Has it all been a big horrendous mistake?

The GCSE referred to here as the Current GCSE is now the old GCSE

 I need more space than a tweet to explain why I think the new GCSE that we may end up with is just a big horrendous mistake. So here goes:

The reforms in the GCSE (alongside Ofsted and NCELP) seem to want an end to random vocabulary items, and an overall accumulation of language rather than topics. I have said in previous posts that the current GCSE is an excellent fit for this. The Speaking and Writing exams are best taught with a core repertoire of language rather than by topics. And the Listening and Reading exams are largely built out of high frequency non topic language. And it's the non topic language which is vital for the questions and the markscheme.

My contention in a previous post was that the GCSE panel may have been familiar with the current GCSE in the specification, but not with how it has worked out in practice. I would say in 2019, I hadn't fully fathomed it either. For example, on paper, there is a very long list of random topic vocabulary. Which it turns out teachers can ignore because the key to the Listening and Reading exams is the non topic vocabulary.

I have said all this before, but today I tried to explain this to a member of the GCSE panel on twitter. I couldn't understand how it could be decided in 2019 to scrap the then brand new GCSE. Which had been presented as a generational shift reintroducing translation and the rigour of written exams. His answer was that in 2019 it was clear that the recently introduced GCSE was not working. He said that there was clamour on facebook from teachers, and he said that no-one could defend it.

Is this why we've been through all this? Because of clamour on facebook from teachers struggling with what was then the new specification?

I would say that we were daunted. We were daunted by the long vocabulary list. And the amount of content we thought you would have to get through. And how to prepare pupils to talk on so many topics. But teachers and the exam boards have found solutions to these issues. 

We are not daunted anymore by the long vocabulary list. We know to focus on the non topic section at the start of the list.  AQA do drop in one or two of the more random words into the exam each year ("hake", "hooligan"...) but otherwise the key is to learn the non topic words. And the overload of topics? This is precisely what has made the current GCSE such a good fit for what the GCSE panel say they want. It's the number of topics which has pushed teachers away from rote learning and towards a core of language that works across topics.

I was always baffled that the new GCSE should be based on the 2016 review into teaching in the landscape of the old Controlled Assessment GCSE which destroyed language learning. But if it was because of the "clamour" from teachers adapting to the first cohorts taking the new GCSE, then this is such a tragic mistake. Because those adaptations, moving away from rote learning and towards accumulating a core of language, are exactly what the new GCSE panel ended up prescribing.

And because the current GCSE is such a good fit for these aims, there is the distinct possibility that the new one actually ends up as a retreat from this. The new vocabulary list may have fewer random topic items. But it will still have them. And this time, instead of being an irrelevant half-forgotten list in the spec, it will be central to how the exam is built. The boards will need to construct their texts and tasks from these vocabulary items, making sure they are all tested in rotation. And if the focus switches to testing pupils' knowledge of items rather than how well they can use their language to express themselves, then the focus on a core repertoire will be diminished, with a topic approach strengthened. And if the Speaking tasks are to require short accurate answers phrasebook style, then rote learning will again score higher than where pupils accumulate a repertoire they can deploy. Think of how the current Role Play works, where pupils who try to extend or express themselves score worse than someone with a ready answer. This is the sort of task the panel's brief to the boards calls for.

So the new GCSE panel may not have realised just what a good fit the current GCSE is for their declared aims. And they may have created something that actually works out worse. We are in the hands of the exam boards. We don't know what they are going to propose. Will they be able to keep a Conversation in the exam? Where there can be interaction and follow up questions? And the pupil is rewarded for extending and developing answers spontaneously drawing on a core of language they can use to express themselves? We can only hope the exam boards are wiser and better listeners compared to what we have seen in the political decision making.

Unintended Consequences. How the new GCSE may end up moving us in the opposite direction to what they wanted.

 One of the "selling points" of the new GCSE was always its defined vocabulary list. Firstly claiming to reduce the amount of random topic vocabulary and secondly to boost the important high frequency vocabulary. On the one hand this was supposed to be attractive to teachers who find aspects of the current Listening and Reading exams frustrating. And on the other hand it was meant to suit a curriculum which is no longer based around topics. Instead pupils should have one long learning experience, accumulating language which is always useful and never abandoned.

This is not what is going to happen. The new GCSE is going to have unintended consequences. And the biggest is going to be an increase in the amount of topic vocabulary to be learned.

Currently, the GCSE specs have a ridiculous list of topic vocabulary. Which you can safely ignore. For the Speaking and Writing exam, teach your pupils the core repertoire of opinions, reasons and tenses. Across topics. As a cumulative learning experience, focused on how well they can deploy their language. For the Listening and Reading, focus on the high frequency non-topic vocabulary. These words are key to how the exam boards construct the texts. And key to the markscheme, where pupils who understand the text but omit these key words don't get the mark.

The GCSE review panel don't know that the current GCSE matches their objectives so well. Because their brief was explicitly to respond to the 2016 Review of the landscape of the previous GCSE. And because where they are familiar with the new GCSE, it is maybe the Edexcel version. Or perhaps they are familiar with the spec (and its irrelevant vocabulary list) but not with actually teaching the course.

So how is this going to be different in the new GCSE? The vocabulary list will be shorter. But this time you WILL have to learn it. The exam boards will have to make sure that all the items on the list do come up in the exam, rotating the content and checking that words are being tested. People attending NCELP KS4 training report that it is being sold as "a big vocabulary test".

So you could well end up with an exam where in practice you have to learn more topic words than in the current one. And skew your curriculum away from a core repertoire that works across topics.

The exam boards are going to have to pick contexts and construct texts that work using the words on the list. And they will be keen to make sure there's as much continuity and as little change as they can manage, in order to ensure comparability of standards, and to create a specification that they know teachers will be able to opt for with confidence.

There was clamour in the MFL community for new content based on the culture and Culture of target language speaking countries. It would have been a spectacular opportunity for the GCSE review panel, if they wanted to see progress away from the First Person narratives and diet of opinions and reasons, to work with the community and make this happen. It didn't happen. I don't know what contexts the exam boards will come up with, but I suspect in the face of changes, they will try to stick as closely as they can to what we are familiar with.

