Where next for Languages?

 I wonder what the new National Consortium for Languages Education is going to be like and what will it mean for us in the classroom?

Just like NCELP, they are mandated to build on the 2016 review of language teaching and its core principles.

I have written on Twitter a little bit about NCELP. They will have a chapter of their own in the History of Language Teaching, as an extraordinary landmark attempt to try to bring about changes in practice and thinking.

I don't think that Chapter is coming to a close. They have made us think about important questions. And whatever comes next, we can't ignore them.

Firstly, the Sequencing of Learning. The NCELP schemes of work have raised the bar for any publisher in terms of the logic of what is taught when. We can't continue to see textbooks organised around ticking off grammar content in a grid, planning where it is met (once or twice) without now thinking in terms of the pupils' conceptualisation and accumulation of language.

Likewise, the focus on phonics is a well overdue shift away from the old idea that we shouldn't show pupils the written form, because it would interfere with their pronunciation.

There are other aspects which I think we have only just started to get to grips with, whether or not we ultimately end up accepting them. One is the idea that while we should be very careful to introduce things in carefully planned steps, they should also be deliberately contrasted. This is also linked to the idea of removing duplicate markers, so that pupils have to focus on the specific form (and its meaning). So instead of saying, "Je suis allée en ville hier", if we want the pupil to focus on the past tense, then we should show them, "Je suis allée en ville." That way they have to look at the verb form and can't depend on the word 'hier'. And we should ask them to distinguish between go/went or between different persons of the verb. The questions here are about how well we understand what NCELP are trying to do. It's not just about spotting patterns. It's about how pupils process language.

I can see that my pupils are happy to know that aller is "go". But despite our teaching, how much attention do they pay to the endings aller, allé, allés, allée, allées, allez, allais...? Are they just happy to pick up on "go". And are we as teachers happy that they then use that to try to deduce the meaning from the whole sentence, rather than processing the endings? Do we assume that inflection is something it takes time for pupils to grasp the importance of? Or do we think it's something we need to force pupils to process?

Then there's the High Frequency Vocabulary idea. This has so many implications, and I can't yet see clearly what it means for my teaching. Does it mean the end of topic teaching? I can see the importance of non topic words and the very high frequency words. The thing is sometimes these words are highly grammatical. Or are low on meaning, high on re-combinability. Meaning that they are very slippery to teach with a bottom up approach. Je vais à la piscine; J'habite à Paris; Je vais au cinéma; Un pain au chocolat; La dame au chapeau rouge... In each one à is doing something different. Might it be better for pupils to learn some of this in chunks without getting stuck over-thinking words like à or du, de la, des? Like the pupil in this post trying to say things like, I like pizza with pineapple.

Does a focus on High Frequency Vocabulary mean a bottom up approach, focused on processing known words and grammar? Or is it the key to a revived focus on authentic texts and materials? If these are the words that feature in all texts, and if they are the key to unlocking meaning, then more authentic texts should be accessible. We've always been good at asking pupils to look for the words strong in meaning. Which can be deduced from clues in the context or may well be cognates. If our pupils are going to be better equipped to deal with the little words and process grammatical inflections, does this mean we can have more (not less!) focus on authentic texts?

If a High Frequency Vocabulary approach means an end to topics and to lists of inconsequential nouns to allow pupils to talk about their trivial lives (pets, stationery, hobbies, clothes), then could it instead bring a greater focus on culture and Culture? A move away from the first person obsession would also fit well with the grammatical sequencing. In Spain they... This Spanish person... In England we... I...

Ultimately, I can't tell how great the role of NCLE will be in where this goes next. What we need to see is what the new GCSE means. I'm holding off digging deep into what it means until the drafts are tweaked and firmed up. We will need to understand the marking criteria in detail to understand what is rewarded. The DfE were right in thinking that if they wanted change, then changing the GCSE was the way to do it. But whether those changes will be exactly what they intended, we will have to wait and see.