John Bald/language and literacy

Outstanding progress in writing and speaking.

After the Wellington Festival, we returned to work on Tuesday morning with a session that I found pure delight. The pupils had worked on the errors in their drafts and practised their pronunciation really hard, and we started by having them read back their own writing.

Here are pupil A's first and second pieces of writing, both completed in five minutes with no prompts or backup of any kind. The goal in the first piece was to practise the French technique of using silent letters at the ends of words to indicate meaning without breaking flow. We also practised the technique of dropping the vowel from a short companion word to avoid a glottal stop. The examples of this are highlighted in blue.  

l'homme, la femme, le garçon, la fille, bonjour, salut, merci, nous sommes calmes, nous sommes riches, j'aime, j'adore, j'aime les chiens, j'adore notre chat, j'ai, tu as, il a, elle a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont, elles ont, s'il vous plaît, noir, rose, blanc.

In the second piece, pupil A moved to sentences and wrote this:

Je m'appelle SM. J’ai onze ans et je suis née le neuf septembre 2003. Mes parents s'appellent K  et J M.. J'ai deux soeurs qui s'appellent Olivia et Gloria et un frère qui s'appelle Michael. Gloria travaille actuellement à Londres pour Amnesty International.  Michael vit a Singapour et travaille en tant que journaliste pour un journal d'entreprise. Nous avons deux collies, Manchee et Bella, qui ont dix mois. Nous les avons depuis huit mois et ils sont vraiment mignons.

Ma meilleure amie est Gemma Ramsay, qui habite à trois portes de chez nous. Nous aimons être ensemble  et jouer avec les chiens. Hier, nous sommes allées au cinema voir Pitch Perfect 2, un film au sujet d'un groupe de chant a capella.

Pupil A had practised reading this with her mother, and read it back with beautiful French pronunciation and only one or two small errors. For someone who had been learning French for six months it was a remarkable performance. Discussing it, I suggested that the French would be more likely to say "il est journaliste," which is more direct, and a matter of usage rather than grammar.

Pupil B is a year older, but her first piece was similar in scope to pupil A's. Note that in both pieces I had taught the purposes of accents in French very carefully, so that the pupils understood what they were doing and why.

bonjour, bonsoir, salut, au revoir, à plus tard, bientôt, bienvenu, oui, non, merci beaucoup, aller, être, Comment allez-vous?  avez vous,   Quel âge as-tu?  j'habite,   Quelle heure  est-il,  je vous en prie,  je ne comprends pas, pourvoir, parce que, j'aime mon joli chapeau.

Pupil B's second piece took her a little more than five minutes to write, and was truly astonishing for a twelve year-old who had been learning French for six months.

Je m’appelle OM. J’ai douze ans. Je suis née à Harrogate dans le Nord de l'Angleterre, mais je vis à Falkirk en Écosse depuis six ans. Je vis avec ma soeur, ma mère, mon père et deux chiens, Bella et Manchee. Je suis éduquée à domicile par mes parents. J'aimerais pouvoir explorer les sujets en plus de détail et j'ai découvert de nouveaux sujets, tels que le cinéma et l'histoire de l'art. J'aime particulièrement les films d'Alfred Hitchcock, surtout North by North-West  parce qu'il est plein de suspense. J'aimerais aller à l'université pour étudier la criminologie et de la psychologie, la médecine peut-être. Mes parents s'appellent J  et K . Mon père est un inventeur et ingénieur spécialisé dans les technologies de l'énergie renouvelable et maman aide papa avec l'entreprise.

Elle a fait des études à l'Université de Manchester et a obtenu un baccalauréat spécialisé avec distinction en anthropologie sociale. J'ai un frère qui s'appelle Michael, qui vit à Singapour. Il a un baccalauréat spécialisé avec distinction en journalisme et écrit pour un journal dans la section Affaires. J'ai aussi deux sœurs   qui s'appellent Sophie et Gloria. Gloria possède une maîtrise en droit des droits de l'homme et travaille pour Amnesty International en tant que spécialiste du Moyen-Orient. Sophie est ma soeur cadette. Elle a 11 ans et fait ses études à domicile avec moi. Elle aimerait aller à l'université pour étudier le design d'intérieur.

Mon cousin Steven est  berger sur une ferme à Dumfries. Les nouveaux agneaux viennent de naître. Nous aimons passer un séjour sur sa ferme et monter sur le quad, mais c'est un peu dangereux!

