John Bald/language and literacy

Welcome...

to everyone with an interest in literacy, languages and basic maths.

I have tried to put what I've learned from forty years' experience on this website. Get in touch if you think I can help. Most reading and spelling difficulties can be tackled quickly and easily with the right teaching, by which I mean teaching that is closely matched to the individual's current knowledge and thinking, and designed to help the person adjust his or her thinking to achieve what they are trying to do. Teachers are always welcome to sit in on sessions, and when I work with children a parent always observes, so that they can help their child to practise. If you don't live near Linton, I'm often able to teach by telephone. Contact details are at the top left, and there is no charge. The site has just reached 70,000 hits.

Books and reviews

I've written two books, Using Phonics to Teach Reading and Spelling (Sage) and The Literacy File (available from me). I have also written The Teaching Assistant's Edufax.  Reviews represent my honest opinion only.  I have no financial connection with any publisher, and there is no paid content. Publishers are invited to send materials for review.  

For Local Authorities, schools...and occasionally lawyers!

I offer consultancy to local authorities and individual schools on all aspects of school management, including budgetary control and staff appointments.  I have extensive and highly successful experience of training teachers and assistants in literacy (including tackling dyslexia), languages and basic mathematics. All training is discussed in detail with you, as client, and closely matched to your needs.

I was an expert witness in the leading libel case, Bookbinder v Oppenheim, with the late George Carman QC, and have recently acted as an expert witness in a schools admission appeal for a firm of solicitors in the North of England.  I am a member of the UK Department for Education's Expert/Reference group on teacher training, and of its ministerial steering group for languages.

 

 

French Teacher: Steve Smith

An excellent, reflective website from a very experienced teacher of French, to which I'll return frequently. Steve's latest posting on translation is interesting - he would use it, but not often, as he sees better ways of developing accuracy. I used to enjoy translation, and worked as a translator. The value I see in it is ensuring that meaning is understood in depth and detail. I also think that beginners translate in their head when they are using a new language, and suspect that even more experienced users do so when we are operating out of our comfort zone. Our first language never leaves us.  Steve is also the author of frenchteacher.net, which I recommend.

Oyez, oyez...¡Oye!

 

 

Lovely free site for people to practise beginning Spanish. I tried some of the games to use with a pupil I´m working with and got hooked myself. Fantastic bargain too - free to use out of school hours, and sub only £30 per school (£24 for Zut Junior) Companion sites are here, click on logo to open. Many thanks to Pascale Spencer of Our Lady's Convent Language College for the tip.

 

                         

Down Syndrome Education International - important study on memory.

Yet again, Down Syndrome International breaks new ground with this study showing improvements in working memory following systematic training. Work carried out by the original Portsmouth-based organisation, the Sarah Duffen Centre, developed techniques to help people with severe learning difficulties learn to read that are still extremely useful, and one is virtually the last shot in my locker with the most difficult cases (selecting words as they are called out rather than naming them.) This study indicates that it is possible to improve a person's use of memory, and if it can be done for children with Down Syndrome, it may well be valuable to others.

New primary national curriculum - French toolkit.

The development work for this toolkit in Hackney has contributed to the draft national curriculum for languages, and it is designed to be consistent with it, particularly in the early stages. It is free to use for any non-profit purposes.

As we learn, neural networks form in our brain. These are the physical basis of understanding, working on tiny charges of electricity. All else depends on them, and until this is understood and made the basis of teaching, children will continue to fail. This new evidence - the earliest is under twenty years old - demands revision of any educational theory that is not consistent with it. The main theories that are consistent with it are those of Vygotsky (Thought and Language - the rest of his work needs to be treated on the merits of individual propositions) Bruner (Courteous translation of adult concepts into language that children can understand), Montessori and E D Hirsch - the operations of the brain are severely limited if they have no access to knowledge stored in long-term memory.

This toolkit shows how to build neural networks in the initial stages of learning French. Additional lesson plans up to 20 will be added shortly, with a toolkit for Spanish. Once these principles are established, the root networks will be in place, and teaching can proceed as we choose. 

Download Primary French Toolkit Introduction and Principles. 

Download Primary_french_toolkit 1-6

Which tables are hardest.

Guardian has an interesting piece from one school on the pattern of children's errors in multiplication tables. Worth reading closely, and the next question is why errors come to take patterns identified, and whether different patterns of teaching may be more effective than others. About time this issue received some systematic attention. See below for other postings on tables, and the importance of getting 2x rock solid to avoid co-ordination problems.

Mathematics Mastery - Dr Helen Drury and The Guardian

Brilliant article by Dr Helen Drury in the Guardian, unpacking the hidden problems of language and logic in the thinking of pupils for whom secondary maths are not straightforward. The piece contains a link to the Mathematics Mastery charity which aims to make the approach available to all schools. Definitely repays investigation.

An Ofsted conversation, and a fair report

This appears to be the transcript of an exchange following a joint observation between an inpsector and a primary head. We only have one side, but it suggests that the inspector is basing his judgement on some idea of an ideal lesson derived from the strategies rather than on the current handbook. We'd need to have been there to be sure, but it did cause me some disquiet.

In particular, the inspector should have checked on pupils' previous work, which must have been available, and would have given firm evidence on whether there was genuine progress or just repetition. As it stands, this is an unsatisfactory observation as the inspector relied on impression rather than checking the evidence, and also seems to have come close to bullying the head into agreeing with him. Basing a judgement on a supposition rather than evidence is poor inspection practice, and browbeating the head into agreeing with it makes it worse. The Secretary of State said in The Times on Monday that the consistency of inspection needs to be improved, and this seems to be a case in  point. 

