Fish64

Agree with more sensible goals.

The thing is, to communicate, you need to remember what to say. To enable language to stick in your memory so you remember, you need frequent short lessons in the early stages, something the UK school system can't usually accommodate.

You're right about needing to think through what we do and why. But communicative language teaching has had a pretty long trial and been found wanting. I know you'll say communicative teaching hasn't been tried properly, but can it ever work on 1 or 2 periods a week? My beginners in Bulgaria had 7!

MFL: students need to see our subject as their ticket to the world The key to boosting uptake of MFL in schools is creating the space for students to see that learning a language is enjoyable and focusing on cultural capital, says this teacher and leader

www.tes.com/magazine/tea...
I'm sure Anthi means well, but tbh, people were saying all this stuff in the 1980s when I was training. Going on about langs being needed for communication isn't enough, I'm afraid.

Dear HTs, HR and recruitment people. Please don't ask job applicants to fill in your own fiddly Word application forms with not enough space and then wonder why you can't recruit. Use TES Quick Apply!
tes.com/en-gb/for-scho…

Chester if you haven't done it. Or pop over to Wales and visit Conwy - magnificent castle and you can walk the town walls

The reason is they aren't used to writing at speed. At sec we want them to get the info down before moving to their next lesson, so we're less concerned with neatness.Y7 don't always realise there's no time to finish the sentence or they'll be late for their next lesson and my next class is waiting!

Don't think anyone expects 8 sides of A4 in 2.5 hours! But the pace IS faster at secondary. I think any secondary teacher understands it takes time to adapt. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect most of year 7 to write faster than 3/4 words a minute.

But this is the issue - we need them to write at reasonable speed.

Maybe the L2 functional skills needed reform. I don't know much about it. But am I alone in feeling uneasy that an education leader is cheering a headline proclaiming no need for maths or English qualifications?

Yes - I do it that way in vocab tests where they write the word or phrase I say in the TL and then translate it. But when it comes to dictation, for me it's always whole sentences.

Which words are different? As Kedi says, the vowels are often where they have most difficulty, so un/une or le/la/les might be good? Or similar words with different vowels? Otherwise, don't they find it far too easy? Duolingo gives word choices and I don't think I've ever got one wrong.

Really thoughtful blog.

"They hold it in during the day. Their parents see the distress, but the school thinks they're fine." Naomi Fisher
Schools can't win. When children kick off at school it's because of the school's harsh rules. When they behave well at school, it's because they are holding it in.

Labour are good at things like understanding that classroom teachers need rights and protection from overbearing managers. And reasonable payrises. But history shows they are easily seduced by whacky ideas on pedagogy and curriculum.

Pushing Back Against Personalization Dan Meyer wrote a great post a few days ago about the dangers of personalized learning, critical of an article on personalized learning in Educational Leadership. This paragraph captures the heart …

Personalisation in education is automatically assumed to be a good thing. Here's a link to a blogpost which suggests it might not be. People are not simply a mass of data ready to be broken down.
fivetwelvethirteen.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/p...

Thanks for this!

They always use Prosit Neujahr at the New Year's Day concert in Vienna. (Not raising glasses). Is Prosit Neujahr used instead of Frohes Neues Jahr as a greeting in Austria?

#WhyLearnGerman? According to an August 2024 survey, German is the most in-demand second language in UK job ads. A January 2024 study also showed it to be the highest earning. Post-Brexit, it is now much harder for UK businesses to hire native speakers from the EU. This could be your chance!

In recent years the role of personality has sometimes been neglected. Overly scripted lesson plans which a teacher has to follow rigidlycan be stifling.

The phrase "Happy New Year" is pretty standard in most countries. But German has so many variations. So when I greet my classes next week, I use "Prosit Neujahr!" Austrian style (Neujahrskonzert) What do other German teachers use? Frohes Neues Jahr? Guten Rutsch?

Agree. Particularly the thing about guessing genders. Eg. Default gender of a cat is masculine in French but feminine in German. No particular logic to it.

Balancing evidence-informed language policy and pragmatic considerations: Lessons from the MFL GCSE reforms in England Emma Marsden and Rachel Hawkes | 17th December 2024 | Policy Papers • Policy change: • New curricula for GCSE French, German, and Spanish were released by the DfE in 2022, for first examination in ...

'Most high-quality research in instructed language contexts has been about the teaching of English to self-selecting learners in higher education. We call for rigorous empirical research in primary and secondary schools in majority Anglophone settings."
www.lspjournal.com/post/balanci...

Lecker!!!!

Balancing evidence-informed language policy and pragmatic considerations: Lessons from the MFL GCSE reforms in England Emma Marsden and Rachel Hawkes | 17th December 2024 | Policy Papers • Policy change: • New curricula for GCSE French, German, and Spanish were released by the DfE in 2022, for first examination in ...

'Most high-quality research in instructed language contexts has been about the teaching of English to self-selecting learners in higher education."
Interesting read! www.lspjournal.com/post/balanci...

fish64.wordpress.com/2024/11/21/m...

Some thoughts about mini whiteboards