Reading Strategies - Part 2.

 In Part 1 on Reading Strategies, we looked at some of the language reasons why we might want pupils to read texts in the Target Language. There are of course other reasons than just to meet words and structures. Reading can be a source of pleasure, interest, and learning. It can allow for greater independence than language lessons sometimes permit. And the texts can give a new perspective on the world, and help pupils realise that French is for real, not just for lessons. We can over-egg some of these benefits. Pupils are not necessarily interested and motivated to read in the Target Language. Reading can be superficial, and it can be hard for pupils to apply reading strategies independently and without support.

What we are trying to do is to teach a way of reading which builds understanding, through cumulative and cyclical reading. Knowledge of the subject matter combines with understanding of known words to build a picture where more and more of the pieces fall into place: new words, the words that link and structure the sentence, the grammatical form of the words. All constantly checked against the emerging picture.

We want pupils to be confident in making and testing assumptions, and then revising them if it doesn't quite make sense. This is what the best readers do and others do not.

Here's a text on the French balloonist Sophie Blanchard:

The first strategy is to look through the text for features we expect to find in a historical text:

The point is to start to build understanding by asking pupils to do a quick first reading of the text, without getting stuck. Some pupils will simply find the names and numbers. Others will start to read the context. Names, numbers, lists, speech, technical terms, known words, cognates... There are always things you can ask pupils to locate in a text. And they can learn to make a first reading in this way.

The next thing we do with this particular text is to give pupils questions in English.

The questions guide the pupils through the text. They locate the information and read the detail that is needed. You can ask them to answer in French and in English so that they start to map the meaning of the whole sentence onto the French. Having questions like this makes the text accessible.

Questions like these work well as a teaching strategy. But would it work as an independent reading strategy? I suppose the closest we could come would be for the pupils to ask their own questions and see if the text provided the details they wanted. So for this text, you could watch this trailer for a film about her life. As a trailer, it teases information but keeps the detail back... Then the pupils can look for the missing details in the text.

Another way to make the text completely accessible is to give parallel English and French texts.

We ask the pupils to find the underlined words in the other language. Sometimes these words jump out and are easily identified. Sometimes they push the pupils into reading the French closely, mapping the French sentence onto the English, and exploring the different sentence structure.

In this particular example, there is a further use to this. The words the pupils are finding in this part of the text, are deliberately chosen to help them read the end of the story:

We have built up their knowledge and interest in the historical character. We have equipped them with some key vocabulary. We have shown them how to build up meaning over several readings of the text. Now we can ask them to read the ending of the story for themselves.

This is part of a worksheet I leave for cover lessons. So pupils ARE working independently, reading the text and extracting information.

They have the activities on the sheet to support and guide them. The worksheet is deliberately guiding them through the text. But are they learning and deploying strategies?

I would say that they are at the beginning of this process. They are learning important strategies such as:

You build up understanding by reading repeatedly.

You can find words you know.

You can recognise new words that are similar to English or from their place in a sentence.

Your cultural knowledge helps see the pieces of the jigsaw.

You can find specific pieces of information.

Words you figure out in one sentence may come up again later.

Little words that hold sentences together are important and so are word endings. These should all fall into place as you make your understanding more focused and accurate.

You can figure out what it says from the words. And you can figure out words from what it is saying.

You may have made assumptions that need revising.

And most importantly: You may not understand all the words. But you can puzzle out what some of it says.

Reading Strategies. Part One - A Rationale.

 In the era of "knowledge", it seems that reading "strategies" have fallen out of favour. We no longer tend to have regular lessons where pupils select from readers in the Target Language to practise their reading. Was this because the whole idea of reading strategies you can deploy was bogus? Or because there wasn't enough focus on deploying focussed strategies that work?

There certainly seems to be inequality around pupils' confidence in accessing texts in a foreign language. Some seem more "skilled" than others. This suggests that there are skills and strategies that some have learned and others haven't. In this case, we need to find out what those pupils are doing, and work out how to teach other pupils to do it too.