Meantime, the Ofsted report on York University's training partnership has been published, and raises some new issues. The previous report, in 2010, was on the university only, and was graded 1. This report includes the schools in the partnership, and is graded 2, partly because of inconsistencies in the work of the schools, which now carry out the bulk of the work and which need, in the case of languages, to take more account of HMI findings. For some, a starting point would be to read the HMI reports in the first place.

Two vices of language teaching and how to avoid them.

The idea that language teaching "could do better" is now pretty well established. Too many children are failing, and the goodwill that they start with in secondary schools steadily dwindles from Year 7 onwards. There is no one reason for this, but while the errors of some established teaching methods are identified - eg too many exercises, not enough speaking, pointless content - two associated with more modern and communicative approaches are not, and they are prevalent. 

They are:

1. Going too fast for children to understand. Presenting language at near native speed to beginning and intermediate learners overloads their mental capacity and does not allow new neural networks to form and consolidate. This is endemic at KS3 and failure will continue until it is stopped. Language does not consist of four skills associated with the four main channels of communication - all are based on understanding, and going too fast prevents understanding. We must slow down to a pace learners feel comfortable with, and speed up later.

The effects of going too fast vary from one language to anothee.

Spanish has around 30% more syllables than English per 100 words of comparable text, and so we have to take in more information in the same time frame.

French likes to run spoken words together to create flow, but likes its writing to be very precise. At full speed, we need to know the language in order to distinguish the words.

Going too fast in German makes it much harder to pick up the detail of the grammar that holds the language together.

2. Copying. Jerking back and forth makes it harder to see patterns in the new language, and to understand how words are put together to make sense. Children should never copy, even in the early stages. Looking away from the original and tracing with a finger on the sleeve is a painless and effective alternative. Then writing on scrap paper or a mini whiteboard without copying allows children to review their own work and correct errors without feeling threatened.

For more detail, scroll down to the Wellington College presentation below.

 

Wellington College Sunday Times Festival of Education, 21-22 June, 2013.

Wellington College is once again the venue for the ST Festival of Education, which this year has an astonishing collection of speakers for an astonishing price of £65 for a two-day event.  Alongside ministers, opposition spokesmen, the chief inspector and head of Eton, there are leading specialists on areas such as behaviour (Noel Janis-Nortin), computing, networking, nutrition, earth sciences (Royal Society Research Fellow) and virtually every topic you can imagine, with plenty of speaker-free zones for people to talk to each other. You may well find yourself wishing you could be in at least four places at once.

I'm delighted to be in such company again this year, with a talk on Help Your Child with Spelling at 10am on the Saturday morning in the Mandarin pavilion. My offer of free help stands, and this would be an opportunity for parents and interested teachers to see the approach, which now takes account of the evidence on the evolution of English spelling in David Crystal's brilliant new book, Spell it Out. 

As a taster, here are Dr Anthony Seldon's eight aptitudes which Wellington College seeks to develop, and which he has built into the school's architecture in Princes' Court. 

The Eight Aptitudes

At Wellington, we do not ask: “how intelligent is this child”, but rather, in what ways is this child intelligent? For all children are intelligent and they are intelligent in many different ways. We believe that everyone possesses eight intelligences or aptitudes: Moral, Spiritual, Logical, Linguistic, Physical, Cultural, Social and Personal.

Wellington’s commitment to a full, holistic and balanced education is codified in our eight aptitude approach which was inspired by the ground-breaking work of Harvard Professor, Howard Gardner. An education at Wellington requires pupils to engage with all eight of their aptitudes and to reflect on these as they go through school.

The point of an eight aptitude focus in the Wellington education is to delight in the various ways in which we experience the world around us and develop as individuals. Whilst each aptitude can be considered individually, we are often more interested in the way that they meet. It is often in the surprising moments: the consideration of morality on the rugby pitch, or the awareness of beauty in a maths class, that the greatest illumination comes.

The eight aptitudes (underpinned by Wellington's five core values: kindness, courage, integrity, respect and responsibility), ensure that we offer a broad and wide-ranging, genuinely holistic education.

Most of the consideration of the eight aptitude approach occurs in tutorials – the eight aptitudes provides a framework for the discussion between pupil and tutor and pupils are encouraged to reflect on their personal contribution to the whole life of College (their eight aptitude or holistic engagement with their education) at the end of each term. 

 

Dyslexia: Two cases and a thought on progress.

On Saturday, I saw two reports on pupils who had been assessed as dyslexic, one from a psychologist and one from a practitioner certified to carry out such reports. Both reported a big weakness in short term memory, based on a test of memorising random digits forwards and backwards. This test is considered by psychologists to be reliable, though memorising digits backwards has clearly nothing whatever to do with reading, or any other sensible activity. Nevertheless, the low scores were there, and on one case running under the first percentile. 

One pupil had a low score on word recognition, but an above average score on comprehension, leading the assessor to conclude, reasonably enough, that he was using his above-average verbal intelligence to compensate for weaknesses in "decoding". I put the word in inverted commas as I'm not sure the term reflects what we do when we read in English - information containte in letters has to be interpreted and not simply moved from one system into another, as happens when we use codes.

The other, whom I'm teaching, had an average score on word reading, but a below average score on reading pseudo-words and in spelling.It also noted that he is at Level 5c in English, a truly astonishing assessment in view of his weaknesses in spelling. In fact, astonishing is not the word for it - it is inaccurate to the point of being seriously misleading and fraudulent. Before I started to work with this pupil, he was barely writing anything, was using capital letters indiscriminately, and forming letters irregularly. I taught him to write using French lined paper, am taking him through the Galore Park junior writing course. As a result, he joins writing, no longer misplaces capitals, and is beginning to write in complete sentences rather than fragments. Part of the problem is that he is doing almost no writing in school at all, and so cannot improve.