Pupil B's reading was good, but less fluent than pupil A's, partly because what she had set out to say was much more complex. "Soeur" caused some problems that we did not quite fix during the lesson, but we'll see again next week.

This work is an example of mastery technique in teaching and learning, and mirrors the success of this approach in the government's initiative in mathematics. Learning involves the development of new neural networks that are reinforced by practice. Overloading them, or going too quickly, inhibits or prevents their development. Matching teaching and learning to individual children's needs promotes growth. The common practice in language teaching of ignoring errors, rather than using them as an indication of what needs to be taught, is the opposite of mastery learning, and a catastrophic error.

Wellington Festival of Education, notes and presentations. John Stein dyslexia, John Bald, French to Falkirk.

Wellington Festival of Education 2015 was a great success for Sir Anthony Seldon, and remains the only educational event that is genuinely open to all for a reasonable subscription. Highlights included an excellent double act between Tony Little, head of Eton, and Eton's head of administration and technology, Percy Harrison - Eton can give a joke as well as take one - and Professor John Stein's excellent presentation of new evidence of brain development and dyslexia. Professor Stein's evidence of irregular development and distribution of large and small cells in the receptive areas for vision and sound, of genetic elements, and of of the influence of Omega 3 oils brings us close to a definitive picture of the condition, though of course none of these techniques are available in the normal course of assessment, which remains vulnerable to the factors identified by Professor Joe Elliot of Durham.  Download 10.00 - John Stein

My presentation on French to Falkirk is here.  Download French to Falkirk, Wellington 2015  The slides of writing are remarkable for pupils who have been learning for under six months, and pupil B has studied a further twenty pages of Le Petit Prince, looking for shared words, since last week.

 

64, no more...

My pupils in Falkirk and their mother sent me this lovely card to mark my status as the first recorded male member of my family to trouble the administrators of the state pension scheme:

 

One of the most interesting things about the Falkirk lessons is continuity - they are not cancelled because of school trips, visiting speakers or extra maths lessons (though we have done some maths too). So, we are able to build up the children's knowledge, skills and understanding in a consistent way, with skilled reinforcement and practice from Katharine between the lessons. It feels a lot like flying. The children were kind enough to thank me for being "a great teacher".  I'd like to thank them for being great pupils. In fact, great students.

Falkirk Lessons 9 and 10, 11th and 18th March 2015

Lesson 9 continued with Le Petit Prince, once again unpacking and explaining every grammatical point until we reached the picture of the snake that had swallowed an elephant. 

Next, we agreed that I would show the pupils how to say anything they wanted to in French, but once again explaining exactly why things were phrased as they were, practising grammatical points and using them as focal points for extensions. These are the sentences the children asked for, and the way I suggested they would say these things in French.

Excuse me but can you tell me where the toilets are (as I suffer from
bladder weakness)?   Excusez-moi (monsieur ou madame), où sont les toilettes, s'il vous plaît?

J'ai une faiblesse de vessie.      (J'ai une crise de foie, à cause du foie gras.) 

   Ma foi ! Mon père. Mon frère, Michel.  ma mère. (using the companion words to find gender, rather than the noun, and pointing out that an e at the end of a noun did not necessarily indicate that it was feminine).    sion, ssion, tion, always feminine. La dépression.  Je suis déprimé(e).  La condition humaine.  Systématiquement. Conséquement. Mutuellement.   Pari mutuel  le tiercé.    Te voilà de retour.

How much does this cost and can I really afford it? Cela coûte  (vaut  valoir  la valeur)  combien, et est-ce que je peux me le permettre?  (Un permis de conduir.)

Can you tell me where the nearest park is because I would like to walk
my dogs. Excusez-moi (monsieur ou madame) pouvez-vous m'indiquer le parc le plus proche, car j'aimerais promener mes chiens.  Une promenade.  Je me promène le dimanche.  

Can we have the bill now, please? L'addition, s'il vous plaît.

I've lived in Scotland since I was five years old.  Before that we
lived in Yorkshire.  Je vis en Ecosse depuis l'âge de cinq ans. Avant, nous habitions le Yorkshire.

My dog ate my homework. Mon chien a mangé mes devoirs.

Do you know the way to Saint-Germain Boulevard? Excusez-moi (monsieur ou madame), pour aller au Bd.St-Germain s'il vous plaît?

Sorry but I can't come out now.  I'm too busy. Désolée, mais je ne peux pas sortir en ce moment. Je suis trop occupée  (J'ai trop de choses à faire.)     Sortie.