What are we hoping that pupils are doing when they read in a foreign language? In purely linguistic terms, perhaps it is: 

• Meeting known words in new contexts
• Seeing how sentences are articulated by high frequency words and inflections of words.
• Engaging in a feedback loop between decoding word by word, and overall meaning.

But each of these contains interesting complexities around the two opposing views of language learning: acquisition through incidental input and communication, versus direct instruction of step by step conceptualisation and deliberate repeated retrieval.

Meeting words in new contexts.

There is an argument that in order to learn a language, we have to use language not just in practice exercises, but in order to comprehend or communicate real information. This strikes me as something of a romantic argument. But even the opposing point of view, based on repeatedly and deliberately tracking how many times learners meet new words, stresses the value of meeting them in different contexts. Perhaps because this is how the brain processes language and builds the complex articulation of the way words can fit together and create meaning.

Seeing how sentences are articulated by high frequency words and inflections of words.

In the past, the accusation leveled at this kind of reading text, was that pupils were finding cognates and guessing from knowledge of the content, and glossing over the high frequency little words. The knowledge approach puts much more emphasis on the high frequency words found in all texts. So although it usually advocates pupils reading sentences which tightly model known language, this approach could actually be compatible with texts to be read for information or pleasure. Because pupils are much more familiar with the little words that hold sentences together. A caveat would be that there is a reason why the focus continually slips away from these words. Learners' attention is inevitably drawn towards words strong on meaning, rather than the nuance of words that articulate sentences but whose own meaning is more slippery.

Engaging in a feedback loop between decoding words and overall meaning.

The direct instruction approach would have us believe that reading consists of parsing known words and known grammar to arrive at meaning in a one way street process. This is clearly not true. The overall understanding of the content, and the interpretation of individual words is held in constant tension. The reader actively makes sense of the text. At all levels. This includes their prior knowledge of the subject matter, their vocabulary knowledge, their grammatical knowledge, and their willingness to hypothesise meaning. And most of all their resilience with a degree of uncertainty and the ability to monitor the strength of the validity of their emerging hypotheses.

So this brings us on to the "skills" and possible strategies to employ. What is it that confident readers can do, that less confident readers could learn to do?

Of course, some pupils will have a firmer grasp of vocabulary than others. And one of the purposes of asking pupils to read in the Target Language, is to encounter those words and to practise retrieving their meaning. Our strategies will need to challenge pupils to do this, while finding ways to make sure it's a learning opportunity for pupils who didn't know the words.

And equally, depending on the text, some pupils will bring greater prior knowledge of the topic than others. We can exploit this by tailoring texts to pupils' interests and knowledge. We need to make sure we use this as a way of engaging with the text, not to allow them to gloss over it!

When it comes to confidence in dealing with uncertainty, hypothesising and bouncing between the overall meaning and the detail of the sentence structure, we need to observe carefully how different learners behave. Often it is confidence that is key. A pupil who fears being told they are wrong, may tend to jump to an answer and give that as their one attempt, before giving up with an "I knew I couldn't do it." It takes a lot more confidence to go through the process of tentatively assigning meaning to words, working out what that would mean for the overall sentence, accounting for all the words and even the inflections, tweaking or revising assumptions depending on whether it all made sense or not.

In Part 2, I will look at specific texts with a series of activities which take pupils through, building up meaning. I will look at to what extent these activities are one-offs which just apply to guiding the pupils through this particular text, and to what extent they could be strategies that a pupil could apply to any text. And whether this means pupils are learning to become better readers.

If you can't wait for Part 2, here's a link to how I tried to achieve exactly this transferability of strategies in the 1990s. It will be interesting to see in Part 2 if I've made any progress!

Can we sort out Languages in English schools?

 Can we sort out languages in English schools? That's a sentence you can read 7 times putting the stress on different words in turn. How about we try, "Can WE sort out languages in English schools?" Because if WE don't do it, then who is? They will either not bother, or muck it up. And I'm not sure which is worse.

Going along with that idea of giving us the responsibility, I'm nervous of commenting on sectors I don't work in. So Primary languages, Universities, and private enterprise all have a role to play. But meddling by outsiders never ends well. So I will stick to talking about the sectors I know something about. The one thing to do first at Secondary. And what on earth to do post 16.

