John Bald/language and literacy

First steps in French for a 9 year old.

Since I started in 1973, my main concern has been the number of people who fail at French, and so never experience the pleasure we have found in it. I've observed this as a teacher, local authority officer, inspector and adviser, and my conclusion is that failure starts right at the beginning when pupils don't fully understand what they're doing.

I've posted my thoughts on my site and the Youtube link below, and tried the approach over Zoom two days ago with a very difficult 9 year old whom I'd been asked to help with reading and spelling. Here's how it went.

 

Me: Do you do French at school?

He: We did, but it's stopped.

Me: Could I show you some French?

He: (with a little prompting from mother, who sits in) OK, I suppose.

Me: French people like their spoken language to flow, but their written language to be precise. So, if I say Je ai, (written on Word, using shared screen) which means I have, does it sound smooth to you or jerky?

He: Jerky.

Me: Yes. So what they do is take away the last letter of the first word and replace it with an apostrophe (Fr pronunciation), making J'ai. (I do this on the screen). Say j'ai. (he does). Does apostrophe look like an English word?

He: Apostrophe (En. pronunciation.)

Me: Yes, it's a shared word, we just pronounce it differently. A lot of French words are shared with English. Now, I'd like you to look at J'ai again, and when I take it off the screen, write it with your finger on your sleeve. (He does)

Me Did you get it right?

He and Mum Yes.

Me. Now, let's think you have one of these things. I use shared screen to show a Clicker grid (more of this on request) allowing the composition of several sentences with Je, J', ai, un and chat, chaton. perroquet, chien. We'll have a cat, chat. What letter don't we pronounce in chat?

He: The t

Me: Where is th t?

He: At the end of the word.

Me: That's good. French people often don't pronounce a letter at the end of a word if it's going to stop the language from flowing. Now please write chat on your sleeve (I minimise screen so he can't see it. He does.) Did you get it nearly right?

He: I got it all right.

Me. Well done. Now French, like English, uses what I call companion words - we'd say a cat, they say un chat. We wouldn't say I have cat, would we?

He: No.

Me: Now, you've got a pencil and some paper. Do you think you could write J'ai un chat?

He: Yes.

Me. (minimising screen so he can't copy) Have a go then. (He does.)

Me: Did you get it nearly right?

He and Mum. I got it all right.

Me: Well done.

He: But I've got two cats.

Me: French for two is deux (I write it). What letter don't we pronounce at all in deux?

He: (after some hesitation). x

Me: Where is it?

He: At the end of the word.

Me: Good. (I write J'ai deux chats in Word) Can you see what I've added to chat when we have more than one?

He: s

Me. Good, just like English. Now, do you think you coiuld write that now, or would you rather practise it for next week?

He. Practise for next week.

 

A suivre...

Free clicker grids French

Please contact me if you'd like more, or send your own for distribition.  I've also included popular ppts on weather and colours. Sound files using Fr voices can be added if you have the software. Otherwise, best to turn the sound off! 

 

Download Frintro       Simple sentence with J'ai and masc nouns

Download Frintro+negative    Introducing     ne  pas + de

Download Je suis   

Download Je suis + neg

Download Sentence Building

 

Download Fr colours

Download Fr-weather-sound

Draft Protocol for small-scale research in introducing writing in French, German and Spanish.

The protocol is designed to investigate the initial stages of writing in these languages, without copying, based on the primary toolkits on this site. Correspondence welcomed.

Download Draft Protocol for small

French Vocabulary - thanks to Daniele Bourdais for the link to this very useful glossary on public vocabulary.

http://langues.univ-paris1.fr/glossairepatrimoinefrancais-anglais.pdf?fbclid=IwAR36c3H40xvdFwKZoUw1jIC3faIh1cZfnq9qTSHntXynuPA4k9y7hgTi2hw

Make your own emojis - a brilliant idea from Mele Bustamente, US.

These emojis, made by pupils on paper plates, are a brilliant way of teaching vocabulary that can't otherwise be illustrated concretely. I'm going to use it this morning. Thanks, Mele!

Click on picture to enlarge. Enjoy!

 

Fabulous ideas for primary French from Sudbury Primary School.

Mrs Rivas has some really fabulous ideas for enlivening primary French teaching on her site,  here.  Includes her full scheme of work. A must visit for people interested in primary languages - some great ideas! Merci bien, Mme Rivas!