15% of the words on the list can be specified by the exam board to fit the contexts they decide on. They are going to have to create texts and tasks year on year for the specified contexts using the limited number of words. So when it comes to choosing the other 85% of their words from the "High Frequency Words" list, they are going to need to chose as many words as possible which can be directly linked to one of the chosen contexts. And with this exam, you WILL have to know these words. It's a test of the specified knowledge.

So in terms of Vocabulary, we may well end up with an exam which has fewer items on the list than the current GCSE in the specification. But in practice it will feel like an exam with more vocabulary, including more "topic" vocabulary that you actually need to memorise. This has implications for teaching at KS4 and also for how the curriculum is organised. And also for KS3. I've been rewriting the curriculum and the resources, but I am reluctant to make further changes until I know more about what is going to happen at GCSE.

This may be where I should end this post. But there are more worries perhaps for a future post. If the idea of pupils expressing themselves and showing off what they can do with their language is to be replaced by testing of knowledge and accuracy, then there is a risk that this will reintroduce rote learning and phrasebook learning. Think of what currently can happen on the Role Play in the existing GCSE. A pupil who sets out to express themself and try to say what they want, communicating and extending their ideas, will score worse than a pupil who has a quick ready response. The new Speaking exam criteria given to the boards specify this kind of short accurate answer. It's hard to say more without knowing more about what is coming. I suppose we have to trust to the expertise of the exam boards and whether they listen to teachers more than the GCSE review panel were prepared to do.

Ofsted Inspectors' Questions and Curriculum Progression in MFL

 So this week's big story was the leaking of Ofsted Inspectors' Question Crib Sheets, on the website Quality Schools. The MFL one doesn't really hold any surprises - it's based on asking how you ensure progression in the three "Pillars" of Phonics, Grammar and High Frequency Vocabulary.

There's one section that has got me wondering. There's a section of questions for Inspectors to ask staff to see if they are on top of exactly how and when certain features are taught:

Now we know that the curriculum envisaged by Ofsted and NCELP and the new GCSE is a curriculum based NOT on growing the learners' language - their evolving conceptualisations, repertoire, and ability to use the language to interact with meaning and to express themselves. Instead it is a curriculum that takes the linguist's language and chops it up and tries to reconstitute it. (As in Scott Thornbury's metaphorical rubbery omelette analogy.)

The thing is, I have it very clear in our curriculum how we take the raw ingredients and carefully let them cook into the learners' language. What I don't know is where Ofsted get their idea of what the lumps of chopped up cold omelette should be. The quoted question above shows some random spot check items: agreement, word order, comparatives, superlatives.

If you ask me when we teach comparatives do I have an answer ready? Isn't it literally just the word "más"? What else are they expecting me to have planned? How have I organised the curriculum to accommodate radical changing verbs, impersonal expressions, adjectives before a vowel like nouvel, verbs where the spelling follows the sound like mangeons? These are hardly the architectural pillars of a curriculum. And it's starting to sound like a tick box curriculum on paper. Not something robust that builds what you want pupils to know or be able to do.

And I know it's just a spot check random example, but it seems adjective heavy. And in our curriculum we're not big on adjectives. You can't spend 5 years on "it is..." And one thing the current GCSE doesn't ask for is description. I don't ask, Décris ta chambre... Comment est ta soeur... Because the criteria want rather more than is + adjective. Even if you can say Elle est plus intelligente que moi.

Is there a list of things that the language curriculum has to be made up of? The NCELP curriculum isn't compulsory. The GCSE syllabus isn't supposed to determine KS3. The 2016 Review had idiosyncratic things to say about verb paradigms. What is it that Ofsted are actually meant to be inspecting? It's whether we are teaching the National Curriculum. Which sets out what we are meant to be teaching. Spoiler alert. It does not mention the comparative or the superlative.

It's worth going back and looking at the National Curriculum to remind yourself (and Ofsted if need be) what it is we are supposed to be teaching. Here's the central points:

It should enable pupils to understand and communicate personal and factual information that goes beyond their immediate needs and interests, developing and justifying points of view in speech and writing, with increased spontaneity, independence and accuracy... Write prose using an increasingly wide range of grammar and vocabulary, write creatively to express their own ideas and opinions, and translate short written text accurately into the foreign language.

I'm glad I checked. Because that is exactly what we do. I am not going to lose sleep over whether a member of the department may or may not be able to answer the question, "When do you teach the superlative?" Because I will already have told the Ofsted inspector that we follow the National Curriculum and develop what pupils can do with the language, with increasing spontaneity, independence and accuracy in order to understand and communicate, developing and justifying points of view.

So if I didn't start with the linguist's map of the whole language and chop it up like a dead omelette, how have I structured our curriculum progression?

By what pupils can do with the language. And how well they can do it in terms of expression, independence, spontaneity, coherence and sophistication. That's our curriculum progression model.

These are the exemplars for our Key Performance Indicators for Year 8 and Year 9. They are based around pupils developing and being able to deploy their repertoire across topics. So everything builds up, and nothing is left behind. By the end, they can give and justify opinions, talk about other people, give examples in past and future and narrate anecdotes.

The second half of the KPI sheet shows the other half of the progression model. Not what they are learning but how well they can deploy it. With increasing expression, coherence, accuracy and spontaneity. Here is the Year 8 model:

So I have kept this overall vision of progression which seems eminently compatible with the National Curriculum. With pupils learning to speak and write and express themselves in French. And I have rewritten the booklets to make all the grammar, phonics and non-topic vocabulary more explicit. Because we do teach word order, adjectival agreement, irregular adjectives, the words more  and most, infinitives, tenses, possessives. And we teach them in a way that ensures they become integrated with the body of language the pupil is accumulating and can deploy. Far from being incompatible with teaching the nuts and bolts of the language, a curriculum which expects pupils to communicate using the language REQUIRES them to be acquiring an understanding of how the language works. In order to express themselves.

