I have been reading more about what Littlewood had to say about the Continuum of Communication. In a previous post I outlined my interest in the idea of the way when we say "meaning" is important in language learning, what we mean by "meaning" can range from semantic meaning (I know chien means dog) to communicative meaning-making (saying something you want to communicate). Our own reflection as a department on our National Priorities Project is leading us to question what is the importance of these different degrees of "meaning" when it comes to successful language learning.
We are looking at how a creative and Intercultural project meshes with the nitty gritty of language learning. We are examining our Year 7 French Exhibition, where pupils create an artwork and describe it in French, and we want to see if our insights into this creative project also apply to the rest of our curriculum.
I wanted to see if Littlewood saw his Continuum of Communication as a progression model. With mechanical exercises a necessary starting point and communication of meaning as an ultimate goal. And if so, is it a remote goal (as suggested by the Ofsted research review Novice-Expert model)? Or is creativity and self expression something that can be injected much earlier as we seek to do with our French Exhibition?
Through the National Priorities Project and UCL, I was able to access this excellent article Developing a Personal Approach to Teaching Language for Communication - ProQuest in which Littlewood sums up the principles of Communicative Language Teaching. While he doesn't explicitly set out a progression model based on the Continuum of Communication, he seems to take it for granted that this is how teachers work. It seems necessary to start with a focus on the form of the language (let's not get into Focus on Form versus Focus on Forms today). And then to progress through questions which require understanding of meaning, but which aren't really communicating anything of great import. And then finally to projects or Tasks. Littlewood points out that maybe the bulk of learning gets stuck at the middle point, where the learner is communicating some meaning, but primarily to practise the language and without any real communicative purpose. He stops short of evaluating this, simply describing what we might see in the classroom.
So as things stand, I think we are free to see what insights our National Priorities Project can offer in terms of our own answers to this question.
As we examine our resources as a department and discuss what is most successful, it is becoming clear that the exercises we have found to be least successful are the ones that seem most mechanical and least "meaningful". Here is one example from the Art Exhibition Booklet practising turning the indefinite article into the definite article.
I have to say straight away, that our booklets are not full of this kind of exercise. As we move on to looking at changes we are making to the booklets as part of this project, I will share more. But in response to the Ofsted research review, we have boosted the attention to nitty gritty grammar, alongside more communicative and meaningful tasks.
Pupils can mechanically complete the grid. In fact they seem happy to do so and feel they are doing useful "work". To emphasise how mechanical this is, some pupils filled in le and un repeatedly down the columns before writing in the nouns. In a slightly less mechanical exercise, they can fill in a subsequent grid where they have to pick the correct masculine or feminine article depending on the gender of the word. As a check of the broad concept of gender and articles, it works. Teachers can see who is and who isn't picking the right article.
But it seems that beyond the concept, it's too mechanical for meaningful learning. Pupils can fill out the grid repeatedly but it doesn't mean that in the next lesson they will associate le with un, or remember the gender of the nouns or be able to pick the correct word for the or a. And I think we would be fooling ourselves to think that they even care. When constructing meaning, for example to say that there is a red circle behind the blue square, while the teacher thinks that the gender is important, to the pupil communicating meaning, it's the least important aspect of the sentence.
What has been learned mechanically doesn't transfer up the continuum to more meaningful communication.
It reminds me of this post, where Year 10 pupils who had written practice paragraphs, just to rehearse their language repertoire, when it came to Year 11, were starting from scratch. Whereas a pupil who had written a personal story was able to retell it. Firstly because it was meaningful and memorable when it came to thinking back. But also because when he wrote it, he was engaging his Spanish repertoire to create personal meaning, not just practise some language.
So in line with the suppositions of translanguaging and task based language learning, we are going to tweak the most mechanical exercises such as the grid above, to increase the level of "meaning". We will share what we do and how it works in the classroom.
This feels like a step towards an answer. But I have another answer. Or maybe another question...
When it comes to the purpose and meaningfulness of exercises... And when it comes to the purpose and meaningfulness of a Task or Project... And when it comes to the purpose and meaningfulness of communication... although some of that can be engineered by the teacher, how much of it comes from the individual pupil?
A pupil can take an open Task, and turn it into an exercise by carefully rehashing language they know the teacher wants to see and without any real personal communication. Other pupils will ignore the strictures and set criteria of an exercise, and embark on something they want to try to say for their own amusement. In this post we see this play out with a Year 9 group. It tells the story (with examples of work) of how I tried to curtail the more fantasmagorical and error-strewn writing of some pupils and what happened when I tried. But the most important question is how does this relate to language-learning. And I can't shift the strong feeling that the pupils who carefully stick to the criteria might do well in tests. But the pupils who put more of themselves into their work are the ones who if you dropped them into France would be the strongest language learners. Click on the link earlier in the paragraph and see if this is born out in their work.
Is this a romantic notion? It seems important, and the posts on Translanguaging and Task Based Learning have been building up to this question. I think in this series of posts, there is a strong rationale for meaningful, purposeful communication to have a very rational role in language learning.
On the other hand, I don't think that I can argue that learners who produce work demonstrating careful accurate application of the language the teacher has selected and sequenced for them can be labelled as "bad learners".
I am enjoying the journey this National Priorities Project is taking us on, in looking at the synergies between nitty gritty language learning and Intercultural communication. Like Littlewood, I am happy to describe what I see without having to adjudicate. Let's get stuck in to what we see happening in the classroom and how communication, grammar, accuracy, expression, exercises and Tasks all overlap...
Next Post: What does pupils' work for the Art Exhibition show us about error?
No comments:
Post a Comment