The Best of Both Worlds

 It's been tempting over the course of the last couple of years, to feel as if we are being asked to choose between two different visions of language learning.

On the one end of this spectrum, is the idea that language learning is all about Meaning. Creating meaning by saying things and communicating. Understanding meaning by listening, reading and interacting. It's important that language learning isn't just learning and being tested on your knowledge of a collection of vocabulary and grammar items. You shouldn't wait until pupils have mastered the whole system before showing them they can use the language to communicate.

At the other end, are the new exhortations from the Ofsted "Research Review" and the new GCSE panel, that language learning shouldn't just be a collection of things that pupils can say or understand. We shouldn't be learning by osmosis to give set phrasebook style answers for different situations. It is primarily about learning vocabulary and grammatical concepts. Communication can wait.

Here is a slide from Steven Fawkes from an ALL talk to enthuse new MFL teachers. Here are things that we have always thought are the strongest points of our subject:

and here's a snippet from Common Ground by Florencia Henshaw and Maris Hawkins:

Language learning happens when pupils use the language for real, for purposeful creation of meaning or understanding. Not just by practising the language.

We are being asked to consider what if this approach is not just wrong and misguided, but dangerously counter-productive.

When pupils struggle with language learning and seem frustrated or unmotivated, we reach for the levers of communication, relevance, authenticity, culture, creavity, expression... And we expect these to switch on a love of learning and engagement, a sense of purpose.  But might it be that these levers are the wrong ones? By doing this, we are increasing the cognitive demand on pupils, asking them to communicate too soon? Is it a successful approach only with those learners who come equipped with the cultural capital, awareness of language, confidence, self-efficacy and literacy skills needed to cope with this "in at the deep end" approach? The danger of sink or swim is that some just sink.

Instead, we are being asked to consider an approach focused on the language. Vocabulary and grammar, carefully selected and sequenced. Not so that pupils can say things or understand things. But so they can see how the language works. With everything explained clearly, with no guessing or glossing over or assumptions about what pupils can work out or don't need to know.

That's the thinking behind this slide from an Ofsted webinar accompanying their "Research Review." It is a view of language teaching where everything is planned and sequenced logically, boiled down to the essentials and carefully avoiding rich and complex contexts.

The examples given in the webinar are that we should teach pupils to say red dog, red tortoise but we should avoid green dog, green tortoise because this brings in adjectival agreement. And leaners already have enough on their plate with learning the vocabulary and the word order. A logical step-by-step teaching strategy. But one which is totally distanced from learners using the language to say things they want to say.

This has huge implications for things like our Year 7 French Art Exhibition.

What if...

What if we are focused on the product not the process? There's a deadline and we skip over important learning because we need to get the picture and the text done.

The pupils' attention might be too directed towards the meaning and not enough towards the forms of the words.

What if the pupils' descriptions bring in random words that they are never going to need again? 

What if pupils are trying to say things they can't? So they fall into error but we gloss over it because they are "communicating well."

That could mean that the things we think are the best for our learners turn out to be the worst!

Let's look at that spectrum diagram again. Is it really how it has been painted? How about we move things about a little.

Are those positions really incompatible?

Let's move the things we do want from language learning, into the middle. Language Learning is about Understanding and Creating Meaning. And about Knowledge linked by Conceptualisation. Sounds good to me. Spot on in fact. I want all those things.

How about the things we don't want? Language Learning isn't just a collection of knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. And neither is it a collection of phrasebook style things pupils can say. Absolutely spot on.

So instead of being asked to choose, in reality we are being given the best of both worlds.

So when I teach Year 7 j'ai un chien, I know that we are not going to be spending 5 years remembering words for pets. I know that the important things are j'ai and un/une and the sound-spelling link in oiseau and poisson. But the pupils are focused on a game where you have to guess if people are telling the truth about their pets and their names. Because the meaning and communication and link to reality matter to pupils. More than links and patterns between words at this stage.

And when I teach je n'ai pas de..., we will spend time looking at contractions of je - j'ai and ne - n'. But we will also chante je n'ai pas de over and over again to a video of a rhythmic steam train. The best of both worlds.

And I know that when I teach Year 8, we will separate out the process of randomly using the language in a ridiculous world record length "sentence" and then later working on coherence and quality of expression.

Because both are important, and there is no conflict.

And when it comes to the Year 7 French Exhibition. Why do we teach the grammar of word order, adjectival agreement, definite and definite articles, prepositions and high frequency words? We teach it so that 200 pupils can all create their own art work and they can all write about their own picture. Grammar is creativity and communication. There is no incompatibility.