And what if an inspector asks a pupil about their learning. Is it terrible if the pupil says, "I'm learning to talk about my free time"? Instead of saying, "I am learning to use verb + infinitive constructions to give and justify opinions"? Surely we want pupils to feel they are learning to communicate. And that this is what drives their learning and their progress. The planned curriculum can show how learning to talk about free time is bringing in tenses, adjectives, comparatives, superlatives. And the teacher may want pupils as part of the learning process to start to think about what is the most powerful and transferable language. But isn't it entirely natural for the learner to be focused on meaning, expression and what they can do in the language?

Longest Sentence or Bust!

 My normal approach to Open Evening is to showcase examples of creative and communicative outcomes in our curriculum like the Year 7 French Art Exhibition. This year, on Monday lesson 2 I was told I needed a more exciting activity for Open Evening on Thursday. By the time the International Leaders met at lunchtime, I'd made one: World's Longest French Sentence or Bust!

These are not dice. They only have four faces with French on, not six. And you don't roll them. You spin them. Skillfully between two index fingers. The International Leaders stand in a row as a human fruit machine. And they invite the Year 6 pupils to make the World's Longest French Sentence. With the warning that if you carry on too long, it will say something nonsensical and you will be out!

The boxes are always spun in order. So you can see the sides facing the punter currently say, I don't like to visit a castle with my family but... And the sentence will always be grammatically correct. The Year 6 pupils say when they want each International Leader in turn to stop spinning.

The conjunction on the end sends you back to the first box to go round again. So you could end up with, I don't like to visit a castle with my family but I love to swim in the sea in France and I like to eat snails in a hotel but I prefer to take photos in Paris...

As you build the sentence, the International Leaders read it to you in their beautiful French. And translate it into English. And another International Leader writes it up on the whiteboard in their beautiful handwriting. Before each spin they give you the chance to decide whether to stick or twist. Because you might up saying, I like to take photos on the beach with my family but I don't like to take photos on the beach with my family. The most common way of going Bust was ...and I like to swim in the sea in Paris. I must say the International Leaders were very strict about what they considered an incoherent sentence. Even so, the record was a 40 word sentence.

There were others who managed more than 40 words but at around the 45 word mark they went bust and were erased from the board. Sadly I didn't get a photo of the winning sentence so you will have to imagine it in all its beauty. If you were going to do this activity for your own Open Evening, you could issue little cards to say, "I took part in..." and take away a little certificate with your score.

It was fun to take part in, fun to watch and simple to run. Having said that, I don't think it would have been any of those things had we not had an excellent team of International Leaders making it fun and professionally run. Parents liked the way you could produce something impressive from simple building blocks. I was impressed with the Year 9s' fluent pronunciation, confident translation and tidy board writing. The element of competition and jeopardy was also an attraction. By comparison, nobody went on the gimkit game on the board all evening!

Would I use it in class? Yes, but not with these boxes for spinners. We already do a lot of work that starts with creating randomised grammatically correct sentences. This post talks about how randomisation is one step in getting pupils to confidently produce longer answers in French. And then moving on to the task of curating meaning and coherence. This is an important message in our curriculum: saying things in French isn't hard. What we work on is making what we say more coherent, developed, personal, expressive.

So instead of sets of spinning boxes, you could play the same stick, twist or bust game with a Keep Talking sheet or a Dice Game sheet. I would probably also get pupils to write down their answers in felt tip on the table - you want them to write quickly without worrying about neatness, without the writing getting in the way of the speedy generation of multiple sentences. And erasing any that go wrong. You could ask them to do the activity without writing the words down. But then the job of remembering 40+ word sentences and assessing them for internal consistency becomes a task in itself!

Learning pupils' names - modelling learning

 Two weeks in and I have learned the names of my five Year 9 groups and my two Year 7 groups. Very deliberately, and using it to talk to pupils about learning.

I'll tell you what I do. It's very basic and I'm not suggesting you do it the same way I do. It's just the way I've always done it because I can't think of any other way. But I do think it's important and interesting to be able to use it to show pupils the learning process, with the emphasis on process.

Because I haven't finished learning the names of those 200 pupils. It's an on-going process...

When the pupils come in, I sit them randomly and I take the register. Because I have to. And I use it as a way to check the pronunciation of any names I might be unfamiliar with and spot any spellings that might trip me up.

Then I go round the class, ask each pupil their name and write it on a seating plan. I check the spelling of their names, including any contractions. I'm usually quite good at remembering these from the register or at least remembering to focus on tricky spellings. Double letters, silent letters, vowel combinations. Pupils appreciate you wanting to get it right. But I don't dwell on quirks, as names can also be very sensitive. But it is important to at some time point out that we have to focus on pronunciation and spelling as well as memory. All through this process, I am modelling deliberate learning.

After every four or five pupils, I go back and test myself on their names so far. Without looking at what I've written. It could be stressful, because pupils don't want to be the one that you've forgotten. I talk about this. I let them know that putting pressure on me won't help. To learn, I have to be relaxed and prepared to have a go. And getting one wrong will hopefully mean that I actually end up remembering it better. I don't rush through the class. There's no point trying to get round the whole class and realising you've not tested yourself enough as you went. The same with the pupils' vocabulary learning. If they have a list of words to learn, don't rush through. Of course, when I get to the last pupils as I go round the class, I've tested myself on their names fewer times, so we talk about that too. And the fact that I am going to learn all their names. Not without mistakes, not without it taking time. But I will learn them. And it's the same with their French. Just as I wouldn't stop with half the class and say I couldn't learn the rest, or if there's someone whose name escapes me or I muddle up with someone else... I will keep going until I know them, and it's the same with French. You have to keep going, accept you're going to get some wrong, but confident that you will end up learning the words.

I talk to them about what I am doing by constantly testing myself: Testing isn't something that happens at the end of learning. You don't do "learning" for a bit and then have a test to try to catch you out. Testing is learning. I learn their names by challenging myself to remember them. One pupil this week said, "Why don't you get us to wear name badges?" Easy answer: Because the teachers who get you to wear name badges get your names right, but they don't learn your name. That hit home, with lots of nodding and agreement. And I mentioned it to my other classes who agreed and could also link it to what happens when they are doing French. If they rely on their booklets for everything, it helps, but it's better to challenge yourself to try to remember it. Even if that means getting it wrong - the ones you get wrong often turn out to be the ones you remember most strongly!