Why is the weather so awful in Scotland? Pourquoi fait-il toujours un temps aussi moche en Ecosse?

What is the answer to life, the universe and everything? Que signifient, la vie, l'univers et tout? Quarante-deux.

 

Falkirk Lesson 8, 4th March 2015.

Traditional grammar would teach and practise regular verb forms in the present tense before introducing past tenses, then future and then conditional. For these lessons, I'm trying a different approach, using the idea of time zones rather than tenses, and drawing analogies between the way English and French operate. So, we took the first two paragraphs of Le Petit Prince, and studied them closely, looking at the verb forms and the ending, ait, that kept appearing. We looked at the composed and simple past tenses, and continuous past tenses, in English and French, and agreed that the pupils would return to these paragraphs over the week, and make sure they understood them fully. As always, we looked at shared or mostly shared words in the text, and were grateful for them (serpent, magnifique, histoire, image, forêt, copie, boa, représentait, entière,  digestion). I thought mâchait might be the origin of mashed potato, but the OED tells me it's more likely to be German. Still, the shared words gave us ten out of a total of 84 words in the two paragraphs, and many of them are key words.

Parent asked about accents and how they were used, so I took words from the book that had an accent, read them out, and had the pupils in turn say whether they thought the accent was grave or acute. We noticed that nearly all accents were on e, that the acute tended to stretch the sound différent, and the grave to cut it short planète. One pupil noticed that there were a lot more acute accents than grave, which is consistent with the accentuation of vowel sounds in French, and with preserving flow rather than cutting things short. I pointed out that graves were usually found near the end of words rather than at the beginning. The atmosphere was more like a seminar than a lesson, with everyone free to offer observations and thoughts. Parent's email that afternoon - I love the way you're teaching tenses. Never mind the kids, I'm learning so much! 

 

A parent's view of Falkirk Lesson 7.

I just wanted to send a quick 'MERCI!' for yur lesson this morning.  Even though the sound was not ideal we both learnt so many interesting and helpful things.  I really think that your approach is the most advanced I have come across.  I managed to go through six years of French at secondary school without understanding the meaning of words.  All we did was rote learning and it was useless when I arrived in Paris to study, some years later.  

 

As one of my favourite anthropologists, Claude Levi-Strauss, taught, to understand a culture one must understand its language and both are function as 'bricolage', a way of recombining facets of universal consciousness in new ways for the advancement of that particular culture.  It is this psychological bricolage that I believe you offer because you seek to build up cognitive links which wil enable students to retrieve and recombine this knowledge and linguistic grammar in new ways.  It's absolutely the only way forward because it goes to the very roots of cultural development.  It enables us to understand why French is spoken differently, with diverse styles and flows of linguistic combination but also how these are linked to English (and how much vocab) which builds a sense of continuity with the past and a sense of shared liguistic heritage.  I feel that this is very important psychologically for children as they learn that they, and the subjects they study, do not exist in isolation but are part of a fascinating web of cultural life in which we all share.   Surely this is an example of REAL One Nationism, or even One Worldism which joins and embraces, not fractures and dissipates.  

 

We like your approach so much that we now use it in everything we teach, from history to science to mathematics.  We understand the language, the grammar of the subject.  Then we can play!  For example, we have spent considerable time building a thorough understanding of mathematical algebraic terminology.  Then we add the method.  Then the children can solve any equation, any sum.  When I read about the classical trivium it appears to follow similar principles - grammar, logic, rhetoric.  It just seems that we have moved away from this method over the years and not for the better.  You cannot analyse what you do not know.  And you do not know if you cannot understand the core of a subject which in turn requires comprehension of language.  Maybe this is too much of a challenge for teachers as it requires a deep subject knowledge and personal development many do not have.  But clearly 'things' are not moving in the right direction.

 

I'm sorry you face such vitriol on a daily basis but I am not surprised.  We live in a world of mediocrity, after all.  The Guardian is no exception.  But I must say you are always very gracious.  I would have become some sort of evil internet troll by now!  When I talk to friends and family, particularly those involved in the Arts, they unanimously lament the passing of real cultural interest.  That's why I try to take the girls to concerts, galleries etc.  Not to learn but to love.  To elevate their souls.  And for the really great coffee at the RSNO...

 

Postmodernism wasn't all it was cracked up to be.  As a friend once remarked, "You know Roland Barthes was run over on the Place de la Concorde.  He WAS deconstructed!"

