John Bald/language and literacy

Rachel Hawkes, Comberton Village College

Rachel Hawkes' weblog, here, generously shares lots of practical teaching ideas, including conference presentations that would otherwise cost a lot of money to see. Recommended.

French Revolution, and the gift of time.

The approaches to French set out in postings below are having a remarkable effect on learning in the primary school I'm currently working with most. By focussing on understanding key concepts in the early stages, teaching writing and speaking together, and using questioning techniques that involve the whole class, we are finding that, after a little more than two terms, pupils:

• understand gender in nouns, and apply it when writing about themselves (eg girls usually add e to an adjective in a sentence such as je suis poli(e)
• hold a simple sentence in their mind and write it without copying
• recognise French personal prounouns and are beginning to know the way verbs change with them
• recognise the difference between tu and vous in classroom commands and respond accordingly
• understand the use of ne and pas to make a negative
• recognise shared words between English and French, and begin to make sense of translations of their class rules.

The gift of time in primary languages allows these key elements in understanding to be consolidated over time, and for children who don't understand something first time round to practise. The pressure of time is one of three main sources of failure in secondary schools - the others are going too fast for children to understand, and copying. For the first time since I began teaching French in 1973, I think we have a solution to the problem of failure that has beset us for centuries.

 

 

 

Take Mali - Vive le français, langue mondiale!

French is an international language, spoken by people of many races and cultural backgrounds. Take Mali provides an important focal point for this dimension of French studies by bringing together video and resources covering a wide range of Malian society and work. Take Mali is not a self-contained course, but a series of units that will make sense to children at different stages of the 7-14 curriculum - only a few sections, including some of those on the school and games - are aimed at beginners. Elsewhere, the French is quite advanced (though it comes with full transcripts) and careful preparation will be needed to use it in lessons. However, the detailed teachers' book will help with planning, and interested older pupils could be encouraged to explore the materials on their own. A strong recommendation for all UK schools offering French at Stages 2 and 3.

 

Teaching Schools Alliance Modern Languages Conference, Manchester, October 2011

This power point presentation was given to the Training and Development Agency's conference for the Teaching Schools Alliance on 11th October.  Download Language Learning and Brain Activity. TDA Oct11.  A list of references for further reading is here.

Not a bad day's work...

To Hackney, for a short professional development session on French with some of my thoughtful, determined and well-organised colleagues who are holding the line for civilisation. A quick reorganisation of my main slide on suggestions for the very first lesson, and we are away, just twenty minutes to discuss what we have achieved in our first term - introducing pronouns, positive and negative sentences with être and avoir, identifying masculine and feminine, songs and practice with Languagenut, and beginning to say anything we wish to. French is not a bolt on to the school's work, but fundamental to its core values of helping children to make the right choices, and to see that hard work and concentration will pay off. A very happy atmosphere, and I am rewarded with a warm round of applause. This will not make it any less tough when the children return next week. Bon courage à tous.

Then across London to work with a ten year old whose reading problems have not been completely resolved by synthetic phonics. The basic techniques outlined by Sue Palmer in her description of work with her daughter, slightly reorganised so that the same guidance can be used for reading and spelling, produce their usual effect, and the observing parent describes the outcome as "fantastic". A colleague has observed the whole lesson, from the time I greeted the young man to the time I left his home, and will send an account to Sir James Rose, who did not receive the evidence I sent him about this teaching, and who is now very interested in it. 

On the way back to the tube, I bump into a very senior figure in the education world, whose name I can't give here. He had also had dealings with the last government on a range of issues, and said that civil servants had become so close to ministers that they simply excluded anything that was not in the party line. They were no longer behaving as civil servants. The ministry says that my work may have been lost en route to a researcher. I can't believe this. Someone must have made a note of it, and, if it had been sent to an (unnamed) researcher, someone must have expected a response, and would have chased it if none had been received. This would have shown the loss, and I would have been asked for an other copy. It's embarrassing to lose things, but this is what I and newspapers I've worked with have done when it happens - the penalty has usually been a sarcastic comment from the sender, followed by a new copy.

My own belief is that the work was deliberately suppressed by someone in the ministry, or by someone else connected with the inquiry, as it goes against both the government line and the views of the voluntary organisations that have been given a disproportionate role in public provision for dyslexia. This is the way New Labour did things. As Mandelson once said, it involves the creation of truth. He later retracted this statement, saying you can't create truth. But he was right the first time. The price of artificial truth in this instance is tens of millions of pounds wasted on training and provision that is not based on full assessment of the available evidence, and much puffed up self importance from what New Labour termed third sector organisations that don't know as much as they think they do. The whole truth, or as close to it as current evidence will take us, is now available, and it is not too late to put right the mistake.

Débâcle. GCSE languages entries.

 CILT has a usefuls table of entries in French, German and Spanish, since 1996. (the full table can be downloaded here).  

French entries have fallen from 347,960 in 1996, to 318,963 in 2005, to 154,221 in 2011. The fall in French entries since 1996 is therefore 56%.  Such is the legacy of New Labour on French.

Spanish entries have risen from 42,553 in 1996, to 62,489 in 2005, to 66,021 in 2011. This is a fall from over 67,000 in Spanish in the previous two years, so the growth in Spanish has stalled.

German entries have fallen from 134,286 in 1996, to 105,259 in 2005, to 60,887 in 2011. The fall of nearly 10,000 entries between 2010 and 2011 is proportionately the largest of these three languages.

These are national statistics, and so include the private sector, which has close to 100% of pupils taking a language. The fall of almost 200,000 pupils a year taking French, and 60,000 a  year taking German, since 2006, is catastrophic, and not seriously ofset by the gain in Spanish. Overall,  entries in the major European languages have fallen from 524,799 to 277,597, a loss of 247,202, or 47%.

The falls in entries for geography and history make this a compelling argument for Ebac. These subjects are all better represented in the private sector. It should be a matter of pride for those of us in the public sector that we do not offer children fewer opportunities than they would have if their parents were better off. Science has begun to pull its socks up. So should languages.

 

 

Your Child's Right to Learn a Language

All children have a legal right to study a language from 11 -16, but a parliamentary answer to Nick Gibb MP revealed 25 secondary schools that are not offering this. This is illegal, and probably not the full picture, as the government can only reply about schools it knows about.

If your child is not being allowed to learn a language, I am happy to help on a no-cost basis.  After you have written to the headteacher to point out the situation, if you have no positive response, email me and I will advise on the next steps. These should include involving the local media.