Language World 2023

Here are my sketchnotes from last weekend's Language World conference.

Dr Andrew Curran

Jennifer Wozniak-Rush

Ellie Chettle Cully

Tracy Williams

Prof. Terry Lamb

Vincent Everett

Dr Liam Printer

Isabelle Jones

Lisa Stevens

Elaine Gelder

Presenting new language - an update years later!

In February 2010, I wrote a blogpost here about presenting and practising new vocabulary.  At the time I had been in the primary classroom for a term and a half.  Now, 13 years later, I can see that my practice has morphed into something different, and something that I think is more effective.

In January I read an interesting article about the benefits or not of learners learning new words in the foreign language by repeating them out loud.  Here is the summary of the article:

This paragraph explains it a little more:

Reading and reflecting on this article has caused me to modify the way that I introduce new vocabulary and then get the children to move towards saying it out loud.

Here is what I now do, and I am definitely seeing the benefits, with better pronunciation and recall from both my more experienced Spanish learners and my beginner French learners.

1. I present the new vocabulary via Physical French/Spanish Phonics.  My PowerPoint slides show the words, the sounds that make them up, and image to show what it means.  We sound the words out, repeating each one at least 3 times.  We don't blend them at this stage, although I do hear some learners quietly saying the words.
   
   
2. On a new PowerPoint slide I put all the words in a numbered grid, along with the images to again show meaning.  I say the words firstly in order and then randomly, and ask the children to point to them on the screen.  Engagement is always good and it is a quiet activity.  Here's an example of a grid:
   
   
   
   
   The pointing game could be used as an alternative for this, and would be a useful resource for further practice later.
   
   
3. Next we use the numbers for listening practice.  I say the word and the children have to tell me which number it is.  It's also a good way to practise numbers!  We cycle through all the words probably two or three times.
   
   
4. Next it's time for the children to start saying the words.  We use "don't repeat until I click".  I say the words in order, but the children aren't allowed to repeat them back until I click my fingers.  I give them a good few seconds to mentally rehearse the words first.
   
   
5. Finally we do some choral repetition in the usual way.

We repeat some of these steps the following lesson, and gradually reduce the amount of practice that we have to do.

Do you have any other go-to activities that you do at this initial "getting to know the words before saying them" stage?

Read all about it!

In case you weren't at Language World yesterday and the day before, here is my presentation Read all about it.

When we read, what exactly is it that we do?  This is the Oxford English Dictionary definition:

We infer meaning from a series of (usually) black squiggles on a page.  We have to learn what each little squiggle is and how it combines with other little squiggles to form blocks of meaning, and how these blocks of meaning (words) go together to create greater meaning.  

We want children to read aloud and in their heads, for pleasure, for comprehension and for information.  We want children to distinguish the different words in the new language and to understand them, and then to understand the meaning in English of a word, phrase or sentence.  

For reading aloud, phonics are crucial to confidence, and it is by reading aloud extended passages of the language that children can hear and practise the intonation of the language.  Once the children can decipher the sound of a word, they can link that sound to the word they have already learned and begin to build the meaning and understand the writing.  They can also use clues like capital letters, layout and pictures to help them to deduce the meaning.  Therefore we read with our eyes, our ears and our mouths.  (Thanks to Vicky Cooke for this!)

These are the objectives for reading from the National Curriculum programme of study.

Phonics of course invaluable for confidence in reading aloud and helping to decipher new words.

The "words, phrases and simple writing" part echoes the progression that is built into the old Key Stage 2 Framework, which advocated building up from single words in Year 3 to short texts in Year 6.

"Authentic sources for reading" can comprise children's story and non-fiction books, poems, texts from the internet, magazines, newspapers, publicity material from shops, adverts, leaflets, posters, letters and emails from children in schools in another country.

What would be in "a range of writing"?  Perhaps handwriting, machine text, stories, letters and news articles.  Also, writing that has been written by a language teacher for practising a particular point, as opposed to authentic materials.

Via reading children will see some of the “patterns, grammar and words” of the language in action, and will also see the grammar points in action that are mentioned in the National Curriculum.  Dictionary skills are specified for developing skills for children to help themselves to understand what they are reading.

WORD LEVEL

We’re going to look at ideas and possible resources for word level reading, phrase and sentence level and then text level.  Activities are of course very adaptable!

It’s often worth showing children an extended passage of the language – they don’t have to be able to understand it – for them to notice differences in conventions in text.  There can be some significant differences in punctuation, accents and so on.  This way they are going to be more alert to things as they start to read more.  I also get them to practise writing accents and upside down punctuation very early on to make them aware of these special characters which they will see in text and have to replicate for themselves.

• We mention cognates in passing while teaching new vocabulary, but don’t necessarily spend a lot of time examining them.  They are very useful as a strategy for reading and understanding unknown words.  Children often don’t trust themselves that cognates are as straightforward as they look!  We can see a lot of cognates just by looking at the headings of the El País website.
• When children are starting to read, small pieces of paper, where you can only fit a little bit of writing on, are perceived as less threatening.  One example is dominoes, where you can match the L2 and English, or L2 and pictures, or a mixture if you’re feeling mean.  Tarsia puzzles are also useful here.
• I like to use flashcards in the presentation and practice phase of new language.  Children can think of lots of games to play with a partner if they have a set of the same picture cards and corresponding word cards. 
• Trash or Treasure
• Animal sounds to practise phonics
• Festisite for word spirals and snakes
• Understanding and sequencing: good for anything that can be sequenced, e.g. numbers, times, part of a story.  Children work in groups to put the items into the correct sequence and then have to read them out in the right order.  This is particularly useful for French numbers to 100!
• Reading information from a table.  Cross-curricular maths.
• Multiple choice.  Good for addressing meaning, spelling and also phonics misconceptions.
• Quizlet
• Studystack  
• Educandy

PHRASE AND SENTENCE LEVEL

• Use prior knowledge and known information to fill in the gap in a sentence.

