Understanding Languages-Why Teachers Need to Listen and Learn

In this week's MFL colum in the Times Educational Supplement, I tackle the perception of languages by non-specialist colleagues and what can be done to demystify our job.

Some subjects are scarier than others to non-specialist teachers. Languages are definitely in the scary category for many teachers, but a lot will depend on personal experiences, often dating back to their own school days.

Isn't it funny how most adults-whether they are teachers or not- and teenagers lose all common sense when they are presented with something they know is "foreign"? Anybody above the age of 9 will become more and more hindered as they grow up by the assumption that they WIL NOT understand.

They will forget they have a language of their own with which they can establish comparisons and make inferences from. They will ignore the visual clues, the cognates, the sound-alikes because let's face it, it is foreign and they cannot possibly understand this. That is why I believe before we even attempt to teach a foreign language, we must make students realise that it is not a threat to their identity.

Many adults behave in such manner and would rather deliberately mispronounce words rather than be seen to try to emulate the sounds produced by a native speaker. Speaking a foreign language then becomes a bit like karaoke singing: a high-risk business with strong potential for the participant to end up looking ridiculous.

It is therefore hardly surprising that some of my primary or secondary colleagues feel uncomfortable having to teach or supervise the learning of languages, particularly if their own experience was less than successful at school. So let's demystify!

Being supportive and non-judgmental is a good start but pointing at useful techniques and resources is key. This should be an exchange as both participants have as much to learn as each other. 

All teachers have a reasonable repertoire of cross-curricular learning and teaching strategies so no need to re-invent the wheel. After all,  languages are a medium, they can be learnt through any content...   

Guest Blog Post: Essential Memorisation Techniques for GCSE



Most of us learn successfully through a mixture of seeing, hearing and doing. When it comes to succeeding in GCSEs, we also need a mixture of techniques to help us. Here are some top tips on essential techniques for GCSE success:

Tips on effective note-taking

Students need to be able to take effective notes so they can re-read and reflect on the essentials of a lesson. This enables them to deepen their learning and fill in any blanks with further study. Some well-organised notes are also essential for effective Stage 2 preparation in MFL GCSEs.

However, students often find note-taking a challenge, so here are some suggestions:

*Ensure your lessons are structured in a way that is conducive to effective note-taking;

*Encourage students to use a mix of old-fashioned pen and paper, ICT, post-it notes, highlighters in class as well the recording facilities on their phones at home;

*Emphasise that it is not necessary to write down every word-only what they have trouble remembering from English into the Target Language; 

*Encourage them to use plenty of space and write down main headings and subheadings as they go along so they can fill in the details later or try to remember them

*Some students might prefer more visual note-taking techniques such as mind-mapping or diagrams, which show how each idea link into another.

Tips on memorising

Memorising through endless repetition or singing can work with auditory students. Saying the text to be memorised to a tune or a rhythm can also help.

Visual memorisation aids are also useful and can include:

*Silly stories or unusual pictures, as a prompt to remember ideas;

*Study posters, perhaps incorporating a mind map, as a way to memorise the structure of the questions to be memorised; 

*Study cards, to help memorise individual facts like key vocabulary and structures. 

Tips on exam recall

We can help our students with simple techniques to help steady the nerves and aid recall during exams. This includes the opportunity to practise basic exam techniques such as:

Reading the questions

*Sticking to the question and answering each part in full;

*Drawing students' attention on common mistakes;

*Weighting and allocating appropriate time to each question.

Practising with past exam papers is certainly not cheating (but do check your exam board’s policy on reproducing and distributing old papers) and will help students to understand the level of detail required in the exam as well as to familiarise themselves with its format.

For the exam itself, you may like to suggest that students take a few deep breaths to settle their nerves before turning over the exam paper. Students may also find it helpful to boost their confidence by noting down familiar mnemonics, key words and structures before starting the Listening and Reading papers.

Like other recall techniques, mnemonics can be applied across subjects. They are as useful to GCSE students as to executives on English corporate courses in London, so it is well worth teaching your students how to use them.

Go over these essential tips for GCSE success with your students before the exam-when students starts getting nervous, it is always useful to go back to basics to settle them.

