John Bald/language and literacy

Languages Show Live: Success without tears in the early stages of language learning. Sunday 13th October,10.30, Business Design Centre, Islington.

Apologies. This talk has been moved to 3pm on Sunday.

 

The head of languages at a celebrated specialist school told a conference I attended at Wellington College a couple of years ago that, "We have a lot of tears in the first term." Observation of lessons over the last thirty years, my own and other people's, confirms this. Failure in languages usually starts right at the beginning, and becomes increasingly difficult to reverse. 

This is not necessary. Brain research has given us valuable insights into the formation of the networks in the brain that are the physical manifestation of learning, and into ways of promoting them. In particular, it has shown that the areas of the brain involved in spoken and written language are located very close to each other, and often overlap. If we tap into this capacity from the first days of learning a new language, without overloading children with more information than their developing brains can handle at one time, we can replace tears and failure with smiles and success. 

This presentation, which draws on previous presentations on brain research, will show how to do this for beginning learners in primary and secondary schools, and will feature the toolkits for French, German and Spanish available on this site. Once the basic approach shown in the toolkits is established, we can move outwards in any direction we choose, in order best to meet the needs and interests of our pupils.

Download Languages Show 2017

http://johnbald.typepad.com/language/2017/10/brain-research-how-myolin-lets-us-think-faster.html

 

Eliminating Copying in Language Teaching - it works! Letter from a teacher.

Since 1980, I've been campaigning against the practice of copying in schools. Switching the eyes back and forth between the original and the child's copy interferes with the development of understanding, and is anti-educational. I've just had this from a teacher who tried it.

Dear John

 

Some time ago I was in contact with you regarding the possibility of carrying out some research.  The sticking point as I remember for me was your insistence that children should not be copying off the board.  Again if memory serves me well I did not at the time understand how, from a practical point of view in an ordinary classroom with 30 challenging youngsters, it could be achieved.  I just wanted to up date you with the fact that I did not forget what you have written about copying from the board, and my pupils no longer copy from the board apart from the date and title which they are obliged to do in the school I now work in. 

It has been a good decision and freed up time for more productive activities.  I have moved to a school where I am the only teacher of French and so have a certain amount of autonomy as to how I teach French.  It is a high school so the children begin in year 9 and much of my work is building confidence.  Thank you for your blog it really makes me think and change my practice for the better .  I am just about to look at the material on teaching phonics (French).  I already do this but feel I need to so more extensively.

Kind regards

 

S.

 

Assessment in language learning - the key skill, and how to focus on it.

As we learn a new language, we adjust and extend our thinking from the structures we have learned while learning our first language. These involve, in the initial stages, big changes in pronunciation and in our understanding of the use of letters to represent sounds in words. The primary toolkits on this site show how these can be introduced and explained in the first few lessons - and in particular in the very first lesson, where colours illustrate most of the main changes, in a context that is self-evident.

To communicate using the new language, however, we need to know how to put our words together to make a sentence, and to understand sentences that we hear or read. This can be achieved by building up sentences based on personal experience and preferences, and gradually extending these to encompass as much of the scope of the language as a learner wishes, or is able, to know. This sentence construction uses grammar for communication, rather than as an end in itself.

The techniques in the toolkits, if possible supported by the teacher's own resources using Clicker,  enable each child to learn to compose and understand sentences, without the illusions created by copying. The approach is very easy to use, and builds assessment into the teaching, so that there is no extra work for the teacher. Any system of assessment that does not focus on sentence construction is giving a false picture of a child's ability to understand and use the language.  I'm happy to discuss this further.

Dyslexia and Foreign Language Learning: Futurelearn, Lancaster University.

This course makes balanced and innovative use of the internet to present teachers with a balanced and challenging introduction to a field that is almost wholly neglected. Most children who are assessed as dyslexic are either withdrawn from most of their lessons, or given no chance at all to learn a language. Others are placed in mixed ability classes with no special help, in the sure and certain knowledge that they will fail. Participants on this course are not expected to agree with every word of it, and are given opportunities to comment, argue and interact with instructors and other course members at every stage, using the comments board. There are video demonstrations, research references - on which I'll post separately - recommended reading, and assignments.  A certificate of participation is available for £39, though this is not a strong point, as participants to not need to complete the course in order to receive it. Otherwise the course is free.

Participants are invited to submit a lesson plan for discussion by their fellow-students. Mine was a little too long to post on the site, so here it is:

Spanish, Lesson 1.

From experience and observation, failure in language learning often begins in the first lesson, where pupils are not expected fully to understand the language they are given. My approach ensures complete success in this first lesson and begins the process of adjusting the learner's thinking so that they can say what they want to say in their new language. An outline of the whole approach, and its consistency with the emerging evidence from neuroscience, is on my site johnbald.typepad.com, beginning with the ppt downloadable from http://johnbald.typepad.com/language/eliminating-failure-in-language-learning.

This assignment demonstrates a multisensory approach to a first lesson in Spanish for speakers of English. I vary the content of the lesson according to the needs of the class or student, but I introduce colours at an early stage, using the ppt at this

http://johnbald.typepad.com/language/2013/06/new-national-curriculum-first-steps-in-spanish-free-toolkit-for-primary-schools.html

Many of the features of Spanish pronunciation that are new to English speakers can be learned and explained in this first lesson.   One way to start is to write rojo on the board, and go round the room pointing at red things and having children repeat the word. Then have them study the word. What letter is not giving us the same sound as in English? They will notice j. Then look away from the board and trace rojo on their sleeve with their finger. Who got it nearly right? Who got it completely right? Who remembered j?  They will probably all have got it right first time, as there is only one new thing to remember. Once they've done this with finger tracing, they can write on a miniboard or in a notebook. I repeat with these further colours, unpacking the new feature, explaining and practising until the pupils have it completely right, and have the satisfaction of knowing that they can write it as well as say it.

The key features are:

• rojo   Stress on first syllable, j giving h sound.
• azul  Stress on second syllable, z giving th sound.
• amarillo,   stress on penultimate syllable, 11 giving  a distinctive, y sound.
• verde,  Spanish v sound, very light touch of the lips. Have pupils say very, and feel their top teeth touch their bottom lip. The teeth don't touch in Spanish, but the sound is not a hard plosive as in bad.
• marrón   Ask if children can see anything here they wouldn't see in an English word.  They might call the accent a line or something similar. Explain that the accent is our friend, and tells us what to stress

 Once something is learned, I use it as a starter in the next lesson. For colours, I might pick up three pencils of different colours. I'll say three colours, one or two of which will be wrong, before giving the right combination. At each stage, I'll ask if I've got it right. Children find this amusing, and soon recognise colours.

 At an early stage, and sometimes in the first lesson, I use the same approach to sentence building using tengo. I explain that Spanish people usually take a shortcut by not putting in the companion word (pronoun) that we need to use in English. I'll ask if they can see the two English words in tengo - ten and go - and they'll write it on their sleeve.  I'll then explain hermano and hermanas, pointing out the final letter as a useful guide - but not an infallible one - and they'll trace and write some sentences saying how many brothers and sisters they have. Finally, no tengo to indicate a negative.

Around half of the children can learn to write sentences in this way, without copying, from the age of seven, and I've had no failures from the age of eight onwards. Eliminating Failure Slide 33 shows the result from a pupil assessed as dyslexic, in an ordinary class, after one lesson.

 

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-2

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.