• Post-it grids
• Trapdoor and Cluedo
• Odd one out
• Spot the errors

TEXT LEVEL

• Parallel texts: Good for detective work.  There are quite a few published books that have texts in both English and the L2, which are also good for children to look at independently.
• Knowledge organisers
• Make your own texts
• Authentic websites
• Poems, rhymes and songs are specified in the Key Stage 2 programme of study.  I have written my own anthologies of poems for French and Spanish as suitable authentic ones are hard to find.  When we learn a song or a poem, the words are always on the board and the children often have a little copy for their books.  We practise it together word by word, chunk by chunk, line by line, then read it all together, then perform.  This one is like a dialogue so we might split into groups.
• Dialogues.  Reading and speaking, and children can adapt them.
  

• Authentic books in the L2
• Commercially available translations of English-language children’s books.  Often the children will already know the story, which will help with understanding.
• Books in English that will sometimes open up a topic.
• Raid your children’s bookshelves and do your own translations.
• Make your own stories in PowerPoint.
  

• Storybird
• Storyjumper
• Minibooks
• Text analysis: Texts offer the benefit of extended language, a model to follow.  Emphasis is on core language and structure with a view to helping students to create their own work afterwards.  I have included one in a lesson pack I wrote about sports and opinions.  Children look for and circle the different categories of words.
• Write Away:  Read other children's work and submit some of your own!

Substantive and disciplinary knowledge: what does it mean for Languages?

In 2021 Ofsted began publishing a series of curriculum research reviews.  The Languages Curriculum Research Review (Languages OCRR) was the fourth in the series, and was published in June 2021.

The first in the series was Science, which came out in April 2021.  It featured substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge.  This is an excerpt from the Science OCRR:

The terms also appear in the OCRRs for History, Geography and RE, while disciplinary knowledge only is mentioned in the OCRRs for Art and Design, and English.  There no mentions in the OCRRs for Computing, PE, Maths, Music or Languages.

These terms appear to be replacing the "knowing more and remembering more" maxim.  I have found out this week that it has permeated into other subjects, and I have heard anecdotally that it has come up in some recent Ofsted inspections.  Schools have already rewritten their curricula to accommodate the "3 Is" (Intent, Implementation and Impact), language teachers have had to factor in the 3 Pillars (Vocabulary, Grammar and Phonics), and schools are now being encouraged to revisit their curricula and reframe them in terms of substantive and disciplinary knowledge.  We will all need to think about what substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge look like in our subject.  

So what are substantive and disciplinary knowledge in Languages?

Christie Counsell, in her article Taking curriculum seriously, says that "Substantive knowledge is the content that teachers teach as established fact".  Disciplinary knowledge, on the other hand, "is a curricular term for what pupils learn about how that knowledge was established, its degree of certainty and how it continues to be revised by scholars, artists or professional practice."

She then goes on to say that "This substantive-disciplinary distinction works to differing extents and in very different ways across subjects. The disciplinary dimension is barely relevant, for example, in school-level modern languages."  It is possible that this may support its omission from the Languages OCRR.

Despite this, a Google search for "disciplinary knowledge in languages" reveals that a number of schools have already rewritten their subject paperwork to include mention of substantive and disciplinary knowledge, and it is clear that they have interpreted the two kinds of knowledge in a number of different ways.

I've been reading around the subject, and have put together a list of bullet points for each type of knowledge:

Substantive knowledge	Disciplinary knowledge
Teacher input Focus on meaning Vocabulary Grammar Phonics The content that is to be learned Carefully chosen and sequenced factual content The facts Rules and methods “Knowing what”	Learner output The big ideas Thinking like a linguist Thinking like a French/Spanish/German speaker Practising the language Using the language creatively Asking questions Planning Evaluating Presenting Problem-solving Critical thinking Choosing and selecting Making connections “Knowing how to”

To put that into some context, I'll use a series of lessons I've recently completed with some Year 4 (age 8-9) beginners in French.  The substantive knowledge that I taught them was 10 animals with the indefinite article, including the phonemes in each word.  Then I taught them the difference between masculine and feminine nouns, and how to use the indefinite article to differentiate between the two.  Finally, as per the scheme of work we are using, I taught them je suis, which enabled us to practise short sentences such as Je suis un oiseau. and Je suis une souris.  I then wanted the children to take what they had learned and to apply it in their own work.  I gave them a bilingual glossary with many more animal words, and asked them to use their knowledge to write je suis sentences, and work out the correct indefinite article for each animal.  For this task they called on their disciplinary knowledge, applying the rules they had learned to solve a problem.

This shows how important it is to build into our schemes of work frequent opportunities for the children to demonstrate what they have learned, to be creative with the language, to "think like a linguist".

How does this picture of substantive and disciplinary knowledge fit in with yours?  All constructive comments welcome!

Finally, many thanks to Dr Gianfranco Conti for pointing out the similarities here with Krashen's Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, which was a great help for me in getting my thoughts in order.