I also point out that I am remembering them in the order of where they sit. Just as they might remember a French word as the one at the top or bottom of a list, or which word it was next to. If I can't remember their name, I ask them to tell me the first letter. Just as they can uncover the first letter of the French word and see if that helps. I go back to the register list and identify them in alphabetical order, rather than by going round the room. I warn them that if I meet them in the corridor, then they should say hello to me and I will try to greet them by name. Just as they will have to recognise French words in context, not in a list.

We do get started with the French, but throughout the first lesson, I will always interact with pupils by name. And I tell them that although they think I've learned their names, I haven't. And that I will have to continue to test myself, and not worry about getting them wrong.

Next lesson, we see if I can still remember their names. And talk about the curve of forgetting. And how it's entirely normal for the brain to let go of things. But with pupils and their names, it's also important to keep hold of it. And French words too, obviously. So with time, we start to forget but if you catch it in time it helps strengthen memories. But if you leave it too long, it's gone and you have to start all over again. So I do some homework. I write their names in my markbook. I put their names on a seating plan on the system. Even so, they can see I have started to forget. As the term gets underway and they start having homework set, I remind them of this.

And there are different ways to test myself. When I give out the booklets, they were collected in desk by desk, but I still give them out, trying to match individual pupils to the name on the booklet. I do the register as a matching exercise. And I continue to test myself every time I interact with a pupil, using their name.

Throughout the year, I can refer back to these first weeks. The testing, the having a go, the low-stakes, the first letter clues, words in order, out of order, in different contexts, spelling, pronunciation, muddling one word with another, forgetting, homework, and taking time and effort because you will learn it.

It also keeps the brain alive!

Introducing the idea of a Game Plan in KS3

 You may have read previous posts about using a "Game Plan" as an extended metaphor for preparing the language needed for Speaking and Writing at GCSE. Today's post is about building up to that Game Plan, starting in Year 8, in the booklets I am rewriting.

What I am trying to do in rewriting the booklets is show that deliberately teaching meticulously sequenced language items is not incompatible with teaching pupils to express themselves and develop how well they can use their language. Or, to put it the other way round, to show that a curriculum based on developing how well pupils can use their language and express themselves, is not incompatible with careful, deliberate and coherent sequencing of the language.

(It still beats me why anyone would think that by espousing one you have to abandon the other.)

I am working on Year 8 Unit 3 Free Time. This builds on the previous two units in Year 8 on Town and School. Pupils are getting better and better at developing answers which give opinions and justify them using can / can't / have to / want to. So at the end of the previous unit, a typical answer might look like this: J'adore la géographie parce que je peux travailler dans un groupe. Et le professeur est sympa parce que normalement je peux parler avec mes amis si je veux. Mais en maths on doit travailler en silence. Je préfère la géographie.

Pupils are working on developing answers with increasing coherence, spontaneity and independence in speaking and writing. With lots of focus on the quality of the answer, developing one idea rather than stringing ideas together. And focus on the process - what can pupils do with and without support, how can we reduce the cognitive load of thinking up what to say, with activities like Being Ben. These are aspects of our curriculum with a strong literacy and oracy foundation, and based on the fundamentals of learning a language not only in order to communicate but by dint of being challenged to express yourself using what you know. I am not prepared to relinquish them to a doctrine that says communication places obstacles in the way of pupils' learning and that self-expression has to wait until "expert" level is reached.

That previous paragraph wasn't a digression. It was a statement of the content and purpose of the unit. In terms of new language content, we (re)introduce: the present tense of -er verbs, the present tense of the verb aller, the perfect tense in the first person.

What I want to show with the Game Plan idea, is that these are not introduced for the sake of it. They dovetail in to the pupils' growing repertoire of language. And we teach them specific ways and triggers for deploying the new language in order to continue developing the quality of their answers.

Here's a screen shot for the tactics for deploying -er verbs. Have a look at the two examples and see if you can spot the tactics before looking at the answer.

Here's what we get pupils to do next:

So they take a model, typical of the type of answer they have been giving up to now, and they work out how to deploy the new language to take it on to the next level. Their writing has had references to with my friends or with my family. Now these are exploited as a trigger, to use the conjugated -er verbs they are learning. To add them on to their repertoire, and build routines so that as they speak and write, the next idea flows coherently from what they have just said. Every time you say, with my friends, use a verb in the 1st person plural. Every time you say, with my sister, follow it up with a verb saying what she does.

The Game Plan idea continues when the verb aller is introduced. Again, the new language is introduced so that it extends the repertoire. And pupils think tactically about when to deploy it, building routines to extend and develop their answers.

Another example:

As well as looking at individual tactics, the overall Game Plan works as a framework for writing and speaking:

I think you've got the idea by now, but we can finish it off by adding the perfect tense:

Just in case, I should make it clear that there's a lot more in the booklet and a lot more in lessons than these Game Plan activities shown here. They appear regularly as part of how to use and deploy the pupils' language as part of a growing repertoire.

It's part of understanding that communication and self expression aren't something that just happens. Or aren't something too demanding that has been an undesirable obstacle to learning. Communication is like everything else. It needs work, needs developing. And while you work on developing communication, you are practising working on the language. There's no conflict between the two at all. Absolutely none.

Explicit and Implicit Learning - rewriting the Year 7 Unit on Food.

 This is NOT a post about whether you say, "Je n'ai jamais mangé un croissant" or "Je n'ai jamais mangé de croissants."

It's a post about how we structure and sequence the curriculum.

We are supposed to be at a time of transition from a curriculum built around topics and situations, to a curriculum built around knowledge of the grammatical system. Supposedly we have favoured topics, ticking off things pupils can say and situations they can deal with. The grammar is supposed to have been incidental and randomly sequenced according to the demands of the topic, not the logic of the language.

Of course this isn't true. We have curricula which cleverly intertwine grammar and communication, visiting and revisiting, using and recycling grammar, in a process of meeting, spotting patterns, practising, applying, and transferring to a new topic in an ever-growing repertoire of language.