The first report recommended that the pupil have a programme of memory work, a reduced timetable an 25% extra time in examinations. The second, that the pupil would need "specific support to his literacy skills" - a blinding statement of the obvious - without specifying what this support might be. In practical terms, it is completely useless. The value of the first report will depend on how good the memory training is, and how effectively the pupil's word identification skills are built up. If the teaching is effective, he should not need the extra time in examinations, as the weaknesses in short term processing will have been dealt with by establishing other channels into long term memory. If the teaching is not effective, then extra time in the examination will at best be a patch to compensate for its weaknesses and not the pupil's.

 

Teach English at Volunteer Thailand.

My friend John Keeble at  Volunteer Thailand  is about to welcome 95 new language teaching volunteers, with two further large groups to come from Leeds Metropolitan University. Excellent work, and very well organised. Check it out if you have time, and a wide range of skills is needed. Happiness virtually guaranteed in return!

John is also doing great work with his colleagues in saving large numbers of dogs from being kidnapped by gangs and sold into the restaurant trade. Copyright-free videos are on You Tube. Please pass on links to these.  

 

Interludes: Judge Cardinal, Fanny Waterman's Christmas Carols, and authoritarianism.

His Honour Judge Cardinal presides over Birmingham's Star Chamber, otherwise known as the Court of Protection. Disregard this eminent Christian, and you can be put in jail without a hearing, without access to counsel, and with no opportunity even to contact an MP. His eminence knows the law better than I do, and no doubt thinks himself entirely justified, although throwing someone into jail for five months without access to advice does rather preclude the possiblity of appeal. Some of us might think that a son and daughter could care for their father better than Birmingham City Council. The case has come to its inevitable conclusion with the death of the gentleman, but heaven preserve us from Judge Cardinal's protection (for the avoidance of doubt, he is a lay reader with the CofE, and not RC). I await the knock at the door. 

Dame Fanny Waterman is probably the most distinguished piano teacher in the country, and one of the best ever. Here she is on top of her form, explaining Beethoven to young children in terms of his other work, getting into the deepest meaning behind a simple note change from F to Eflat in Clair de Lune, and using this understanding to explain technique.  I bought for a pound or so at a boot sale her Merry Christmas Carols, which she describes as being "arranged for easy piano."  

Except, it's not so easy. There are no (verbal) notes on any of the carols, just fingering marked above quite a lot of the notes, and this fingering is very often not the easiest, and hence most natural, way to play a particular note. It very often involves a movement of the whole hand, for reasons that are sometimes only apparent one or two bars later. Do it Fanny's way, and the later notes fall into place. Don't, and you find your hand needing to make a big and unnatural jump that makes phrasing very difficult if not impossible. This is counter-intuitive, and my wife offers the view that life is counter-intuitive. Discuss...   Still, it would be much better if Dame Fanny were to write some notes explaining what she does and why, as she does on You Tube, or even videoed some lessons doing this for all of her materials. "Do as I say," is not always enough if people don't understand why.

PS. I´ve started to work on Mozart´s variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and Dame Fanny´s fingering principles are the key to being able to play it at all. I think she has another book to write.

 

 

Down Syndrome Education International - free online events.

 

The latest developments in Down Syndrome Education's See and Learn programme are being presented online at a series of events here.  Very highly recommended to anyone with an interest in this field. The child above is developing an understanding that meaning can be contained in pictures by matching the picture in her hand with one on the baseboard.  

Excellent Ofsted Training Videos - Reading for Meaning.

Thanks to Joan Low for this link to six training videos from Ofsted on reading for meaning. The first video has excellent techniques for a Year 2 class reading Jenny Hamlett's The Sand Tiger, from the Oxford Book Project, and shows, among other things, the teacher modelling fluent reading while the children close their eyes and form a mental picture of the story, close questioning on points of detail, and a very clear emphasis on having children refer back to the text to answer questions. More difficult words, such as "obviously" and "stealthily" are explained, unpacked and practised, so that accuracy and understanding are combined and children enjoy their work without it becoming "wishy-washy". Excellent work, and good use of Youtube by Ofsted. The techiques are essential to teaching reading at all levels, and would make a very good focus for a staff meeting.

The inspector, Mark Lindfield HMI, talks about "drilling deep" into the text, and the narrator, former HMI Janet Brennan, says that "when there is any doubt about the story, it is the text that holds the answer". A good introduction to the inspection technique of basing judgements on evidence - as Janet Brennan points out, "Inspectors base their reports on what they observe actually works for children". The schools are Ilsham CE Primary Academy, Torquay, Tollgate Primary School, Newham and Oldway Primary School, Paignton.  

 

Language Learning Principles and German.

The principles of language learning set out in the Wellington College presentation  can be applied to German, but need careful handling to avoid confusing students. 

First, the pattern of shared words (a friendlier term than "cognates")  between German and English is not as straightforward as in French, where virtually every latinate or Greek word is close to identical. In German, longer words come from a wider range of sources, which Germans have historically been keen to protect - an example is Beethoven's Hammerklavier rather than pianoforte.

The second obstacle is that the endings used to mark gender are not consistent. In French, a word followed by une or la will always be feminine. In German, a word followed by der, eg Der Mann, will usually be masculine, but may not be - Die Donau becomes  An Der Schönen, Blauen Donau (By The Beautiful Blue Danube). As with other grammatical peculiarities, it is not enough to leave people to work them out for themselves. They need to be unpacked, explained and practised, as indeed German children have to practise them hard in school and at home.