Sustainable Promotion for Foreign Languages

I was delighted to share today in the Times Educational Supplement's MFL column some of the best strategies our language faculty has used over the years to promote languages with our students.

Instead of just looking at presenting a very wide range of strategies, I wanted to reflect on how effective different strategies had been in encouraging taking a foreign language as an option at GCSE.

Some activities are really enjoyable but not necessarily have an impact on the uptake and despite using exit questionnaires and questionning students, the key reasons that make a student take the leap and opt are still a bit of mystery.

Some of the best strategies included:

*Involving students in the organisation of trips,

*Trips to local restaurants or tapas bar to facilitate discussions about how speaking another language can help in other careers like catering,

*Inviting speakers to show how languages are used in the world of work,

getting involved in cross-curricular project,

*Linking with schools abroad for students to get the personnal satisfaction of communication for a  real purpose,

*Regularly celebrating student achievement to make students realise that fluency is not the ultimate aim at KS3 or 4 for that matter...  

In our on-going promotion campaign, languages teachers would be well-advised to warn students against the following reasons to opt:

I like the teacher

Lovely but very dangerous-everybody will have warned the students about it, but it still happens although it can also be more maturely expressed as "I know I will do better with this teacher as I get on with them". Still, a long term aim and career plan might be safer to secure student's commitment over the two years leading to a GCSE exam...

My friends are doing it

Not a great idea but it is a fact that a lot of students seem to opt in frienship groups. Some realise early it was a mistake but unfortunately some take longer and then feel trapped on a course they are no longer interested in. Opting in friendship groups can mean good group dynamics in class but it can also create a classroom climate that constantly needs steering away from the socialising mode..

My parents want me to do it

It is always a great asset to have strong parental support but it is sometimes a real problem if the choice to opt was not made by the students themselves. We all know that the correlation between student commitment and good results is very strong and students who are involved directly in the decision-making tend to be a lot more committed.

To avoid these 3 main pitfalls and really get students to carefully consider their options, it is also essential to have an honest on-going conversation with students about their aspirations, interests and achievements. Securing a choice for the right reasons is certainly the step in the right direction towards commitment and success.

ALL French Online: Tips and Tricks for GCSE, Friday 10th December

The video conference was organised with Flashmeeting and was attended by Esther Mercier , Dominic McGladdery, Michelle Cairns  and my colleagues Alison Watkinson and Vanessa Parker from The Radclyffe School. The replay can be viewed here.

The exchanges referred to the two exam boards used across the schools represented, EDEXCEL and

AQA. Teachers across the land have had issues with both boards as regards the severity and the unpredictability of grading in Languages. EDEXCEL was also recently in the news as part of a governmental investigation into examination boards although this is not MFL-specific.   

Although Edexcel offers for MFL compares well with that of other examination boards, I pointed out that my perception had been irrevocably tainted by our school's bad experience with the Applied French in 2009.  

More recently, Edexcel caused a lot of disruption in schools by changing marking criteria for the Writing Controlled Assessment, which affected work already completed by Y10 and forced teachers to add more Controlled Assessment tasks in Y11 to redress the balance. There was also some confusion regarding the 200 words minimum for a C grade.

Our AQA examination analysis also highlighted  than more words than what was stated seemed to have been required for higher grades. As this is not currently a written rule, we all felt that more specific guidance in terms of minimum outcome was needed for different grades.

Predicted A* Students sitting the Edexcel GCSE also seem to be expected to use subjunctive, which is more than is required for AQA AS level... Although this is not explicitly stated, it appeared through the use of conditional perfect / subjunctive phrases in the higher grades corrected sample tasks.

Students are encountering difficulties with the AQA rule that "what is done at home stays at home" and "what is done at school stays at school". Meanwhile, Edexcel allows students to take preparation at home back and forth. Although this makes it more flexible for students and teachers, there are issues with the use of google translation, similarity of the work produced and the fact that teachers cannot be 100% sure it is students' own work even though they sign a form to say it is.

With AQA-they can do the stage 1 preparation at home in “bits” but this change as soon as the actual task is given to students (bullet points).