Confident in the statements of that last paragraph, I am re-writing all the KS3 booklets, to make the grammar and phonics sequencing much more explicit. I am trying to find the balance between the two caricature extremes and show that we do manage to develop grammar AND pupils' ability to use the language very much in symbiosis.

I have done half of Year 7, half of Year 8 and half of Year 9. With no real pitfalls yet. Year 7 has been the hardest because we don't want lessons to be booklet based. It's about interaction and using the language. So I've had to dabble in powerpoints as well as the booklets. But now in the Year 7 unit on Food, I have hit some issues that bring us back to the central question.

And it is around the words some / any / not any.

In the first unit, we have a fairly traditional start. Where pupils meet the indefinite article  un / une to talk about a brother, a sister, a dog, a cat and other animals. In the second unit, we deliberately move to something pupils won't have done in Primary school, and work on describing artworks for an exhibition. This sees further work on gender and adjectival agreement. And focuses on the definite article the. "Il y a une licorne rose. La licorne est sur le pont." So far so good. 

The picture is supposed to be that definite articles and indefinite articles are picked up in the next unit on Food, and joined by the partitive "some." It makes sense, and it's what we've always done: j'aime le pain. J'ai mangé un croissant. Je voudrais du lait.

And pupils always love this Keep Talking Sheet, that means they can say great things right from the first lesson.

So pretty soon, they can talk spontaneously and write like this:

No problem. Except this year it was. I'd been talking to the group about du, de la, des. And this was the pupil's first draft. Along with his comment.

It seems that not only does he not understand how to change the into some. It has also thrown him off being able to write enough instead of agonising over which one to put. And worse, he's written le hamburgers and la fromage.

This throws up several interesting questions. You could say that the fact that he's thinking about it, and cares about it, and with his booklet he is immediately able to correct it, all means that he's going through an important process of conceptualisation and understanding. Or you could say that what he needs is simply a lot more input so that le fromage becomes automatic. In both cases this is accepting that this is not the finished article and that the learning process will continue.

You might be relaxed about the mistake. Either because you think it just doesn't matter or is not the priority, or because you know it will slowly be sorted out. Or you might believe that it's a disaster because la fromage might become fossilised and that pupils shouldn't be asked to express themselves at this stage because unsupported use of the language leads to errors. I have written here about these different attitudes to error.

But there's a further question. Why are we teaching le, un, du? In particular, why are we teaching du? Because it's fundamental to the grammar? We've taken the logical language system as a linguist would see it, and we've identified this as a key feature that pupils must master? 

Scott Thornbury has written about the difference between chopping up "the linguist's grammar" and building up "the learner's grammar" here.

There has always been this difference in approach. The new element is that we are being asked to think of it as a social justice issue. In the past, maybe we thought that for the pupils struggling most with languages, it was important to concentrate on communication, on opinions, on the topic words. And that the little words weren't important, shouldn't get in the way, could be quickly passed over. We are being told to question this. What if confusion around these high frequency little words is precisely what is frustrating learners? And what if these are the learners with less cultural capital in terms of linguistic confidence, and who are the least able to figure these words out for themselves by osmosis?

So, for example in Year 8, a pupil who says j'aime au foot or je joue le foot. What you want is for them to be able to talk confidently. Does this mean not worrying about the confusion, because getting stuck on that is an obstacle to communication? Or does it mean you should sort it out, because the confusion is an obstacle to confidence in language-learning? 

Further questions: Do they need more input so this doesn't happen? Explanation? Or careful and deliberate sequencing of how each one is introduced and when they are contrasted? Or is it perfectly fine to go through a period of confusing the two because it will sort itself out or because it's not worth getting stuck on?

So when we plan our curriculum, is grasping du more important than learning the words for fromage, pain, viande? Is du more important than learning to give opinions? Is du more important than being able to ask for food in a restaurant? We are being invited to consider that the answer is Yes it is.

If it's so important, should we be planning where pupils are going to meet du again? Apart from when they talk about food, when do pupils need to know some? Year 8 is built around saying things like: J'aime aller au parc avec mes amis surtout s'il fait beau parce que je peux jouer au tennis si je veux. Not a du, de la, des in sight.

And when they do meet it, it doesn't translate as "some": il fait du soleil, je fais du skate. An explanation here is not going to be better than just knowing it as a chunk.

The non-topic approach is meant to be about getting away from lists of nouns and away from chunks. And shifting the focus to the high frequency words. So in j'ai un chien, it is j'ai and un which are the important words in the new approach. Our Year 8 curriculum is much stronger on verbs than on nouns. But because of that, there's hardly any du, de la, des either. Should I be bringing in more nouns, so we can have more articles definite, indefinite and partitive?

What to do? Is du so conceptually important that we need to build in more use for it throughout Year 8 and Year 9? Surely not. Not just for the sake of it. Or is it OK to only use it when a topic requires it? Or if it's not that prevalent, maybe we should we avoid it and get rid of je voudrais du pain and just stick to j'aime le pain? Because otherwise we're letting a focus on use and communication get in the way of sequencing the language properly.

So what have I done? I have reinstated quantities. Un kilo de, une barquette de... Which seems as if I am going down the communicative transactional route. But it's in order to get at the core meaning behind du, de la, des which is that de  means of. Then I'm keeping everything we used to do. With some explicit focus on j'aime LE pain, je mange DES céréales, je ne mange pas DE viande. But that doesn't mean explanation. Or over focusing on it to tie pupils in knots. It means being careful how each is introduced and contrasted, with pupils and lessons focused on meaning and communicating about food.

I don't want to be over-thinking the curriculum around this. It brings me back to the idea that teachers had this in balance. Why? Because it has evolved that way. A curriculum honed over decades. Keeping a balance between meaning and form, communication and concepts. Messing about with it, trying to produce something meticulous on paper is bound to produce something that doesn't always get it quite right in the classroom. I'll keep going. And of course, what matters is what happens in the classroom next year! Watch this space...

J'aime la glace. J'aime manger de la glace au chocolat. J'aime la glace avec des guimauves.

 Excellent. Really have something to think about. And I think I know the answer, but I have to be open to the alternative and give it a real chance.