Next, the system of "cases" is completely new to learners who have not studied ancient languages, and some words are neuter. Where there are clashes in logic, such as the diminutive  chen  making a noun neuter even when, as in Mädchen, girl, it has an obvious physical gender, these need to be discussed. Languages are human constructs, and have human peculiarities. German is no exception.

So, what to do, and in what order?  My suggestion, based on observation of people learning and my own experience of learning German. In all cases, these are starting points, and refinements can be introduced later.

1. Colours introduce many of the main changes in pronunciation from English, and the umlaut. Rot, blau, grün, weiss, schwarz, gelb, orange, lila, grau, rosa, braun. A site with pronunciation is here.

2. The pronoun song, pointing to each other as we sing it, amuses children, and the idea that they call the teacher Sie because he or she is much bigger than they are leads into the reasons for du and Sie.

3. The verb song works with German verbs as well as French, and can be sung with sein.

4. We can make simple positive and sentences with sein - Ich bin Englisch. Ich bin nicht Deutsch.

5. We can do the same with haben, with family members introducing gender and the idea of the accusative Ich habe einen Bruder, einen Vater, einen Onkel, eine Schwester...

6. We can learn to count to ten, then twenty, and sing the days of the week then months. Heather Rendall points out on Linguanet that learning to say and read numbers to twenty presents nearly all of the distinctive sounds in German, and boosts confidence when children can read them.

7. We can make further simple sentences using easy verbs, and practise them with the verb song.

8. We can learn to tell the time and types of weather.

9. We can build sentences saying things we like and don't like. Introduce gern.

10. We can learn the German equivalents of simple classroom routines, requests and instructions, in singular and plural forms.

Once these elements are in place, the trickier features of German grammar can be taught in the context of things we might wish to say, and practised. At the same time, all earlier features can be practised in the context of daily routines - eg a chart with today's date and weather, Take 10 in German, giving instructions or telling the time in German in lessons other than German lessons.

As ever, comments welcome, and anyone in the Cambridge area who would like to start learning German is welcome to get in touch. No charge.

 

Medical Research Council Institute of Hearing Research

The Medical Researcch Council Institute of Hearing Research is here. It is adding new dimensions to our understanding of hearing issues, including processing as well as receiving information through sound. 

British Council Comenius CPD Deadline, 30th April

The British Council still has Comenius grants available for courses running from September to December 2013, but a deadline of 30th April. Full details are here. 

You can pick a course from their database, or apply for another course that meets their specifications, adding the course prospectus to your application. 

This course, at the small and friendly Spanish town of Tordesillas, has been popular with Hackney teachers and is open to any primary teacher. Please email me, johnbald@talktalk.net, if you'd like to know more. The BC grant is 2000 Euros.

Duero Formación.

Teaching and Learning Spanish in the Primary School.            

Sunday 27 October to Saturday 2  November 2013

 This course includes five full days of training to teach Spanish in primary schools and will focus on upskilling, teaching techniques and resources. Topics will include using ICT, designing and using a scheme of work, assessment techniques and forming partnerships with schools in Spain.   At least one day will be spent  in a local school, and there will be a programme of cultural visits in the afternoons.  

Sunday: Arrive Tordesillas, check into hotel, explore Tordesillas town and historic buildings. Accommodation will be arranged in comfortable hotels with private facilities, half-board, transfers provided.  Your subsistence grant will fully cover these costs.  

Monday. 9.30 - 12.30.  Spanish language and teaching techniques. Grouping will be based on course members´ experience and knowledge of Spanish.                        

Pm. Excursion to Salamanca, Main square, cathedrals and  museums.

Tuesday. 9.30 - 12.30.  Spanish language and teaching techniques

 Pm  Exc ursion to historic Zamora

Wednesday. 9.30 - 12.30.  Spanish language and teaching techniques.

Pm  visit to Convent and former Royal Palace, Tordesillas.

Thursday. In school.  

Evening: Flamenco dancing demonstration and lesson

Friday. 9.30 - 11.30.  Spanish language and teaching techniques.

11.30 - 12.30. Final evaluation session.

Pm Visit to Valladoli 

Evening: Farewell dinner

Saturday am, depart. 

 

Young primary pupils can understand grammar in foreign languages

The university council for modern languages has told the Department for Education that   

Research evidence shows that pupils of primary age lack the cognitive maturity to acquire the morphosyntax of a foreign language if their only exposure to it is in the classroom – and especially if they have less than 60 minutes of expert teaching per week, which has often been the case in recent years.

Their full response can be dowloaded from the link at the bottom of this page (the link near the top did not work for me). It is not clear whether this view represents the whole of the association or its chairman. It is, however, unsupported by any reference to research, let alone any that would "show" such an absolute statement to be true, and it is wrong. Morpho-syntax is a highfalutin term for the ways in which words change according to their grammatical function, and it used to be known more generally as "inflection". 

My evidence is three pieces of raw video shot by the Teaching Agency on a visit to observe my work in Hackney. I can't upload this, but it is available to researchers. The video shows childre aged 6 and 7 responding to singular and plural forms of a French verb, and pronouncing negatives accurately. They are having more trouble with simple vocabulary than with grammar - for example, they all understand the difference between lève and levez, but some get mixed up between standing up and raising their hand, so this takes more practice. By Years 3 and 4, pupils are correctly using feminine or masculine endings in short sentences about themselves, and understand why. Pupils of this age could also understand sentences such as Je suis poli and Il est poli. 

Speculation: Why migh vocabulary be harder to learn than grammar? 