To prepare students for the speaking Controlled Assessment, using text-to-speech software such as http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/ or Voki.com can be very useful as it makes the students more independent. Students can listen to the text-to-speech version to memorise it and it can be uploaded to the school's VLE. Students may also record themselves on their mobile phones to learn their answers.

As regards the preparation for writing, I feel strongly that getting students to memorise a possibly inaccurate stage 2 preparation in class is not the best use of class time. Although peer support is allowed and can help students to focus on their task, it can also be a great source of distraction.

I was interested to find out about differences between AQA and EDEXCEL as regards the use of  the Task Planning sheet: Up to 5 pictures are allowed for Edexcel as well as  30 words including conjugated verbs, whereas AQA allows 40 words with no pictures or other visuals and no conjugated verbs at all. A recent decision-see p14-to include past participle as well as infinitives will also make it challenging for students who already struggle with using the present perfect...

It was noted that memorisation of the tasks was found difficult even by the higher ability harder-working students. Memorisation was also affected by the students' ability to concentrate over what constitutes quite long periods of time, with the usual pattern of a decent  beginning that slowly deteriorates for both writing and Speaking assessments…

Speaking for 4 minutes minimum in a foreign language is extremely challenging and this is compounded for Edexcel by the fact students may have to do a one minute presentation and ask questions to be awarded the higher marks.  

I was surprised to find out that the format for the Speaking Assessment is NOT standard across the exam boards as there is an element of choice with Edexcel. There are 3 different possible types of tasks for Edexcel with different marking schemes applicable to them: picture-based task, presentation/ discussion and open interaction (conversation).

It was noted that there can be a strong negative impact on pronunciation and intonation if students speak too fast, hence the need to practise whith a version of their speaking task recorded at an appropriate pace.

How many tasks should we be doing?

This seemed to vary quite a lot, depending on the exam board used, the time allocated for languages and students' ability. Teachers aiming for 3 speaking and 3 writing tasks admitted that this took over their teaching time possibly at the expense of developing listening and reading skills. There were also issues with "back-to-back" speaking and writing Controlled Assessments on similar topics which narrow the range of the topics taught and can also affect performance in the Listening and Reading exams.

There are undoubtedly some communication problem with the boards when they decide to change or modify rules. Although the changes are usually mentioned on the exam boards' websites, it is unrealistic to expect language teachers to check large websites every week "just in case". Specific email alerts should be sent to all language teachers to inform them immediately when a change occurs. In addition, the fact that it is very difficult to enforce changes half way through a course means that boards should be very mindful of the implications of changes for classroom teachers and limit the publication of changes to certain times of the year e.g. January and June.

Can the board find out if you do the same topics for speaking and writing?

That question was asked many teachers on language teachers forums like MFL resources and although we all thought that it was unlikely that the exam boards would physically be able to check, we all agreed that this would lead to further narrowing of the syllabus and be detrimental to students in the long term.

AQA's recent changes for re-taking the writing were discussed-the title needs to be different and the outcome too. There should be no overlap of outcome between tasks as technically a student cannot be credited for overlapping  content.

For the Writing task, a healthy piece of advice was to not over-complicate the bullet points, leaving it to the more able to develop further. This makes all the more sense as the bullet points in the AQA Writing tasks are just for student support and not linked with the marking scheme.

Some schools are rumoured to mark the preparation before students learn it for stage 3. This constitutes malpractice and does not guarantee that students will still be able to remember accurately what they have learnt.   

Tenses are an issue: time lines can be given for the same verb for practice

AQA has compounded the problem with verb endings as the task planning sheet only allows verbs in the infinitive. Training students to use verb tables effectively is therefore essential to allow them to develop more independence and accuracy as students will not just rely on memory. Effective use of dictionary is very important at Stage 3-but it is as important to teach students when to use it as it is when not to use it

Sixth form issues were discussed as the current GCSE format does not encourage students to develop effective learning skills. 11-16 do not focus on skills enough and time pressures lead to a lot of spoon-feeding and rote learning of set phrases for the exam. Some students end up with no knowledge about tense formation and this makes effective transition to ALevel very difficult.

Writing frames can be used during preparation at stage 1 and at stage 2 as a reference but they need to be designed in a way to avoid students to all produce very similar outcomes. Writing frames need to be basic to allow students to add a lot of their own language and personalise the piece to an appropriate level.

