How much can you rely on a metaphor for learning to guide your practice? All models of learning are metaphors. Starting with the popular "storage and retrieval" model. This seems a particularly circular metaphor, based on comparing the brain to computer memory, which in turn is a metaphor based on human memory. Metaphors for the brain often go hand in hand with current technology. This post looks at how previous models included cogs, hydraulics, cables... And of course in languages we have been presented with the metaphor of pillars which I examined in this post, showing how the metaphor revealed more than I expected: carefully constructed classically impressive pillars of free-standing stand-alone grammar, vocabulary and phonics, was deliberately an act of "folly".
You will know that my favourite metaphor for language learning is the snowball.
A few years ago, the day after a light snowfall, I was walking round the school with a pupil who had been sent out of his French class, to calm things down. He was telling me he didn't mind French lessons, but he just didn't know any French he could use. We stopped and I asked him where all the snow from yesterday had gone. He said, "It all melted, Sir." I asked him, "And where's your French?"
He was quick on the uptake (he is now a vicar, after a time in the police force), and said, "Oooh. Nice metaphor, Sir." He had been there in lessons while all the French was happening, but he hadn't managed to grab hold of any, roll it into a snowball, and stop it from melting.
This is the first use of the metaphor. To warn pupils that their French will melt. That it's their responsibility to grab hold of some and make it theirs. To roll it into a ball and stop it melting. And that more and more French will stick to it.
Then there's the message to teachers. We need to spend time making sure that pupils have a core of sticky French. That they are making it theirs and not letting it melt. It's important that our curriculum is designed so that we develop this core of language, using the same language over and over. And it's important not to design a syllabus where everything is ticked off once. The metaphor tells us that an even coverage of language will melt. What we want is a snowball of language that rolls on from topic to topic, getting bigger and bigger around a sticky core.
This post examines how to design a syllabus where new language adds a layer of accretion to the snowball. It starts from how to add new language to the pupils' existing language. Not by chopping up the language into bitesize chunks of omelette and hoping the pupils can make their own omelette out of it. Mixed metaphor alert. But cooking an omelette out of raw egg is the equivalent of the snowball approach. Chopping up the cold dead omelette is the equivalent of the even coverage approach.
So far so good. But how far does the snowball approach get me with the new GCSE?
For the speaking and writing, it's fundamental to our vision. We use it explicitly in our resources to show pupils how to tackle the demands of the speaking exam, whatever the topic.
But this new GCSE has a huge gulf between the language needed for the Speaking and Writing exams and the vocabulary list for the Listening and Reading exams. The vocabulary list is not designed to be based on the language needed for the topics or for the tasks of the exam. For example when you get to the Jobs unit, there are fewer than 10 jobs words in the list. The topic of Jobs is just another arena to meet the non topic vocabulary. It's the even coverage idea reimagined. This time it's meant to be such intense snowfall that layer upon layer of French has fallen, before the previous layer has had time to melt. It risks leaving my pupils with their pathetic snowballs they were so proud of, lost in a snowy wastes landscape that stretches off to the horizon. Or at least that's what it's starting to feel like.
But is anyone achieving this deep layer upon layer of snow? Does it mean having to do listening and reading activities from the textbook totally by the book, missing out nothing because without the intensity of repeated snowfall, melting will happen? To achieve this, we would have to abandon the lessons focused on getting pupils better at using their snowball of French, all the lessons on practising speaking, thinking what to say next, getting really good at using their snowball. Do the textbooks actually deliver the meticulous coverage and re-coverage required for this permanent even coverage not to melt?
Anyway, for me and my Year 11s, who only started Spanish in Year 10, it's too late. The snowball approach is doing its job for the speaking and writing exams. Are we scared of the vocabulary for the listening and reading exams? What I am hoping is that having such a huge snowball will take care of it. Now their snowball is so big with all the things they can say or write, surely the little rocks, bits of grass, sticks, abandoned carrots and coal from other people's melted snowpersons... it can all stick to their snowball as they roll it round and round...? Can it?
This is the idea. That by making sure the pupils have their own snowball which has got bigger and bigger, more and more Spanish will stick to it. Including words that aren't nicely adding a natural layer, but which are odd words that don't seem to stick, but get swept up along with the snow.
Can I rely on this metaphor to get me and my pupils through the exam? Or will the whole thing come unstuck?