I am rewriting our Year 7 booklet on the topic of food. The booklet contains this sort of thing: Strategies for learning food words. Giving opinions about food. Ordering food in a restaurant. Looking at food on French menus. Talking about allergies and what you do / don't eat. Looking at food around the world and talking about what people eat.

Or in grammatical terms: food and genders; opinions and the definite article; functions for asking and "some"; tu and vous; present tense of manger; negatives with "de"; taste adjectives with is and are and adjectival agreement.

Some of this grammar is not new to pupils in this unit.

It brings us up against the arguments about whether to teach pupils "to say things" or to teach pupils language that exemplifies specific forms.

If we are teaching a synthetic syllabus, the language is carefully selected and sequenced around the "logic" of the language. Not the meaning. So we wouldn't be teaching the topic of "Food" at all. We would be teaching opinions and the definite article. Ranging from j'aime le chocolat to j'aime les chiens to j'aime les maths.

With this example, I've always found it very useful when we come to the topic of School, to be able to refer back to the topic of Food. Pupils learn j'aime le chocolat by the sound, the feel, the rhythm, the music of it. And so when it comes to je n'aime pas la géographie, they are perfectly fine with it. But I do want to think through where teaching topics might mean we are overloading underlying grammatical complexity.

I don't think that "explicit" always means "explaining". Things can be made obvious in other ways. Starting with how the syllabus is organised and structured. And then by focus on a form, isolating it, contrasting, spotting patterns, manipulating.

What I have come up against with the Food topic, is that there's a particularly nasty bit of complexity going on with articles.

J'aime le pain. Je n'aime pas le pain. J'aime le pain avec du beurre. Je mange le pain au petit-déjeuner. Je mange du pain. J'aime manger le pain. J'aime manger du pain.

This is an example of where a synthetic syllabus, built around carefully selected and sequenced language, wouldn't attempt this. It would stick to j'aime le pain. Teaching the rule of opinion + definite article. But it would risk sacrificing the desire to communicate, to talk about food, to express yourself. Because pupils have to recombine what you have taught them, but go no further. Because the teaching objective isn't for them to learn to say things. It's to learn about how the language works.

If you believe that mistakes are harmful, and that language learning means acquiring building blocks in a predetermined way based on the logic of taking apart the language, and that frustration with language-learning comes from all those confusing little words that can't be pinned down, and you think that explicit knowledge is all important, if you think pupils shouldn't play with language because they might break it... then it's a sacrifice worth making.

If you welcome mistakes, because it's a sign of pupils using their language with growing independence instead of regurgitating... If you think that language learning follows the logic of growing pupils' constantly evolving language repertoire and conceptualisation... If you think that pupils are focused primarily on meaning rather than form... If you think language learning happens from hearing the sound and the rhythm and the meaning... If you think pupils can pick language up and play with it... then you won't be worried.

And I never was worried. Pupils picked up j'aime le pain and je voudrais du pain and j'aime le pain avec du beurre. And if they get it wrong, then for me it wasn't a disaster. Firstly because there's plenty more time for it to straighten itself out. Secondly because it's not as important as communicating and expressing meaning.

And thirdly because focusing on it won't magically make it any better.

Sometimes I think that the communicative approach relies on a kind of "magic". Statements like "Language learning happens when pupils interact with meaning." It seems something of a statement of faith rather than an argument. (Although it's an argument I can make, but now is not the time.) But I don't see anything different in an argument about explicit knowledge. Explaining le / du isn't going to magically make it work. In fact it may make it worse. The same as teaching that je suis allé means I am gone doesn't make it less likely that pupils will mix it up with I am going.

To spell it out. I can explicitly tell pupils that the cheese is le fromage. And that du fromage means some cheese. But this explanation leaves them none the wiser when it comes to saying: I like cheese. I eat cheese. I eat bread with cheese. English doesn't have a the  or a  some. And in French you will need le or du depending on each different case.

Anyway, I never worried. Until all this started. And we were told to be acutely aware of the sequencing and grammatical logic of what we are teaching. And then this is what happened...

Here's a lovely piece of writing from a Year 7 pupil this year.

It's based on speaking, as you can see from the and... and... but... and...  structure. And it's a pupil enjoying expressing themself on a great topic for having opinions. But it didn't start out like that.

Here's their first version.

In this first draft, it seems they haven't got it at all. Singular, plural, gender. All gone wrong. And the comment. "I wrote a good sentence but I am not sure about the/some. I was so worried about the/some I didn't write a lot."

Interesting.

How to react to this? Is it a good thing that they were aware they were making mistakes? Especially as they were able to immediately correct this by checking in their booklet? Is it a bad thing they were making mistakes because it shows a lack of conceptualisation of number and gender? Is it a bad thing they were making mistakes because they just haven't had enough input to know that la fromage does not exist? Is it entirely normal they might make exactly these slips because their attention is on what they are saying and these little words don't matter to them at this stage?

Personally I would say all of the above. Even when they are contradictory. Because it is all part of a process with ups and downs and round and rounds.

Another question is "Has my teaching made it worse?" By explicitly looking at le / du or by setting up a situation where the pupil needed to use them. We had talked about learning du, de la, des. And whether it was better to have a rule or just to pick it up from lots of examples. A great discussion with the class. With this very pupil making the point that an explanation will need lots of examples.

So I think we come back to what I hinted at earlier. "Explicit" teaching of grammar isn't about how you teach it. It's about what you chose to teach. And what not to teach.

Rewriting the booklets isn't about whether you learn le, du by explanation or by example. It's about whether you decide to teach pupils to talk about food (including opinions, ordering, what they generally eat, what they can and can't eat) which introduces more complexity than you might have expected. Or whether you teach opinion + definite article, and avoid anything more that might confuse or complicate matters.

You want me to give an answer?

My answer is that on paper it looks as if you should limit, select, sequence. But that as soon as you are in the classroom with real pupils and teachers, then meaning and communication take over. Language is complex, but the human brain is up to the job.

GCHQ Challenges

 There's lots to fill you in on with how I'm doing rewriting our booklets - although the really interesting part will come when we see how they go down in the classroom. Meanwhile, I need to do an update on the GCHQ challenge our International Leaders did with Year 8.