Clicker 7 - a unique and brllliant bridge between spoken and written language, in English and other languages.

In the early years of this millennium, I reviewed Clicker (www.Cricksoft.com) for The Guardian, and the publishers have kindly kept me supplied with updates. A review of Clicker 5, from 2008, includes this:

Clicker 5 itself remains the best ICT resource available to EAL teachers. Sarah Bailey, head of Queensbridge school, Hackney, in London, says that its "scaffolding and constant modelling with visual reinforcement" are so effective that teaching assistants use it to reinforce basic literacy skills from reception to year 2 "at least three times a week".

Clicker 7, the latest version, is astonishing. The voice recognition has been developed to include surprisingly accurate reading in French and Spanish, and the additional materials in the modern languages package provide excellent practice in grammatical features - eg Cinderella in French for feminine endings - and pronunciation. It takes a little practice to set the program up for language learning, but once it's in place it's plain sailing. I've uploaded this video to youtube - the sound is a little low, so you may need to  turn yours up.

As I said of the earlier version nine years ago, this is the best piece of software available to EAL teachers, and also to modern languages teachers. Its author, John Crick, is a modest man, but we need to say to him what Robert Schumann said of Chopin - "Hats off, gentlemen, a genius."

PS. Clicker resources for earliest stages of French, plus 2 ppts, here. 

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.

 

The Disappearance of Emile Zola. Michael Rosen.

Michael Rosen’s interest in French, and in Emile Zola, came as a surprise, though not quite such a surprise as that of his late father, Professor Harold Rosen, who would pore over his homework in his eighties much as I did myself as a teenager. By the time I started to read French at university, Zola was considered so last century that a friendly lecturer (with a doctorate in seventeenth century drama) asked me why the hell I was bothering to read him. My reply that it was a good book seemed inadequate, but I still think this is the main reason for reading and studying literature. Zola was, and is, an important writer, and Michael Rosen’s book reminds us of one of the reasons for this.

“J’accuse,” is one of the most quoted lines in French history. It was the headline of Zola’s verbal onslaught on the establishment that fabricated evidence against Captain Alfred Dreyfus for allegedly leaking to the Germans details of the recoil mechanism of France’s 75mm quick-firing field gun, which was to play a crucial role in World War I. The false accusation was followed by a cover-up, and then by persecution of those who sought to expose the cover-up, including Zola himself, who was convicted of libel for telling the truth. Unlike Oscar Wilde, he had the sense to choose exile rather than imprisonment, and this book tells the story of his exile.

I learned a lot from it. I had not known that Zola’s first publisher in English, Henry Vizetelly, had been fined, and then imprisoned – like Wilde, with hard labour – on charges of publishing obscenity brought by the “National Vigilance Association.”  I found it mildly surprising that Zola himself was allowed to live in hotels in London and Upper Norwood, and later to take leases on houses, with virtually no security arrangements. Opponents of Dreyfus and Zola were determined to maintain the former’s conviction even after it had been proved that he was innocent and a Major Esterhazy, who admitted forging the evidence, was guilty. Dreyfus was Jewish, and, as one of his enemies put it, all Jews were traitors. This, even more than the outrageous injustice to Dreyfus, was Zola’s driving force – the full power of the French state was being used to enforce lies and suppress the truth.

There is much social history alongside the drama. Zola cannot abide British food. The idea of putting water on a steak offends his soul. He is a pushy parent, urging and bribing his children to be top of the class, and telling his son that if he is lazy and tells lies, he will turn into a monkey and be put in the zoo. Zola is a keen photographer, with his own darkrooms, and pedals around with a plate camera on his bicycle. His double life, with children by his mistress while enjoying the support of his wife, are described in extracts from letters, as is their reconciliation – Zola’s wife has a picture of his mistress placed in his coffin. The enmity behind the story is never far away, though, and a confession that an anti-Dreyfus fanatic had murdered Zola by blocking the flue of his stove, so causing carbon monoxide poisoning, is consistent with the evidence. The account of the aftermath reveals a personal connection – Michael Rosen’s great-uncle, Oscar, was on the same “Convoi 61”, to Auschwitz, as Dreyfus’ granddaughter, Madeleine Dreyfus Levy.

First-class scholarship, and a light touch on a dark story. Recommended.