 

Bravo, John.  Please keep on annoying people for the foreseeable future.   

Falkirk Lesson 7, 25th February

Despite a break, difficult sound conditions over the internet, and the indisposition of one of the pupils with a ricked neck, we started Le Petit Prince today, after just six lessons. The pupils had, though, been practising reading Pas Maintenant Bernard, and are receiving excellent support form their mother.

As usual, anything that they happened to be doing or saying in English is used as a way into French, and the pupil with a sore neck needed a hot water bottle. I've never had cause to use such a thing in France and had to look it up.  It is une bouillotte, with some alternatives - a stone one, my Harraps tells me, is un cruchon. Also as usual, I unpacked and explained every detail. Below is note of what we'd discussed.

After explaining the idea of time zones, and particularly the past zone, I read the first paragraph of the book and explained every detail of it. Pupils will study it, and we´ll go over it again next week. It contains imperfect and perfect tenses, with present introduced in paragraph 2. 

Note.

(Q. If le petit prince had a sister, what would she be? And a big sister? P had to work quite hard to make all of the companion words match the gender of the noun)

 Le petit prince.    La petite princesse.  

Le grand prince.  La grande princesse.

Oir.    Oyez.   J'ai oui.  -  Oui!    (Origin of French for Yes)

Entendre         entente cordiale       Cordialement   ment  =  ly   Amicalement   un ami/une amie Exactement

Oui     beau      la beauté         la belle

Bouillir     bouillon        bullion    une bouillotte

Avec les aquarelles de l'auteur  (aquarium -water- watercolour)

 

Voir   Tu vois?  Au revoir.  ( Adieu.Adíos).      Voilà     Voici

Histoire  history  

Victoire victory

Une avalanche  (le boa avale sa proie)

 

Falkirk Lesson 6, 11th February.

Le Petit Prince had not yet arrived, but the pupils had had brioche for breakfast, so we talked about Marie Antoinette, - Qu'ils mangent de la brioche - and sang the verb song with manger. I explained why we kept the e in nous mangeons, to keep the g soft, and it turned up later in the lesson in mangea.  I have a vivid memory of learning this at school, and being pleased at getting it right, but no one explained why the letter was needed, and I only understood why when I started teaching people to read in English, and met the pattern of e, y an i softening a g - most of the time - and c, virtually all of the time.

It took 10 minutes to teach the pupils to tell the time, including minuit and midi, and we agreed that they would try to tell the time in French consistently over the next week. We then read the version of Pas Maintenant, Bernard,  Download Not now Bernard powerpoint concentrating on pronunciation, and introducing the simple past tense in the context of the story - Bernard alla dans le jardin, Le monstre monta l'escalier, regarda la télévision (remembering that the acute accents "stretch" the sound of the e, so it is not pronounced like television) etc. This took about 30 minutes, and we all enjoyed it.

Finally, we used the ppt of the weather from the French toolkit, again explaining each French expression, and concentrating on pronunciation. Three things to practise for next week - time, weather and Pas Maintenant, Bernard.

French to Falkirk, Lesson 5. Time Zones.

This lesson was experimental The pupils said they couldn't get Zim Zam Zoum out of their heads, which was of course the idea, and an other nice tribute to Taught By Song.  I picked up the masculine/feminine distinctions in the first song - Je suis français/française - and we discussed the purposes of the cedilla (Eg cela and ça). We reviewed the use of companion words (gramatically, articles/determiners and adjectives) to work out the gender of a new word. We sang the verb song, with aller, and got onto the main substance of the lesson, time zones.

Last time, I had explained the origin of the term "tense" in the old French word for time. It is anything but a transparent term, and its everyday meaning conveys its effect - it creates tension. So, as an experiment, I tried the term "time zone", which includes both separate verb forms, and what linguistics specialists describe as "aspect" where context and emphasis indicate time as well as changes in the form of the verb.

The zones we thought of were these, with their English equivalents:

Le présent           I am learning French      I learn French        J'apprends le français.  French.      Face      

Le passé              Ccomposed   (composé)      I have learned French.      J'ai appris le français.

                          Continuous    (imparfait)    I was learning French.      J'apprenais le français.

                                                                  You were learning French.    Tu apprenais le français.

                                            (l apprenait   nous apprenions, vous appreniez, ils/elles apprenaient_   

                           Simple                                          I learned French                    J'appris le  français

 

Le futur           

with going                                 I am going to learn French             Je vais apprendre le français.