I was wondering if GCHQ were going to produce materials to promote languages. I know they have done spectacular Cyber Challenges and Competitions in the past. As languages is part of their core activity, I would have expected them to be leading the way in promoting languages in schools and their usefulness for the UK. I have heard that they are going to be launching a national languages competition sometime soon. So I very much look forward to that. Meanwhile they have these school activities on their website.

The activity takes the form of a scenario: You are listening to intercepted conversations with members of an organised criminal gang. GCHQ identify and exemplify 4 different features of their work: decoding encrypted messages; language skills; cultural references; "veiled" or opaqe use of language. The scenario requires all four of these activities.

Our Year 9 International Leaders tried out the materials and decided the "Year 11" ones would be best for our Year 8s. It was done as a Tutor Time challenge, with pairs of International Leaders going to each form for 2 twenty minute sessions.

They gave a brief introduction to GCHQ as the UK's intelligence gathering organisation and talked briefly about careers there - there are further videos on the GCHQ website if teachers want to follow up with these. Then they gave out the resources for pupils to tackle the scenario. First a simple substitution cypher to decode encrypted words. Then work with dictionaries to translate the French. This went better than expected, with Year 8 pupils well able to look for the overall meaning of the sentence rather than getting bogged down looking up words like "sont" or being frustrated by not finding feminine forms of adjectives in the dictionary. I think this was down to expert help from the Year 9 International Leaders.

 The "veiled" language was not a problem for pupils who had paid attention to the instructions, where it was spelled out that the criminals often used names of fruit to refer to drugs. Perhaps the criminals stole this idea from a previous generation of French teaching resources,- didn't "cauliflower" refer to smuggled diamonds in the 1970s BBC schools series set in a French fishing village? 

This left the pupils with some cultural knowledge to tackle. To pinpoint the date of the illicit transaction, the criminals referred to French festivals. The Year 8 forms were given an overnight deadline to find this information and submit their answers.

All forms submitted what information they thought had been intercepted. And we gave out certificates for participating and for the winners.

The materials were great for illustrating the 4 facets of interpreting communications that GCHQ wanted to exemplify. They were a fun challenge for pupils to tackle involving French. The Year 11 materials were more suitable for Year 8, and were easily tackled by pupils working independently supported by the International Leaders. For my purposes, this was a key aspect: I am looking to recruit a new cohort of International Leaders from this year group for next year, so this was a great opportunity to highlight their role.

I do suggest you have a look at the resources. And hunt around on the GCHQ site for videos of what it's like to work there and how they use languages. I have taught at least one pupil who has used their languages in intelligence, but I can't reveal any details. And I am really looking forward to the national competition that GCHQ are preparing. I hope they can continue to support language-learning in schools with activities like this which highlight the importance of languages and the usefulness of language-learning.

Re-writing booklets. Year 7 Unit 1.

 I don't know how it's been for you, if you've followed developments in language teaching in England over the last year a bit, but for me, writing this blog has been useful to start to think through some of the issues and I am ready to make some decisions.

I am rewriting the booklets we use as a department. The headline for this blog is that I am going to make it much clearer to teachers and pupils how the learning can be broken down. And how we balance the focus on meaning and the focus on the form of language. The sub heading is that overall, I am going to change as little as possible.

Here's what I'm doing with Year 7 Unit 1, as an example.

Rather than take lots of little pieces (phonics, verb to have, verb to be, gender rules, high frequency vocabulary) and see what it adds up to, we will be starting with whole phrases, whole conversations. Year 7 pupils love hearing French and being pleased they can figure out what is being said. They love getting their tongues around sentences, and the challenge of being quick to reply. Teachers love having French as a medium of communication in their classroom right from the start. What we will do, is exploit those conversations for phonics, meaning, and grammar. Then we will work on the component parts so that pupils can move on from the scripted conversations. First of all to adapt them to themselves. And then to be able to vary and manipulate them more and more widely, using their growing knowledge of how the language works.

We are going to have real French characters through the booklet and reappearing in future units.

The first character is the actor and singer Louane. Here's the first dialogue for pupils to find out some basic information about her.

We will work on understanding what it says. But also what it literally means and the ways French is different to English.

We will exploit it for phonics. We use Rachel Hawkes / Comberton Village College Francophoniques. There are keywords and actions for the sounds. We work intensively on this so that the actions become linked not to the word, but directly to the sound. So the teacher can anticipate the pronunciation of the word comment with the dents action for the sound en.

Then we work on memorisation and fluency.

At this point, we are still ostensibly working on the original Louane dialogue, but I don't think pupils or teachers will be able to resist substituting their own details.

That's what happens next. We work on pets, numbers, months, family members. Each in turn exploited for phonics and grammar. So pets, with oiseau and poisson, works brilliantly for phonics. And it also means we have to tackle un / une. Where again, the issue of pronunciation is perhaps more critical than gender. Pupils do get gender (and increasingly refer to using the correct definite/indefinite articles as getting the "pronouns" right). But everything falls apart if their pronunciation of un / une is indeterminate. And with pets we introduce je and ai and our friend Mr Apostrophe. And je  and ne and ai and pas. Again, in an expression with meaning first, before breaking it down. Not the other way round. And numbers and plurals.

And then similarly family members, numbers, months. All great for phonics. And then, the pupils are equipped to go back to the Louane dialogue and adapt and manipulate it.

Then we go through the process again adding personality (je suis and adjectival agreement) and physical description to the Louane conversation. And then to the pupils' own conversations. And then to seeing the Louane information written up in the third person. And the pupils writing about themselves in the third person.

The next step will be to introduce Bigflo and Oli as characters. And go through the same process, to introduce a conversation with vous / nous and written up texts with ils.

It's a tricky first unit to do as a booklet. So much of it is spoken, it's not going to be booklet based! When I was working on rewriting the Year 8 Unit 1 booklet, I found that sequencing the focus on grammar and phonics didn't mean you were making anything that added up to how a lesson would work. So this Year 7 Unit 1 has turned out to be not so much a booklet as a series of powerpoints. Which teachers can then adapt.