My experience of learning languages, between the ages of 11 and 63, is that learning grammar is easier than vocabulary in some languages because grammar has patterns that repeat themselves in different contexts, whereas some vocabulary, particularly if it comes from a language with no shared words, has no clear structure that our brain can latch onto. This is, though, speculative. For example, while there are more regularities in French verb endings than we might think - the second person singular always ends in s, for example - the use of articles in German, where der can in some cases be feminine rather than masculine, took me at least three attempts to master. We can perhaps say that the more pattern there is, in either vocabulary or grammar, the more practice our brain gets, and so the easier the learning.

Professor Ernesto Macaro's eight teaching principles, + one from Professor Stephen Krashen.

                  

 

        Ernesto Macaro, Oxford                   Stephen Krashen, Sthrn  California                                                      

 

Professor Ernesto Macaro is the new director of the department of education at Oxford University. He gave a talk on his research into teaching grammar at this year's Association for Language Learning Conference, at which he set out eight principles of language teaching which had emerged from his and his colleagues' research.  

His final principle, and one that he said underpinned all of the others, was that

 

•The principal focus of pedagogy should be on developing language skills and, therefore, the teaching of linguistic knowledge (knowledge of grammar and vocabulary) should act in the service of skill development not as an end in itself.

 

This is absolutely right. Other postings on this site have attempted to identify just what knowledge of grammar and vocabulary children need to make progress in the crucial early stages, when pupils have the least knowledge of their own, and where failure or success set in quickly. The principles have been presented at a series of workshops around the country, and are set out in his presentation:  Download Grammar at what cost Macaro

The principle that I will add, from the progressive Professor Stephen Krashen, is that pupils must be able to understand whatever language they are given. Professor Krashen called this "comprehensible input". I disagree with virtually everything else he has written about languages, but on this he is absolutely right, and it applies from the first lesson onwards.

Janet Lloyd Network

 

Janet Lloyd was languages consultant for Warrington before starting as a freelance after the advisory service was made redundant. Her website is an innovative and highly successful example of how we can continue to provide services to schools in a format they find useful and at a price they can afford. An inclusive fee (£250) covers termly update sessions, a place at an annual conference,  consultancy at favourable rates, and access to Janet's website with its schemes of work. Over seventy schools have signed up to it, and it is well worth investigation by the rest of us. Well done, Janet!

Turning The Key: Grammar for Adult learners. Some notes.

This fringe meeting brought together teachers of a very wide range of languages, including Greek, Dutch, French, German, Spanish and Mandarin. The adults learning German also spoke a wide rang of languages themselves. The discussion was similarly wide-ranging, and led to these points of general agreement:

1. The four of us who had used Michel Thomas' materials had all found them helpful.

2. A "skeleton" of grammar was useful for learners; the muscles could be added later.

3. Too much grammar at once could easily become a straitjacket. This could be a particular problem with German cases. I suggested initial sentences could be kept personal, with sein, and that cases could be added later.

4. Grammar should be presented clearly and simply, in a way that took account of people's existing knowledge and understanding. For British people, this was sometimes limited because of the ways in which they were taught English.

5. It was important to be able to construct positive and negative sentences. This was easy in Greek, Spanish and German, but more complicated in French.

The powerpoint is here.  Download ALL talk

Westminster Education Forum, Languages,

Here is the powerpoint for the talk I gave at this forum. Download Westminster Forum revised

It covers the issue of brain research and language learning, and makes some points about the need for balance in the national curriculum.

Spanish for Work

Work into Spanish seems a good introduction to workplace Spanish, and well worth checking out. It seems well thought out and straightforward - I didn't know that un turno was the Spanish for a shift - and a good addition to resources for adults or voc learners. Around $27. 

Here are two dialogues from the sample resource:

1. A: Está haciendo un buen trabajo, Sofía.
B: Muchas gracias, señor.
A: ¿Cómo está su horario?
B: Me gusta mucho. 
A: Mañana tiene Ud. el tercer turno, ¿verdad?
B: Sí. Salgo muy tarde – a las ocho.
A: Bueno. Siga trabajando bien.

2. Juana: Este mes tengo que trabajar dos fines de semana.
Carla: ¡Que horrible, Juana! 
Juana: ¿Cómo está su horario?
Carla: Pues, este mes trabajo el segundo turno por tres 
semanas.
Juana: Con el segundo turno hay muchas horas extras.
Carla: Sí. Quizás voy a ganar mucho dinero este mes.
Juana: Espero que sí.

Learn these phrases from today’s dialogs:

Esta haciendo un buen trabajo. You’re doing good work.
Mañana tiene Ud. el tercer turno. You have the 3rd shift tomorrow,
¿verdad? right?
Hoy salgo muy tarde. I’m leaving (I’m off) late today.
Siga trabajando bien. Keep up the good work.
Este mes tengo que trabajar I have to work
dos fines de semana. two weekends this month!
¡Que horrible! How terrible! / That’s terrible!
I hope so. Espero que sí.

 

Long division: Tam's Bunnet

                      

The distinguished group of Scotsmen and the hound are wearing the Kilmarnock Bonnet, a fine piece of headgear immortalised in song more than once. I've used it recently as a key to the steps in long division, as worn by another compatriot whom I call Tam. 

Tam's Bunnet.

Try         - see if the divisor will go into the first digit (or series of digits, as applicable)

Answer   - either add the number of times it will go to the answer or a 0 if it won't

Multiply   - what you've added to the answer by the divisor

'

Subtract  - the result of your multiplication from that part of the dividend

Bring down the next figure and continue until you've either completed the calculation in whole numbers, or to the places of decimals you wish.