There is a great difference of expectation for the writing-AQA writing is being marked NOT moderated hence stricter and sometimes unpredictable application of the marking scheme in some cases.

Re-marks

A lot of schools asked for re-marks in September 2011, a lot more than in the past-particularly for writing. Some scores went up but not always enough to make a difference overall, particularly for C/D candidates.

It may be worth considering entering Controlled Assessment marks early as the marks to UMS tend to be more generous for the smaller January co-hort. (need to check 40% rule for banking modules) 

More and more samples are being published on the AQA websites to be used for moderation but it can be difficult to find information and documents on the website and the same thing goes for the Edexcel website. Maybe the ALL French online group could use the ALL French online wiki to highlight documents of particular importance/ interest.

 
As note-taking and good organisation skills are essential for students to do well at Stage 2, the idea of students having an "exam book" or "big book" with all corrected work in it as well as useful handout seemed a very good idea. Students can also highlight phrases that they may like to use in their Controlled Assessment to help them find them quicker when they are doing their Stage 2 preparation. 

I also found Jen Turner’s idea of getting previous Year 11 to make virtual post-it notes for the new Year 10 very useful. Look at her "post-it walls" here for the Reading exams, here for the Listening exams and here for the Controlled Assessments.

I am also looking forward to Jen's session on how ICT can support students for Controlled Assessment at the ILILC2012 Conference at The University of Southampton in February 2012.

Last but not least Language World, ALL's National Conference will take place in Manchester from 29 to 31st March 2012 and I am also looking forward to meeting more languages teachers to discuss and find out more about topics like assessment at GCSE. 

You are not yet an ALL member? It is not too late to join! Join ALL and be part of the largest network of languages teachers in the UK.

ALL French Online-Come and Share your GCSE experiences!

Are you a UK Languages teacher and NOT a member of ALL, the Association for Language Learning? If so, why not?

At a time when it is getting more and more crucial for langage teachers to take their own professional development in their own hand, ALL offers wonderful opportunities for formal CPD as well as informal peer-to-peer support.

  

If you are a teacher of French and, like the rest of us, you are still trying to grapple with the new GCSE,  come and share your experiences with ALL French Online in our first online meeting using Flashmeeting for Friday 9th December 8-9pm.

To support the group, I have also set up a wiki http://allfrenchonline.wikispaces.com/

You are all invited to join the wiki, edit it and add resources linked with our first Flashmeeting: Tips and Tricks for French GCSE.

If you are not familiar with Flashmeeting, do not worry as it is really easy to pick up. All you need is a microphone, a headset or a webcam. Do contact me if you want to try it before the meeting. To enter the meeting you just need to click on http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net/fm/4b542e-14294

You can register as a user-but please note that this does not automatically give you the right to set up meetings-or as a guest, but your name will not appear on the list of people present if you choose to enter as a guest. Some more information about flashmeeting can also be found at http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net/quickstart.html

To get us started, I suggest the following Agenda:

1. Quick introductions-please include whether you are currently teaching GCSE, what language you teach and what examination board you use

2. Lessons learnt from last year's GCSE co-hort

3. Useful activities to prepare students for the speaking and writing CAs

4. Tools and resources to help preparing for the  Listening and Reading exam

Looking forward to meeting you and thank you for checking here how else your subject association can suppport you.

MORE PRACTICAL WAYS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION

I was delighted to be able to share a few strategies to improve students' pronunciation in the Times Educational Supplement (TES) this Friday as I view good pronunciation as one of the most effective ways to boost students' confidence in their own ability as linguists. Indeed, if their accent in the foreign language is not at least understandable, performance in exams and in a real life context will be poor and lead to demotivation.

 

 

As mentioned in the article, practising pronunciation is a challenging activity for teenagers who often perceive it as a threat to their own British identity at a time of their lives when they are not too sure about their identity anyway. Using puppets or drama techniques like role-play can help but what else can be done to help students improve their pronunciation in the foreign language?