At Secondary level, there is one obvious and easy thing that would go a long way to changing the narrative, the incentives for SLT, the attitude of pupils, and the success of the subject: Ending unfair grading.

At Sixth Form and College, we need to see one thing: a mainstream option for continuing with languages as the norm. Universities have language courses for students NOT specialising in a philology degree: Why is there a gap from 16 to 18 where you can't just carry on learning a language? Pupils who pick a language at GCSE shouldn't be going into a dead end 2 year course just to get a grade and then quickly lose everything they learned.

Ending unfair grading

There is no reason why pupils in Languages should be given lower grades than in their other subjects. If grades were given out fairly, nobody would be clamouring for it to be changed. For grades 4 and above, on average, a pupil is given a grade lower in languages than in other subjects. If a pupil does get the same grade in languages as in history or geography, by the law of averages, this means another pupil is getting 2 grades lower. It's the way the grades are given out. FFT datalab show how this happens year after year. Because that's the way it's been deliberately set up to happen.

It is no reflection of the pupils' achievement in languages or anything to do with the teaching. When the "comparable outcomes" decisions setting the allocation of grades were first applied in 2018, the current Year 11 were in Year 4. The allocation of worse grades for them in languages was already in place. It's a historical anomaly that we've got stuck with for decades. There is some slight variation according to the SATs profile of the year group. But Ofqual's brief is to keep grading standards the same year on year, regardless of the fact that they know it's unfair.

I wrote in another post how pupils' targets clearly show them that the grades given out in languages are lower than in their other subjects. If in history or geography the target is a 6, it will be a 5 for French. This has nothing to do with the pupil's ability in French or the teaching they have received. The targets were already set, based on KS2 SATs, before the pupil started Secondary School. But the targets are a true reflection of the fact that lower grades are given out in languages. A very clear message. Pupils know, teachers know, SLT know. Taking a language is a recipe for lower grades.

But pupils inevitably blame themselves and think that it means that they are not good at languages. SLT may blame the teachers and think that they are not good at teaching. Because surely nobody would carry on giving out unfair grades year after year. Well they do. And they need to stop.

Before any new syllabuses or national centres and hubs or changes to teacher training or methods or research reviews or ebaccs, the one thing to change is grading. So that pupils can pick a GCSE in a language with the confidence that they are going to do well. The narrative of failure in languages is powerful, but as I show in this post, it is entirely manufactured.

I'm not saying that's all we need at Secondary. But it's by far the biggest and also the easiest thing.

Then we can continue to think about whether our subject is about culture and communication, or grammar and vocabulary, or useful language, or story telling. But of course the answer to that is easy too. That richness of our subject is a positive. When we try to cut teaching down and neglect one or more of those aspects, it's the worse for it. Richness and complexity is not the problem. We know what the problem is. It's unfair grading. We've seen it, we've said it, and it won't be hard to sort it.

Pupils, teachers, SLT will all feel better about the subject once we remove the disincentive.

Then we need to make sure that if pupils take GCSE, that it's not a dead end. So the second thing we need is mainstream language learning pathways post 16.

Mainstream language learning pathways post 16.

It is not the norm in England to carry on studying a language. We have A Levels for those who want academic study with intellectual heft. I wrote here about how our attitude to languages means we don't value the study of languages unless it is beefed up with linguistics or literature, history or politics. When the universities meddled with the A Level, they even wanted it to have essays in English. They put intellectual heft above actual language learning.

For a tiny minority, there is the option of A Level and then a degree in philology. I'm not going to bemoan the fact that it's only a tiny minority (2 pupils per secondary school go on to A Level French and the same for Spanish). I bemoan the fact that this is what people are worrying about. What about the 99% of pupils who are never going to want to write essays about Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer? Why is language learning not an option for the mainstream?

More 16 to 19 year olds are on Duolingo than do A Level languages. I don't have figures to prove that but I don't think anyone's going to question it. Because it's bound to be more than 4 pupils per Secondary school. 

That's a clue to how things could be. Online learning. Open access. Points based or counting hours of study rather than exams. At your own pace. And in the language or languages you fancy.