This the key thing. What I am doing is about how we manage consistency and individual strengths in the department. This isn't about me, or a theoretical debate about language learning. This is about my own specific individual department that has had staffing fluctuations and where we are all still only just getting back to working together in the long (and not over yet) aftermath of covid.

I haven't invented or added anything I don't already do or that wasn't already in the scheme of work. But it is spelling out and making clear how everything is supposed to work. Maybe some teachers focus relatively more on the building blocks of language but don't develop how well pupils can use it. Maybe some teachers' pupils have a lovely accent and fluent responses, but don't have such a good understanding of the individual building blocks. I know consistency is in fashion, but this is all about balance. Florencia Henshaw sent me a picture of the swing of the pendulum which made me think about it in a different way. We know that the politics of language teaching swing from one extreme to the other. But Florencia's image is of the Newton's Cradle, where the ball in the middle is constantly bashed from either side, but actually does not move at all. That's us in the middle. Trying to keep on making learning happen in our lessons.

Developing Writing with Year 8

 You already met my Year 8 French group, with a Ready Steady French lesson that went a bit wrong, but turned out all right in the end because they really got the idea of using your French ingredients to make something good.

I've had a look through their books to see how we have developed their writing over this unit of work.

Of course, there was plenty of speaking too. With activities like Being Ben and Connectives Dice (in the second half of this earlier post).

The Connectives Dice involves throwing dice to get and, especially if, because, so, for example, but... to keep talking ad infinitum, without worrying too much about making sense. Just concentrating on really getting the French flowing. The written equivalent is World Record Sentences.

A world record attempt (unsuccessful)

In World Record Sentences, I ask pupils to write 99 words without a full stop. Instead, whenever they finish an idea, they use a conjunction to carry on. And on. And on. Except without the full stops. Some students love the anarchy of this. They enjoy using their French to write and write. To try out bizarre ideas or humorous contradictions. Other pupils cannot bring themselves to do it. They want to use full stops. They want to make sense. Both these alternatives are great. Because incoherent long sentences are just a first step. Once pupils see that they can write in French, then from now on we work not on the French, but on the quality of the piece of writing.

Coherence, convincing personal detail, variety, logic, and paragraphing. From linking ideas together, we move to taking one idea and developing it.

The next step on this journey is Pimp My French. I give the pupils a piece of simplistic French. Repetitive. Short sentences. Incoherent. And it is their job to transform it. With a budget of exactly (in this case) 55 words.

Pimp My French

Pimp My French

Both of these examples started with the same piece of simplistic writing. And both pupils have done their best to rearrange and re-write it. It is a very powerful process, where they start to work on the quality of the writing. It can be done just by adding conjunctions and removing repetition. For example by replacing j'aime... j'aime... j'aime with "J'aime... parce que je peux... et j'adore..." Or it can involve more sophistication in developing ideas or adding coherence.

We work on model answers on the board. And practise translating model answers in and out of French. We annotate model answers in colour and talk about which one reads the best.

Then we wrote the piece of work from last week's post, just writing "French out of my head". Again to prove that the French isn't the problem. And to make sure everyone has their ingredients ready. Here's a reminder:

French Out of My Head

You can see from the feedback, that we are again moving from focusing on the French, to focusing on the quality of the writing. So this week, the pupils wrote their "Excellent Paragraphs". Trying to take one idea at a time and develop it.

This is the sort of thing we got.

Excellent Paragraphs.

Read their Paragraph!

Add convincing personal detail...

The pupils are now very aware of their own progress. The end of unit Listening and Reading assessments show them how well they know the French they've been learning. And they understand that what happens in their books (and in Speaking) isn't about the French anymore. It's about how well they can use their French. In Speaking, it's increased spontaneity, fluency and self expression. In Writing, it's increased coherence, self expression and detail.

There are so many important things happening here. There is a strong oracy and literacy role that Languages plays in the curriculum. And an important self-efficacy impact, with pupils able to see how to improve their own work and take a pride in what they can do. It is structured and also open ended, for all pupils to move from mechanical and incoherent writing, to something personal, coherent and organised. And in that process, of successive iterations, the language learning happens. Pupils have practised speaking and writing over and over, trying out ideas, improving their work. Until they know it well enough to use accurately and spontaneously.

I can't believe that we are going to have to stop working on how well pupils can use their language. And give all this up, so we can work on testing what they know. These Year 8s will be the last year group to have the Conversation in the GCSE Speaking Exam. The last year group to be assessed on how well they can show off their ability to express themselves, develop answers and use their language.

Looking at their progress this year, or across this unit on Free Time, and how it's boosted their confidence and their grasp of the language, I don't think I can or should stop doing this. Even if we are told that it's not what's wanted anymore.

Pupil Feedback

 In our new KS3 assessments, we always have a section for pupils to reflect on their learning and give us feedback.

So impressed with this pupil's ideas about their own language-learning

It's useful for me to have feedback, but I also want the pupils to feel engaged. The more we can get them thinking about why they are learning a language, how they are learning, and how they are doing, the better they will get at thinking of themselves as language-learners.

Of course, I love it when they pick out as important things like phonics, gender, high frequency words, opinions. Or developing a core repertoire to express themselves. And often I think it is because they recognise the importance. Not just because they've heard me say it so many times and give me the answer they think I want to hear.

Phonics. And "I am a squirrel".

And one thing that hasn't come from me, is how frequently they talk about phrases for basic situations. Saying hello, finding the way, ordering food. It seems entirely natural to them that we should teach them what they need, to be equipped with some sentences ready for common situations if they travel abroad.

In case you are kidnapped. And it makes you look smart.

I think we do have to listen to this. And keep it in mind when balancing our curriculum. Lots of them do comment on the nitty gritty of powerful words, grammar, improving their speaking and writing. But they also think it is a perfectly reasonable expectation that we teach them useful phrases. Our pupils are a useful and sane counterbalance to the Ofsted diktats that language should be about exemplifying forms, not communication.

Then you get comments about pupils' view of themselves as language-learners, which are invaluable in building a shared sense of purpose and positivity:

Cats are French

Pride because he worked for it

Why wouldn't they?

Impress my mum