Phonics Phonics Phonics

Teach basic pronunciation rules through examples and regularly re-visit key sounds through starter activities. Use mirrors and discuss with students how some sounds come through their noses or from the back of their throats.  Focus on how foreign language speakers stress certain words and do not pronounce specific letters e.g. “s” for plural in French or “nt” at the end of verbs. For Spanish and German, show how "regular" the sound patterns of language are and get students to decode and pronounce sophisticated words they have learnt in other subjects.

Practise Practise Practise 

Provide opportunities for students to practise individually, in pairs and small groups. Tongue twisters and rhymes are great for starters, with students listening to a model and then practising in pairs to encourage self and peer correction.

Make practising pronunciation into a game. Play vocabulary games like noughts and crosses with two teams or in pairs and make accurate pronunciation one of the criteria for scoring points. Encourage students to correct each other’s pronunciation and step in if needed to clarify pronunciation rules. Some students could volunteer to be "pronunciation expert", in charge of reminding the class of a specific sound e.g. i always sounds "ee" in Spanish, "oi" always sounds "wa" in French...

Use poetry, riddles and rhymes to make students more sensitive to pronunciation patterns. A simple exercise where students have to match rhyming words can really get them to reflect on pronunciation patterns.

Music is a wonderful tool to get students to look at language in terms of sounds and rhythms. Get your students to sing difficult words, they will slow down and their pronunciation will improve instantaneously.

Songs and raps in the target language can be used effectively as pronunciation models. Students listen to the song or rap, the teacher identifies a repetitive structure as a model and students write their own lines and practise them. The raps or songs can then be peer-assessed with a focus on pronunciation.

Using Technology such as Voki, the speaking avatar site, can provide a good model in the target language through its text-to-speech facility. Students can also give their avatar a voice by recording themselves and get their pronunciation assessed by their peers verbally or through comments. Other sites like Blabberize can enable students to make a photo "speak" and will also motivate them to try different sounds and voices. 

Get students to practise at home by recording speeches using Audacity, the free audio recording software, or listening to model answers and making notes about the pronunciation, like where silent letters are or which part of the word is stressed. Making them aware of inflection, the patterns of stress and intonation in a language, is the most difficult unless students are quite musical. Students could just demonstrate whether they think the intonation is going up or down.This can be very good to get them to realise that in Spanish, for instance, the penultimate syllable is often stressed whereas in French it tends to be the last syllable, which explains differences in how the language sounds.  

Finally, getting students to improve their pronunciation will not only mean better exam results in languages but also students developing a more positive self-image as linguists.  This should also lead to improved self-esteem and impact on their overall school achievements.

What strategies do you use in your classroom to make your students more aware how the language inflections, rhythm and specific sounds? 

AQA Course: Feedback on 2011 GCSE Examination in Modern Foreign Languages, 11th November 2011, York.

I attended this course in York hoping to find out ways to improve GCSE results through understanding better the pitfalls of this new exam. However, the frustration shown by the majority of the teachers present, particularly as regards the severe and /or erratic marking of the speaking and the writing Controlled Assessment, unfortunately hijacked parts of the training.

 

 

2011 Examinations compared with 2010 Examinations 

It was stressed that the grade boundaries had to change considerably to mirror the changes from a very small cohort to a full one in 2011. The concern was that very little support was provided to allow teachers to give a reasonably accurate predicted grade for the first co-horts going through the new GCSE examination.

Daring to be more creative

As could be expected, a lot of teachers “played safe” in their choice of topics and relied on topics that had been also part of the previous specification. Some tasks with a more imaginative setting/ content were suggested including:

Being in a celebrity relationship (Context: Relationship and Choices)

Pressures and problems at school  (Cross-context) for speaking

and, for writing:

Free time and the Media (Context: Free Time and The Media)

A job application (Context: Current and Future Jobs)

Differentiation

Some examples of speaking tasks linked to the same topic-holiday-were also given to show how bullet points could be differentiated for higher ability students e.g. Where do you normally go on holiday?/ Tell me about last year’s summer holiday.

For students to gain confidence in their Listening skills, it was suggested to give a reading activity based on the transcript as a homework task before the actual listening activity in class.

Organisation

At stage 1 anything is permitted but the task must not be given in its entirety or with just a bullet point changed. However, individual bullet points can be practised and marked individually.