Online open access study. I'm not suggesting that Duolingo be mandated at college and Sixth Form. But whatever we come up with would need to rival it.

Of course we could call for taught language classes, the same way Sunak wanted all pupils to continue with maths. Although that feels less attractive than being given autonomy over your choice of language and level of learning.

Sunak's maths idea, is of course a warning. Nobody wants miserable classes of students who don't want to be there. In a subject you can't staff. With students coming from different high schools having done different levels of different languages.

If colleges wanted to offer taught courses, and you did want a qualification to aim for, GCSE isn't a bad option, if now you feel better able to make important choices than when you were 13. A GCSE either in the same language you started at High School or in a different language or languages. GCSE historically has kept that balance between useful language and learning the grammar required for more complex self expression.

Or a simply a points based system where the expectation is that you put in a certain number of hours or work through a certain amount of levels. Again, not unlike Duolingo.

The Duke of Edinburgh Award and the EPQ are examples of this kind of add-on that are taken seriously, where students clock up extra hours or other dimensions of study.

I teach A Level students who study other languages independently online. Even to the extent of this leading to next steps linked to the other language rather than the one they took for A Level. Because it links to their other subjects, their other interests, or their aspirations.

This could be happening for many more of our students.

A changed ecosystem.

What would this look like? More pupils taking GCSE languages without the kick in the teeth of unfair grading.

Attractive options to continue with language learning post 16. Incentivised by college minimum expectations and university entry requirements. Boosted by links to the subjects they study. And by the availability of easy access to cultural and academic resources and international communication.

When we used go on the Spanish exchange, our pupils were astounded that their exchange partners see it as part of a strategic plan. They have mapped out spending a year over the border in a French lycée as an EU citizen. They would like to go to the UK for an Erasmus year. And they want to do a Masters in America. We don't think like this. We just moan not enough people are taking A Level and writing essays in English to show their intellectual level. While actually secretly being quite proud of how difficult, demanding and exclusive we can make the subject.

With a language and an international outlook becoming the expectation post 16, Colleges with a high quality language programme will win out over ones who just direct pupils to work online. This will include attracting students with an international outlook to vocational courses and apprenticeships.

The ethos will infuse the whole College, with international links and cross curricular opportunities for students to follow their interests in different languages and culture.

Private language schools will spring up for ambitious students to meet their aspirations.

And universities will find that almost all students want to take a language course alongside their degree, because they haven't had a two year hiatus with no language learning possibilities.

The detail of what online resources and what incentives/requirements would make this work, will have to be thought through. But these two things - end to unfair grading and end to being a dead end at 16 - are key to making languages the norm for the mainstream.

You may not like the open access online study option. I didn't set out to propose that. It's not an idea I particularly like. But it seemed the obvious thing to plug the gap. There's another implication too. Because online language learning is here anyway. So our GCSE lessons have to clearly offer something that online apps don't. Communication, interaction, culture... all the things that an app might be bad at, these are the things that we have to be brilliant at...

The sharp eyed will have noticed that despite my promises not to meddle in sectors I don't work in, this post does rely on support from universities. If it is true as this article claims, that universities need researchers with language skills and an international outlook, then they should say so to schools. I know universities are in competition for bums on seats. And that they worry that requiring a language would bar disadvantaged students. But in fact the result is the opposite. Students are not having the opportunities because schools don't think universities require them.

But it could be put in place that universities clearly state that, "Whatever you study at our university, there will be international aspects. You will be taking some language learning alongside your main subjects. When you apply, we will expect you to show what language learning you have done to equip yourself for this."

Some students may have a GCSE at 16 in a language or languages. They would be required to show what they have done to continue with those languages or what they have done to pursue other languages. Some (but fewer than under the current kick in the teeth grading regime) may not have taken a GCSE at 16. They would be required to show what they have done to prepare to step into an international environment with a global perspective. Whether that be by taking a GCSE at college, or by some level of self study.

Students in Spain definitely think like this. And there are areas in this country where schools have the same attitude. We need to show that we genuinely think this is important for all our students.

