbury resists it from a linguistic perspective. Having already pointed out that corpus analysis shows that language does not equal grammar + vocabulary, he goes on to say that language learning does not happen by breaking down the linguist's language in to what seem like logical chunks of grammar and predetermined vocabulary. The pupils' language is grown out of an accumulation things they are learning to understand and say. Which is not the same as a breakdown of the overall grammar.

You must watch the video for his omelette metaphor.

This is all good fun and I enjoy thinking about it. Even if I couldn't get anywhere near finding an acceptable rationale for structuring the curriculum around High Frequency Vocabulary. But what really counts is what happens in the classroom. Day in day out, we find our pupils want to communicate. They want to know how to say things. Often personal, sometimes bizarre, maybe cultural. Sometimes which fit in with what they can say, sometimes which just have to be learned as a chunk. And we wouldn't want to remove that element of language learning. For the pupils to be focused on what they can say and what they want to be able to say, is a good thing. The teacher has a vision of how their language is going to accumulate and be conceptualised. And may increasingly share that with the pupils. But when you get in the classroom, meaning and communication come first. Watch Scott Thornbury's omelette video and it will become clear why. You don't make an omelette by chopping up the body of a dead omelette.

So, is the NCELP-OFSTED explicit knowledge about language curriculum a logical clearly thought-through solution? Or is it a mishmash of political fads and individuals' personal preferences in a barely coherent project? The role of High Frequency Language, incompatible with so many of their other approaches suggests it may not be as rigorous as they would like to pretend.

Reading in Modern Languages in 2022.

 In the light of a recent national Ofsted report on supporting pupils struggling with Reading, our school has been doing work on each subject department's approach to texts.

As a department, we have thought about the texts, tasks and strategies we use with learners, and how we make them accessible to pupils with different reading ages.

Here's a summary:

Pupils with Lower Reading Age:

Pre-engage with pupils on cultural knowledge, including knowledge of local places and activities.We have pupils who don't know where Cromer is or don't know what a Leisure Centre is.

Integrate Listening and Reading – teacher reads text aloud and pupils follow the text.

Use the key words/pictures/actions/sounds to support phonics throughout KS3.

Use similar texts with variations. Including revisiting texts and language from previous units.

Use parallel texts in English and French to ask pupils to find words.

Strategies of using the Questions (in English, multiple choice, gap fill etc)to make the meaning of the text accessible.

Identify topic vocabulary. Identify powerful non topic / high frequency vocabulary.Identify grammar features.Use these step by step strategies to build up precise understanding of the meaning of the text.

Texts with very high % of known words and grammar which pupils are readingin order to practise recall and see the language modelled.Including structures which are revisited across topics.

Integrate teaching of Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing.

Pupils with Average Reading Age:

Check prior cultural knowledge.

Use key words to reinforce phonics and anticipate problems when reading aloud or “silently”.(Pupils should still pronounce words correctly in their heads!)

Strategies of using the Questions to access the meaning of the text.For example the order of the questions helps locate the position of the information in the text.

Use texts with similar language but with the information structured differently.

Use parallel texts in English and French to ask pupils to find new wordsincluding where the structures or word order are different.

Build knowledge of powerful non topic language and grammatical forms to access precise meanings.

Analyse the quality of texts as models for improving their own writing.

Texts with high % of known words and grammar which pupils are readingin order to see the language modelled. Including structures which are revisited across topics.

Integrate the teaching of Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing.

Pupils with Higher Reading Age:

Read texts in order to access new cultural knowledge.

Use texts to introduce new vocabulary for pupils to deduce from context and co-text.

Use reading aloud to check fluent phonics.

Strategies for dealing with texts with more unknown words or structures,to be deduced from the construction of meaning.

Expect pupils to process known words including powerful non topic wordsand grammar features to read precise meanings.

Encourage pupils to take responsibility for noting down and using new words in their own work.

Use some authentic texts or modified texts.Or texts designed for reading for information or pleasure, not just as models of language.

I would be interested to hear what MFL teachers think about this and whether it fits with how you use reading. Hopefully there's something of a continuum of strategies from scaffolded to independent which teachers can deploy flexibly to support and encourage learners.

But this comes with an important corollary...

Following the controversial Ofsted "Research Review" in Modern Languages, we have retreated from authentic texts or even modified texts. We have decreased the use of texts for information or reading for pleasure, and instead we use texts to rehearse and model the language we expect pupils to be learning to speak and write. We create texts using a high percentage of language pupils know. And we don't expect them to make cognitive leaps in deducing meaning, supposedly beyond their "novice" level. We have been told that learners arrive at meaning by parsing known words and grammar, and require texts where over 90% of the words are known. We were worried that we were labelling pupils with higher literacy levels as "good at languages" and pupils with weaker literacy as "bad at languages". As a result, we have changed our assessment texts to make sure they simply test pupils' knowledge of language they have learned.

Looking at the profile of our learners, and the strength of reading in our school, I think we are going to have to re-introduce texts which pupils read for meaning: to find information, to learn new things, and for pleasure.

You may like to look at this post on Teaching Reading for Pleasure in the 1990s for comparison's sake.