The controversy over long division is more a matter of co-ordination rather than mathematical thinking, which is the reason mathematicians have largely lost patience with it. Children lose their place. However, long division is in some ways easier than short, as everything is written down, so that less has to be held in working memory. In short division, we carry out the same steps, but do the multiplication, subtraction and carrying in our head, which is in some ways more difficult. Both methods are impossible if children don't have fast accurate recall of tables. 

 

Dr David Sousa - How the Brain Learns

I'm investigating Dr Sousa's work on maths, to begin with, and find he recommends a brilliant book by WW Sawyer that explained to me the beginning of Calculus. Here is his blog, and I'll be posting more. Another article on Dr Sousa's work is here.

Help with Chemistry. Jim Baker

Jim Baker featured in the Guardian today, talking about his life as a chemistry teacher. Here is his website, and here is his bow tie:

Turning the Key - ALL Fringe Conference, Nottingham, 23d March.

I'm speaking at the ALL Fringe conference at Nottingham on 23rd March on using grammar to unlock languages for adults. Here is an abstract:

The late Michel Thomas made a big impact on language learning for adults with his emphasis on sentence building and shared vocabulary (cognates), combined with a pace of work closely matched to students' developing understanding. This session will take these principles further, showing how careful presentation of key grammatical features helps learners to adjust their thinking to the requirements of the new language, building understanding and confidence, and putting them in control of what they say and write. 

Wellington College Presentation, Eliminating Failure in Language Learning, February, 2013

Here is the presentation on eliminating failure in language learning I made at Wellington yesterday.  Download Eliminating failure in language learning

I was most interested in Dr Seldon's modification of Howard Gardner's "multiple intelligences" idea into a series of eight aptitudes, which he has built into the architecture of the school in the form of a fountain and garden at Princes' Court. Not all of the elements characterised by Gardner are forms of intelligence, but they are all desirable characteristics, and this is an ingenious and effective solution to the problem.

http://www.linguee.com/ Dictionary and Translation Search Engine. Wow!!!

Type in an English phrase, and get a range of possible equivalents with contexts that will let you choose exactly what you want. Get into it in English and then explore in French, German or Spanish. There has never been a resource like this for language teachers, and it is absolutely priceless - not just equivalences, but the way a Spanish, French or German person would say something in context, and how to understand what they would say to you. For intermediate learners and more advanced students and interpreters, this is a revolution in language reference materials, and it's free!  Explore, enjoy and spread the word. Many thanks to Julia Whyte for the tip.

Jane Breen, King Edward's Grammar School, Chelmsford. Time for languages.

This pdf of Jane Bean's presentation to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in 2012 makes interesting reading. Four hours of one language for two years, adding one hour of Latin in Year 8, and then a second modern language in Year 9 ensures very high levels of success and continued participation. Very well worth reading. However, if a high-attaining pupil can get a top grade in GCSE after three instead of five years, it shows - not suggests - that GCSE is not demanding enough as an end examination for a five-year course for the most able pupils. Of course, KEGS is a grammar school, but a principle of comprehensive education was that everyone should reach their maximum potential, which includes those who would otherwise have gone to grammar school.

I don't quite agree with Ms Breen's comments on primary languages, but progress does depend on how well they are taught.

Ulearn Chinese - important new resource for Mandarin.

Chinese Language Publishing's Ulearn Chinese is, alongside Harold Brown's adaptation of  Michel Thomas' method for adults, the most important development to date in teaching Mandarin to English speakers. The scheme covers all of the areas in which an English speaker - or speaker of another European language - needs to adjust his or her thinking to learn Chinese, and presents new material, including the sound and writing system, in a way that is easy to learn for a beginner. Children and adults can learn together.

A screenshot of the Chinese soundbooth. Note that hearing, speaking, and reading in pinyin and characters are presented together, maximising the use of available channels of communication. 

                                

Writing in characters is carefully and effectively taught, with large hand movements, alongside the phonic pinyin writing, and there is even a virtual pinyin keyboard. The cost is £250 for the first of 6 units, or £1000 for the complete course (so far, Units 1 and 2 have been completed). All resources can be copied or printed off as required, and  an unlimited site licence allows children and their parents to practise at home. Even with money as tight as it is, this is a bargain, and the publishers are negotiating with several Spanish regional authorities to provide online services to all of their schools.

All in all, a major contribution to European-Chinese understanding, and an intellectual tour de force by its author, Kate Hammond, and by the software team.  Click here to visit the publishers' site. 

Association for Language Learning: FLAME

 

Flame is a better acronym for using languages to teach other subjects than CLIL (content learning in languages), and the flame was lit very effectively by launch presentations by Dallam School and Do Coyle that are now online here.  

ILIC/BLEN presentations

Power point presentation,  Bilingual Schools Education Network, v similar to that I did for ILILC Download BLEN 2013.

Professor Ged Martin on language for presentations ...and Harold Evans.

Professor Ged Martin, who was once very kind to me when he was Chairman of my school's debating society, has put his thoughts on the use of spoken English in presentations  here. There is much more to recommend his site, but this might well be very useful for sixth formers and undergraduates looking for hints on finer points. 

I can't mention Ged's site without recalling Harold Evans' Essential English, a revision of his Newsman's English, for economy of style, punchiness and accuracy in writing. A classic.

ILILC 3 - last chance to book.

This international conference, a splendid example of self-help, runs next weekend, and can be highly recommended to all languages teachers. The programme is on this site. The speakers include just about everyone with a serious interest in ICT and language learning, and the conference, above all, is a splendid chance to confer - last time I attended, I had a ten minute slot in the "Show and Tell" section - courtesy of Helen Myers who kindly gave up her turn as she'd already spoken at the main conference - and can recommend this as much as any evening in education. See you there!