I asked chatgpt to solve the 16-18 problem. I don't know how long this link is valid for. So read it NOW! https://chatgpt.com/share/6820bc63-7a00-8010-a7f8-3f0c946a4ed5

The problem with THIS A Level

 I am going to be writing a post looking at what needs to be done for Modern Languages, which will include explaining why the lack of mainstream language learning pathways, unencumbered by the need for essays and intellectual heft, is a major problem. And why A Level and academic degrees with essays and literature or linguistics are all very lovely for the tiny few. But irrelevant to the problem of why MFL is a deadend subject for the mainstream post 16. And it will focus on the fact that our obsession with academic A Levels, rather than mainstream language learning, is the issue. Not the specifics of the A Level itself. Hence this preliminary post. Because there are some issues with the current A Level that mean it's not even appropriate for the tiny few.

It's glaring us in the face. We probably teach a tiny group of pupils who got grade 8 or grade 9 at GCSE. Who have high powered lessons and individual attention. They may have a teacher who literally wrote the textbook. (Well, some textbooks for previous A Levels and a current A Level Grammar and Translation Workbook.) Plus a native speaker assistant. And they do more homework and more independent learning than in their other A Levels and say they are learning more and making much more progress than in their other subjects. At open evening they are the sort of student who sells this as a plus, "It's like doing three A Levels just in one." Even if that comes back to haunt them when they start to think about exams and university entrance grades. Because in their other subjects, which they may have picked up without a GCSE in the subject, they have been nailed on for an A* since the end of Year 12. But in MFL they could drop to a C despite their redoubled efforts in the subject.

There are several reasons. Firstly they notice the difficulty of the exams is getting harder. The Listening/Reading/Writing paper has much harder questions compared to 2019. And the grade boundaries aren't getting any easier. The Essay questions are more abstruse. And so are some of the questions on the Speaking cards, asking for more specific areas of knowledge.

Secondly, the whole exam is out of kilter. The amount of content, the difficulty, the time spent, don't match the reality of the exam. They have to cover every aspect of culture, history, politics, life, and Culture of the Spanish-speaking world. Whether Salma Hayek breastfed the baby in Sierra Leone for publicity or out of altruism. How well Esther Expósito coped with her co-host's inebriation in the awards ceremony. Whether there is some exclusively Hispanic way of using the Internet that stands out from the rest of the world. Whether the use of prehispanic images on Peruvian banknotes is a link to the past or government propaganda. Whether a technocrat like Fujimori was a dictator in quite the same way as a right winger like Pinochet or a revolutionary like Castro. If the Spanish royal family are a frivolity or key to the survival of democracy. The role of the Catholic Church in family values in Spain without harking back to the Franco regime. Whether Spanish dependence on Bolivian women for childcare and elder care is a sign of integration or exploitation. If the music video for Despacito depicts wholesome community life or degenerate sexualisation. Why secular tourists can visit Córdoba Cathedral but not Muslim pilgrims. How the use of Catalán in a hospital could be inclusive or exclusive.

But times that by 100. What for? Just in case they get a card on it in the Speaking exam with a "What do you know about..." question. One question out of 3 on a card worth 10% of the A Level. But which requires study worth about 200% of a normal A Level. It's completely out of kilter.

Year 12 can't believe this. They can't believe that all the stuff they have studied is in case one aspect of it may or may not come up in one of the 3 exams they are going to study.

That card itself. In six minutes you have to: 

1. Show understanding of the material on the card. Including a reaction or value judgement.

2. With a follow up question to make sure you've shown understanding of the material on the card. Even though the material on some cards is pretty thin.