Two cases of mis-teaching rectified in months.

Misteaching takes many forms, but they all result in failure, frustration and misery. In the English-speaking world, misteaching usually takes the form of hopeful reliance on incidental learning, introduced as a reaction to the teaching typified by Dickens' Mr M'Choakumchild, based on his own experience at school in Camden Town. In much of continental Europe, the old ways persist, with, for example, a heavy emphasis on exercises in English that prevent people from learning to speak the language. The late Francis Holmes, who taught me French, was acutely aware of the problems involved in drill and skill methods, which, he said, prevented "even the bright ones, those who could handle the subjunctive," from learning to speak. His solution was to run supplementary exchanges between schools in Essex and Paris, with lessons in the morning and shared free time in the afternoon. It worked for some of us, but not all, as many of the English pupils kept together in their free time and spoke very little French. We learn from mistakes - on my first trip, I ordered a Perrier, thinking it was Perry, and un exprès, in the fond belief that it was beer.  

What all forms of misteaching have in common is a failure to understand how the human brain functions, and how to develop it. Much progressive education is based on the idea that failure should be eliminated, and that the way to eliminate it is to redefine success, so that academic achievement is no longer its main criterion. Kenneth Clarke's recent memoir, Kind of Blue, has a succinct account of his encounters with progressive officials at the UK's frequently rebranded Department for Education and Science in the nineties. Their centrepiece was mixed ability teaching, which relies above all on incidental learning, as it is impossible for a teacher to focus personally on the range of needs in a class in which some pupils are reading Dickens, while others can't read the texts easily managed by children of six and seven. The grinding approach - M'Choakumchild, unlike Gradgrind, was misguided, rather than vicious - was taken apart by Truffaut in Les Quatre Cent Coups, and I saw it in Germany in the early nineties. I was asked to help a nine year old with his German homework, at which he was failing, largely because he was given endless exercises in German grammar without any explanation of its purposes and function. Unpacking the terminology - he was a German national - enabled him to make sense of the work and begin to succeed. The approach is consistent with current research findings on the formation and extension of neural networks in the brain. Whatever does not promote this process does not work.

The way to correct misteaching, from either source, is very simple - unpack, explain, and practise. 

Two recent cases, with apologies for the clumsy phrasing in the interests of preserving anonymity:

M, in the Spanish school system, had been assessed as dyslexic in England and Spain, and could not read in English at all. She was not dyslexic, but did not know how to adjust her thinking to move from the regular Spanish system of Spelling to the English system, in which the letters tell us most of what we need to know, but not everything. In about half a dozen lessons over the internet, in which she chose to read a book appropriate to her age, rather than a primer, I taught M to adapt to English spelling so that she was pleased when letters helped, but not surprised when they didn't. Whenever she met an irregular or unusual word in a text, I would move to another with the same pattern, explain its origins, practise it, and have her father revisit it between lessons so that she understood. M's father brought the family over from Spain to take my wife and me out to dinner to celebrate, and yesterday he sent me an email saying that P was now doing much better, and didn't need any more help for the moment.

S required an A in a modern languages A level for university entrance, had top grades in other subjects, but had been "taught" the language to GCSE with little or no explanation of the finer points of its grammar, in the spirit of the "tolerance of error" advocated by the late, well-intentioned, Eric Hawkins. This had produced an A* at GCSE, but left S with no preparation for A level. Moving to a new sixth form, S was required to pay attention to things that were beyond his/her understanding, because they had never been explained. The teacher marked work thoroughly, but did not explain why things were as they were. Rectifying this in the months before A level got S the required grade, but after a good deal of anxiety that should have been avoided by accurate teaching in the first instance. A sixteen year old I'm currently teaching has the same problem in German. Approaching GCSE without any introduction to German grammar, the pupil writes what s/he thinks is German, emails it to the teacher, who enters the correct inflections and improves the phrasing. Pupil then learns by heart these, to him/her meaningless collections of letters, and reproduces it in what is known as "controlled assessment", without understanding a word. Once again, the approach is to unpack and explain everything, and pupil is much happier as a result.

I recommend Rachel Hawkes' Stimmt series of German textbooks as a way of avoiding such problems in the future. The reading problem will not be solved by a textbook, but by improving teachers' understanding of English spelling and how to teach it.