Clicker 6 BETT Award winner and new ipad app

Cricksoft  has deservedly won yet another award from the annual BETT technology show for the latest version of Clicker, Clicker 6. (click on pic to enlarge)

Left to right, Ian Moore, Comedian and host, Ann Crick, John Crick, Andrew Burt – Technical Development Manager, Carl Vasey – Technical Support and Testing Manager, Philippa Forrester, TV presenter and host.

Many congratulations to all at Cricksoft for their wonderful contribution to education. Clicker, as regular readers of this site will know, is in my view a work of genius, and a unique bridge between written and spoken language. The latest development is an ipad app that will allow children to practise on their ipads using grids made by the teacher and "exported", via dropbox, which is installed on the home and user devices, and which offers 2gb of free storage. This does not have the full scope of the main program, but could still be useful. The cost is £15 for the sentence builder, but half price for multiple purchases by schools. Clicker was designed for use with English speakers, and is a wonderful tool for teaching the early stages of English as an additional language. This award was for special needs, but Clicker's applications extend well beyond this area. A very important development that makes me glad I bought a mini ipad. 

Oxford and Languages: Sir Robert Taylor Society

The Sir Robert Taylor Society exists to promote outreach work from Oxford University, particularly to secondary teachers. The website offers online lectures in French, German, Russian and Spanish, and links to a much wider range of contributions. The President, Dr Helen Swift, is speaking at the Wellington College conference listed below.

Snowed in.

My regular Saturday pupil's parent has lost her voice to a bug, and his school, needless to say, is closed. Needlessly too, in my view, but we won't go into that.

So, we go over the bits and pieces of tables that he is still not sure of, and he reads me the answers he's written to Susan Elkin's comprehension questions, with his mum pointing out any errors. He has misspelled business on his last school spelling test, so we discuss busy, easy, and the position of a y at the end of English words, where the downstroke helps to emphasise the end of the word. We discuss the idea of y as a "Greek i" - igrec in French - and how it often occurs near the beginning of words of Greek origin. My pupil is good at PE, so we use physical, physics, physique, which takes us into the French letter group  que  and the fact that old French did not have k in its alphabet.  The idea that la queue, a tail, gives us queue causes some amusement. We keep flashing back to the tables, in a way that amuses my pupil, as he has learned what questions I'm likely to ask, and so can defeat me by knowing the answers in advance. Curses. We read a little from The Way Things Work. A light touch for a Saturday morning, and a request to practise subtraction over the week. 

Lesson 2 is long distance, by telephone, with a bright Y11 pupil from a private school who is having trouble with spelling and French, but not with much else. The main problem is inserting extra letters, which is probably out of anxiety and wanting to do her very best. With her mother sitting in via a speaker phone, we go through Slimmed Down Spelling, in relation to errors in her own work - the teacher marks these consistently, and she averages between five and ten errors per A4 page - and give her a strategy to apply for nex time. Unsurprisingly, she gets virtually everything right first time. An email thanking me arrives next morning from the friend who referred her - "They are buzzing..." 

Association for Language Learning, Language World, 22-23 March

Language world is at Nottingham Trent University. I'll be speaking on the theme "Turning the key - using grammar to unlock languages for adult learners" on the Saturday morning.  

Modern Languages Conference, Wellington College, 25th February.

 

Conference:  "Rethinking Modern Foreign Languages Teaching for the 21st Century"  A conference hosted by Wellington College with The Holt School. Venue: Wellington College Date: Monday 25 February 2013. - 09:20 - 16:00  Price: £70 per delegate   Why attend this conference: The teaching of Modern Foreign Languages appears to face a more serious crisis than at any time in the history of British education. As declining numbers of students opt for MFL at Sixth Form,  what are the implications for schools, universities, employers, and Britain's place in the world?  Will the British be unable to communicate with our European neighbours? Or is the real story to be found in the growth of interest in languages connected to rising economic powers - such as China and Brazil - or areas of political and strategic sensitivity, such as the Middle East?  Does the rise of online translation tools make the learning of languages redundant ?  Is the future of MFL be found in the innovative research and teaching of Britain's best universities and schools?  And what practical strategies can be employed in your own schools to reverse the trend of declining uptake? An opportunity to discuss these questions with speakers including: Professor Antonella Sorace (University of Edinburgh), Professor Suzanne Graham (Reading University), Dr Helen Swift (Oxford University ) and educational consultant and writer, John Bald.  There will also be an opportunity to take part in a Mandarin class, and observe a range of innovative MFL lessons. Other speakers to be confirmed. Speakers include:  Professor Antonella Sorace (University of Edinburgh) Professor Suzanne Graham (University of Reading) Dr Helen Swift (University of Oxford) John Bald, Educational Consultant and writer  Who should attend:  A conference for MFL subject leaders and teachers; Directors of Studies; leaders of schools and colleges with languages specialisms; education journalists; academics, anyone with an interest in the future of MFL. Delegate Fee:  £70.00 per delegate, to include refreshments at registration, mid-morning coffee break and lunch. Agenda:   This will be updated as other speakers are confirmed.  Contact:   If you have any queries - please contact the Conference Organiser at tw@wellingtoncollege.org.uk or call 01344 444085

To Register:   Once you have read this page please press on the REGISTER button above.

Venue:   Wellington College, Crowthorne, Berks, RG45 7PU.   Please click on the location/map tab at the top of this page for full directions. Please note the SAT NAV post code to follow to bring you to the front gates is:   RG45 6DY

 

 

FrenchTeacher.net

A lively and colourful website, with lots of clearly designed resources and a very reasonable subscription at £20 pa. Well worth checking out, here.  Lots of Spanish resources too. 

 

BLEN last call.