3. Ask the examiner a question which they must shrug off and waste none of the time answering.

4. Ask the examiner another pointless question.

5. Answer a question on the card demonstrating analysis of an aspect of the topic.

6. Answer a follow up question demonstrating analysis.

7. Answer a question on the card to demonstrate further knowledge of an aspect of the topic.

8. Answer a follow up question demonstrating further knowledge of an aspect of the topic.

So eight things in 6 minutes, with boxes to tick for responding to the skimpy written material, analysis, knowledge and language. An exam designed to be done by painting by numbers against the clock. Routines to cope with each of the silly demands in turn. Box ticking. The 2 questions to be asked by the candidate are the absolute paradigm of box ticking. There's no time for the examiner to engage in answering them or a discussion. There's no criteria for them to be good or bad or interesting or sophisticated or even relevant. You just have to ask two questions. Response to the card seems to be best done by having a Value Judgment Plus Subjunctive ready to deploy come what may. Eight things in 6 minutes. You'd better be slick, over-prepared on the multiplicity of obscure topics, and have some fancy expressions up your sleeve to respond to the card.

This was brought in to replace what used to be an intelligent discussion with the examiner, which meant lessons were spent in intelligent discussion in Spanish. Not rehearsing routines for a card to deliver 8 things in 6 minutes with anecdotes to be launched into at the drop of a hat on whatever one recondite topic on the Spanish-speaking world happened to come up out of the hundreds of aspects you've had to learn.

Followed by the Independent Research Project. In which at least one of your sources has to be from the Internet. (Perplexed face.) But which isn't best approached as a research project at all. Because it's for the speaking exam. For an extended discussion. Except we're not allowed to rehearse it or give feedback, and the rules are so vague we avoid practising it at all, in case it's cheating. All the while feeling pretty certain that somewhere there are other schools where the pressure is on teachers to get students "the grades they deserve". And that the idea that they send their students into a high stakes exam without properly preparing them would not be tolerated.

Let's move on. 

The essay paper. Imagine reading La Sombra del Viento for one essay worth 10% of the A Level. A novel it takes sixth months to just read, for an essay in which you are supposed to spend 30 minutes writing. Of course no-one picks La Sombra del Viento. It's preposterous. And the other set texts? Pretty familiar to anyone who studied Spanish in the very olden days.

The Listening/Reading/Writing paper. This has very odd "Summary" questions. Which are not a summary at all. It's not about rewriting in your own words. It's about transforming the grammar from 1st person to 3rd. So where it says "me preocupa", knowing if that me should be changed to se or le or lo or la. Quite a tricky and recondite area. But with a whole task constructed around it. I've written about these questions here.

It also has tricksy synonym questions where if you select se preocupa instead of se preocupa por as the synonym for le inquieta then you lose the mark. And a gap fill text where they have removed some of the words. But for this they choose a literary text, usually quite old for copyright reasons. So there's no context and nobody knows who the characters are or what's going on, so how are you meant to understand when they've removed words from each sentence? And a translation where you can get the whole sentence right but then get no marks because you put catalán with an accent which means you haven't translated it into English. Or you wrote gallego instead of translating as Galician. And that handful of oddball mistakes are enough to drop you from an A* to a B. The 2025 translation has a post all of its own!

So you end up with pupils who have excellent and fluent Spanish, who have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Spanish-speaking world, who can write intelligently about how La Casa de Bernarda Alba is a descent from realism into surrealism, how Almodovar's Volver is an examination of the existential reasons for living and creating art, and do it all in Spanish, worrying that by picking this subject they have sabotaged their chance of getting into the University of their choice.

I know teachers, including MFL teachers or Sixth Form leadership members, who have discouraged their own children from taking A Level languages for exactly this reasons. I didn't have to discourage my own children, but it was certainly a relief that I wasn't put in that position. The exam isn't suitable even for the tiny minority that do select it.

Let's remember where this out of kilter, badly designed exam came from. Universities complained that A Level wasn't preparing students for language degrees. The bizarre idea that because the exams didn't test "knowledge", we weren't teaching through the context of the Spanish-speaking world. They wanted to make sure that we weren't just teaching students the language. There had to be intellectual heft and knowledge. They wanted literature with specified set texts of the right calibre. And they originally wanted the essays to be in English. To make sure that the "intellectual level" was prioritised over language learning.

Which is going to bring me on to my next post when I get there. On why insisting on intellectual heft means we've ended up with no mainstream language learning pathways post 16. And why it is that we only value academic study with essays, literature, linguistics for the few. This particular A Level is bad. But that's not even the real problem. It's a distraction from the real question, which I will come onto in another post...