In 2014 the GCSE examinations will all become linear-everything will happen in the summer with no early entries in January.

The majority of centres adapted AQA tasks or devised their own tasks. Some tasks were more creative: interview with an air crash survivor, being in a celebrity relationship, big brother interview…

Schools set either the same task for the entire class or differentiated task on same topic.

For retaking the writing, the same topic can be used but the title and all bullet points have now to be changed.

It is important to have the task ready at the start of stage 1 for the teaching to precisely cover all the points needed to cover the task.

Speaking/ writing: In speaking all bullet points have to be addressed whereas in writing, the title is the most important. In fact, bullet points are not compulsory for writing tasks and are often used to support weaker candidates.

A broad title for the writing ensures that everything produced by candidates is relevant but it also makes it very difficult to organise tasks for student to retake in that specific context.

There is also sometimes some confusion between title and scenario E.g. Write a blog your holidays and what went wrong. The titles and scenario need to be different and there is a need for consistency. For instance, if there is a mention of a competition in the scenario, it must be mentioned in the task written by students.

When there is an overlap between the writing and speaking tasks, it is not appropriate to use the same bullet points, both tasks need to be “sufficiently different” to ensure students produce a very different outcome.

For speaking, the recorded time begins as soon as the teacher asks the first question relating to the first bullet point.

Stretching the More Able

Teachers need to ensure that opportunities are provided for more able students to reach the top band.

Opinions are essential: to get 3-4 and above a minimum of 2 opinions are required. They can be basic but they must be there to justify the mark.

Developments are also very important. They are instances when candidates offer extra language not specifically requested e.g. adding extra pieces of information, opinions, facts, etc…

In the best speaking tests, students need to take over and present each one of their bullet points like a mini-presentation e.g. 5 bullets = 5 mini-presentations

More able students need to be able to narrate events to get in the higher band and they also have to justify their opinions twice, which is where a lot of centres lost marks. The 2 different opinions and 2 different reasons could be introduced by par exemple, parce que etc…

For the Range and Accuracy, to get into the top band, a minimum of 2 tenses (any 2) is required but it is not needed for the 5-6 band.

Demain je vais au marché does not count as a future tense.

Able students must have a variety of tenses e.g. 5 different tenses (higher candidate) as a greater range of tense will add to the complexity.

Variety of expression is very important and students must actively be taught to use synonyms and how to express same things in lots of different ways.

The use of moods does not count as a different tense so if a candidate uses present indicative and present subjunctive, it still counts as one tense: present.

5 out of 5 for pronunciation seems to be more common for Spanish & German as the pronunciation is more phonetically regular.

There were some issues with high ability students who did not meet the 4 minutes minimum required for the speaking test. This meant that they could not get 10 for communication but they still could get 9.

Teachers do not need to push weaker candidates to do all 4 minutes as they would not get a 10 for communication anyway.

A strong emphasis on memorisation can have an adverse effect on students’ pronunciation e.g. verb endings in French, so it is very important to practise and record models and students at stage 1.

To assess the Interaction and fluency, teachers need to consider how much students hesitate and do not know what to say next.

4 or 5 bullet points seem to work the best for most candidates but teachers must not ask questions out of the order. 

Unpredictable Questions

Unpredictable questions should also be very simple e.g. in the present tense, using cognate…  Students must answer the unpredictable questions in a full sentence with a verb in order to score for their answer. It is also essential for the teacher to print all unpredictable questions on the teacher’s sheets sent to the board.

You need between 4 and 6 different unpredictable questions for a class of 30 to ensure that it remains unpredictable.  You can link unpredictable questions with broad topic e.g. do you like ice-cream for the holiday and all unpredictable questions must be answered at the end of the test.

Teacher may want to get students to prepare 30 questions making it clear that the bullet points for the tasks will be drawn from there. At Stage 1, the teacher should not move on until students are comfortable with all the bullet points.

Planning Sheets and Dictionaries

If conjugated verbs are left on the planning sheet and students use them, students will be marked down.  le/ la are counted in the number of words.

It was stressed that students should not be actively encouraged to use a dictionary at stage 3 because of the time it can waste. However, using the verb tables in the dictionary can be a lot more useful to help student to proofread what they have written.