                       

with will ( word form in French)   I will learn French                       J'apprendrai le français  

The goal here is not to have the pupils remember the endings and forms, but to have them understand how time is indicated, and then to practise. We agreed that a good way to practise and consolidate all we'd learned so far would be to read Le Petit Prince. The pupils have an English translation, which they will read before next week's lesson, when we'll start on the French. We might have a parallel - La Petite Princesse?

 

Three principles of language teaching and an example from the fourth lesson to Falkirk.

It has recently been suggested that there are eight principles of language teaching. I think there are three:

1. Learners must understand their work fully from the beginning. To do this we make links with what they already know in their own language (eg shared words) and give them materials, such as colours, where meaning is self-evident. We do not introduce more material in the first lessons than the pupil can fully understand.

The idea has grown up that children do not need to understand their work fully, and that frustration in the first lessons is normal. This is a big mistake. It leads to confusion, panic, frustration and failure. We don't teach children to play an instrument by immersing them in music or taking them to a concert. They need to understand what they are doing, either instinctively or through careful demonstration, explanation and practice.

2. Spoken and written language should be taught together, and their relationships explained. This ensures that all channels of communication contribute to learning, and gives pupils time to build up their understanding of grammatical structures. This approach is easy to use via Clicker 6 with speech engines. It builds the literacy skills of lower attaining pupils, reinforcing their understanding of phonic patterns and shared words, and exploits those of higher attaining pupils. It is therefore in the best interests of all.

3. Teaching should focus on vocabulary, grammar and usage at all stages. As illustrated below, this ensures that children have the words and structures they need in order to say what they wish or need to say, and that they are introduced to the ways in which speakers of the language use them. The starting point is the language as it is, both in formal and informal contexts.

Children need to understand that languages are human constructs, with human traits, virtues and foibles. Once they do understand this, and that they are not expected to know everything at once, they can approach the work with confidence, knowing that they will not fail.  As the French say, "Ce n'est pas la mer à boire."

Example,Fourth Lesson to Falkirk, pupils aged 11 and 12.

In the first three lessons, we looked at differences between French and English pronunciation, and made some positive and negative sentences. We sang the simple action song with pronouns, and began to look at shared words, gender, and the ways in which French verbs work.

In Lesson 3, we looked at these shared words, collected by Henri Seguin of Canada, and reinforced the idea of gender in words such as intelligent, élégant.

-age:    bandage, image, page, message, usage, voltage, passage

-ance: chance, balance, finance, alliance, tolérance, ambulance,

-ence: confidence, évidence, intelligence, providence, licence

-tion:  nation, action, attention, adaptation, administration + hundreds, all feminine

-al:       animal, normal,  signal, cardinal, final, original, national

-ial:      racial, social, spécial, commercial,  colonial, initial

-et:       alphabet, buffet, budget, cricket, ticket, violet, secret

-ect:     intellect, direct, correct, aspect, respect, suspect

-in:       Latin, cousin, assassin, bulletin, florin, mandarin

-ain:     gain, grain, refrain, train,  quatrain, certain, vain

-ent:   accent, récent, innocent, précédent, incident, président, différent, intelligent  (Vous êtes très intelligentes!)    ! = point d'exclamation

-ant:   vacant, élégant, éléphant, extravagant, descendant

-ive:     offensive, initiative, tentative, co-operative, intensive

-ine:     discipline, machine, morphine, Vaseline, routine, sardine

-ible:    possible, compatible, sensible, invisible, terrible.

 

Acute accent (accent aigu) An e in French is pronounced minimally, if at all. The acute accent stretches the sound, so that it is almost like having an extra letter in the alphabet.

Then an example of usage, from a Frenchman recommending his favourite spot for lunch in the Loire valley: 

Si vous cherchez un restaurant, c'est très correct, et ce n'est pas cher du tout. 

Then some more on verbs. 

Verbs are so important that each one has a name.  Grammatical term - infinitive. 

In English, the name always starts with to   to be, to have, to play, to sleep.

 

In French, the name is one word only.  Donner   Prendre   Finir    To give, to take, to finish. Lots of verbs have these endings, er, re, ir, and they are called Regular because the endings are very consistent.

Some verbs have different forms. These are either very common, or very rare. Stephen Pinker thinks that these make them resist pressure to use the same form of other verbs.

Être    avoir       to be, to have.

 Verbs reinforce our idea of time zones - here and now, what has happened, what will happen. I demonstrated some basic patterns using chercher, and we will do more on time zones next week.