Good people speaking on this conference, and better value than most of the competition. Click on poster to enlarge.

Interlude: Honest John

This Honest John is a motoring correspondent for the Telegraph, who tells us things manufacturers don't want us to know. Here is a list of recent questions. John probably stays honest because it's his living - unfortunately, some dealers are not honest because they find it more profitable. I drive a Mondeo, and strongly recommend Marshalls of Cambridge as honest dealers. 

Christmas Present from Janet Ahlberg (and The Guardian...)

 

Click on Santa to learn to draw him.

Neroscience Commentary, 2006

Thanks to Hilary Jones for pointing out Download Neuroscience Commentary FINAL (1)from the Teaching and Learning Research Project. Many of the leaders in the field have contributed to it, and it has some of the best diagrams of brain cells and connections that I've seen.  The sections on the influence of caffeine (negative) and of sleep (positive) on brain functioning and learning are most informative, particularly the diagrams showing that, as we sleep, we appear to repeat the mental processes we were going through when awake, so in effect adding unconscious practice. The paper also notes, in the context of brain gym, that, while dehydration inhibits thinking, so does drinking water when one is not thirsty. 

 

Meaning and the Brain - New Scientist, 17.11.12

An important report on the organisation of meaning in the brain finds that different words having the same meaning - eg horse and paard, in Dutch - tend to activate the same areas of the brain, although the precise cell clusters differ with individuals:

"This type of pattern recognition approach is a very exciting scientific tool for investigating how and where knowledge is represented in the brain," says Zoe Woodhead at University College London, who wasn't involved in the study. "Words that mean the same thing in different languages activate the same set of neurons encoding that concept, regardless of the fact that the two words look and sound completely different."

This reinforces the idea that new languages are not learned from scratch, but are grafted onto structures that have developed in the brain as we learn our first language. It is, therefore, not merely sensible but important to bring all of a person's intellectual capacity to bear in the task of learning the new language, including their ability to relate patterns in sounds and meaning to patterns in letters.

These patterns vary with each new language, and reflect the culture of the speakers as much as the rules of their grammar. French is the most obvious example. French people like their spoken language to flow freely, with mild variations in intonation that are far removed from those of English, and farther still from those of German. Consonants are not allowed to get in the way of flow, and when they do, they are simply not pronounced. Jerky vowels are simply banished. Written language must be precise and unambiguous (except, of course, when the French wish to be so). So, written French ties up gender, tense and sentence organisation much more tightly than English, and often with word endings that are not pronounced, so that to understand a verb or group of words, we need to understand grammar as well as sound. This is the true hidden agenda of French. Once it is understood, its patterns are reasonably regular and predictable, and a pleasure to use. Unless it is understood, French comes with tears. 

 

Piano practice, how slow is slow?

Sir Thomas Allen takes care to ensure that everyone who wants to hear him can do so, and peforms to the same standard in a school hall as at the Royal Opera House. Last weekend he was at St Christopher's hospice in Sydenham, and the person sitting next to me happened to be a professional pianist. I mentioned to her that I was having trouble practising slowly enough, and she said that she also had to practice extremely slowly, sometimes even stopping with her hands in the correct position when she had to play difficult pieces. 

Patrick has told me something between 500 and 1,000 times that I go too quickly, and this is probably going to prevent me from playing as I would like to unless I can stop it. As soon as I manage to play part of a piece properly, I tend to speed up on that part, creating uneveness. Following this conversation with my kind neighbour, I've moved to seeing how slowly I can manage to play, with the idea of getting all of the information from the score into my mind without the pressure that leads to jerky playing. It seems to be working - my Mozart sonata is a little better, and I'm playing things by Fanny Waterman, who puts pianistic technique into the simplest pieces, with more confidence. 

Catherine Edwards' lovely new recording of Stanford's music for violin and piano ls here. 

Evening Standard Reading Campaign - punch the air!

Excellent piece in The Standard today, showing just why helping someone with reading is a certain way of not wasting your time. Meantime, they have renamed Volunteer Reading Help as Beanstalk. The only way is up...

Two clips on behaviour - Bill Rogers, Ruth Miskin and the alternative to good discipline.

Bill Rogers uses the politically correct term "challenging" for a poorly behaved class that is out of control. His first approach is to "get the teacher out of there" by saying there is a message for them at the office, and then finding ways of rebuilding the teacher's relationship with the class. Giving the teacher the authority to order an immediate two-hour detention for anyone misbehaving might be a more sensible alternative. Two hours is a long time.

Ruth Miskin offers five principles - passion, participation, (focused) praise, pace (lively, no down time), purpose (teachers need to be clear on what they are doing, and adapt teaching style and method to it.) Ruth Miskin is working with younger children rather than adolescents, but her principles integrate each element of effective teaching into the approach on behaviour. In the secondary context, Ark academies' approach benefits from its use of assessment to ensure that pupils are given the right work.

Clicking on either of these links will bring up a series of clips on behaviour, many of which are worth watching for different reasons. English Teacher Going Mad shows what can happen, and shouldn't.

Interlude - Telegraph, free speech, and the lying Ministry of Defence

Even in the days of Sir Humphry, the MoD was a by-word for out and out lying, and its treatment of Sergeant Nightingale, freed after an unjust court martial - plead guilty and you'll get off light - showed the danger of state regulation of the press. A D-notice is a device intended to prevent the publication of information dangerous to national security, and one was issued to the Telegraph in respect of this case, that involved no issue of national security whatsoever. This is reminiscent of the Kremlin's use of insanity laws to lock up its opponents, though I suppose it does stop short of the assassination currently practised in some countries. It's a good job the MoD could not enforce its D-Notice.