Professional Development Consortium in MFL

1. Professional Development Consortium in MFL

2. Listening, reading, writing and feedback

3. Underpinning Principle: 6. Learners need to develop their self-efficacy and general confidence through teaching and feedback approaches that draw their attention to the link between the way they approach solving language learning challenges and the task outcome.

4. Theoretical perspectives Learners’ levels of motivation are influenced by: a) their expectations of success in a given domain (self-efficacy) b) the value they place on such success Expectancy and value are closely related – those who expect success, tend to value it more

5. Motivation in MFL Low ‘value’ level? But learners are aware of potential utility – Fisher (2001); QCA (2006) Perceived difficulty and lack of real progress an important factor in giving up language learning (Graham, 2004; Erler & Macaro, 2011) Erler, L. & Macaro, E. (2011). Links between motivation for learning French as a second language and learner’s ability to decode written French words. The Modern Language Journal, 95, 496-581 Graham, S. (2004). Giving up on modern foreign languages? Students’ perceptions of learning French, TheModern Language Journal 88, 171-191.

6. Self-efficacy • Key underlying principle: self-efficacy influences learners’ level of persistence. This is crucial for MFL. • Self-efficacy develops from: • Successfully completing challenging tasks – ‘mastery experiences’ (Bandura, 1993), and understanding that success comes from the strategies one uses – this needs to be reinforced by feedback that focuses on that link

7. Principle 5: Reading/listening (& self-efficacy) Learners need to be taught how to access a greater range of more challenging spoken and written texts, through explicit instruction in comprehension strategies and decoding. Underpinning both reading and listening skills – and other skills – is the notion that it is important to be able to master the relationship between the written and spoken forms.

8. Reading and listening • Listen to this passage. Can you work out what the nonsense words mean? (see your pack, ‘Awareness Raising’) • How did you work them out? • Now read the start of the passage on the next slide. Do you understand more/less? • What are the similarities and differences between listening and reading a text where there are some challenges?

9. What are the issues with listening and reading? • Learners have very limited strategies for dealing with comprehension –target language input (Macaro, 2011), written texts (Ofsted, 2011), spoken recordings – even by Year 12 (Graham et al, 2008, 2011). • Learners have poor decoding skills which negatively influences their self-efficacy and desire to continue with language learning (Erler & Macaro, 2011); lack of progressin decoding in the absence of explicit instruction (Woore, 2009).

10. Current practice and materials • Little current emphasis, in practice, on explicit teaching of listening / reading / decoding strategies (Ofsted, 2011; Graham et al, 2011; Woore, 2011) • ‘Doing’ listening/reading tasks rather than ‘teaching’ listening/reading as skills • ‘Protecting’ learners from difficulties vs. ‘mastery experiences’

11. What research tells us

12. “Highly scaffolded” strategy interventions Raising awareness; feedback and discussion Monitoring Removing the scaffolding Modelling strategies Tick lists of strategies with the tasks/texts; individualised feedback; teacher prompting

13. Reading – Macaro & Erler, 2008“Raising the achievement of young-beginner readers of French through strategy instruction”, Applied Linguistics, 29,  90-119 • 166 learners of French in Years 7 & 8 • Half the learners received instruction in using reading strategies, such as: • Guess from words around problem word • Think hard about words I might know (i.e. don’t give up easily) • Use a process of deduction (“it can’t be that because…..”) • Sound out the word or phrase • Use common sense (prior knowledge) • Remember to read the whole sentence to see if it makes sense

14. Feedback in reading – on strategy record sheets Well done for following the instructions so carefully. It now really shows me what words you had trouble with. So you can use more strategies to help you solve the riddles of guessing. For example “le dernier film de Batman” what could “dernier” possibly mean? What would make sense? What about: “mais” in “mais je vais au cinéma..”??? Keep going. You’ll get there! Example of feedback on a learner’s reported strategy use on a reading task:

15. Outcome • Strategy group showedsignificant improvementin reading compared with the non-strategy group • They were also more positive about reading and about learning French in general.

16. Mastering the relationship between the written and spoken forms (GPC) • Particularly crucial in French – need to make learners aware that French and English GPC are different, and that French ones are more consistent • Teach the most important French GPC • Provide practice in segmenting and decoding unfamiliar written words • Provide practice in segmenting and transcribing spoken words / phrases; work on liaisons • Both aspects part of Macaro & Erler (2008) and Graham & Macaro (2008); taken forward by Woore (2011).

17. Listening: Graham & Macaro, 2008 “Strategy instruction in listening for lower-intermediate learners of French”, Language Learning, 58, 747-783 • Year 12 • 11 schools received listening strategy instruction, mostly from class teacher • Compared with four schools who didn’t receive the training

18. Examples of strategies taught Examples of strategies taught: • Effective prediction + verification • Inferencing / identifying real key words • Segmentation / sound distinctions Feedback: • Learners kept diaries of strategies used on homework and class listening task • Feedback on process, not product, as in reading study

19. Impact of strategy instruction in listening • Intervention groups performed significantly better than comparison group at post-test • Intervention groups had significantly higher levels of self-efficacy at post-test (see also Graham, 2007 – “Learner strategies and self-efficacy: making the connection”. Language Learning Journal, 35, 81-93.)

20. How could this work in practice? • Awareness-raising: class given ‘nonsense’ passage to listen to on VLE – how did they work out words? • Next lesson starter – discussion of strategies used and how they could be used in MFL listening lotticks • Focus on effective prediction, verification, identifying real key words, dealing with unknown words; teacher modelling prediction 2 • Guided practice – with difficult passage • Feedback – discussion, tick sheets, teacher feedback on strategy use.

21. Task Look at the two listening lesson outlines in your pack. For each version, note: • The aims/objectives of the activity, and particularly of the teacher’s feedback. • What lessons pupils would learn from the feedback for subsequent listening tasks. • What knowledge/skills seem to be neglected.

22. One teacher’s reactions to this approach I feel I have learnt a lot; not least that it's worth the investment of time to take a few lessons out of the curriculum to tackle this issue of Listening, and I can tell the pupils are convinced by that too. The confidence it gives pupils[….] is priceless; even if they gain no more points from the score of the product, they have grown in confidence and found the experience of the process more positive. There was a lot less groaning, and "Oh miss, I didn't get any of that", and more focus on listening to the tape. And we have opened up a dialogue about Listening which is no bad thing!

23. Principle 7 (writing) • Writing in L2 should be developed as a skill in its own right not as a consolidation of other language skills. • For this to happen students should frequently write using their own resources rather than resources provided by the teacher

24. Macaro (2007) – ESRC funded project Macaro, E. (2007) “Do beginner learners of French have any writing strategies?”, Language Learning Journal, 35/1, 23-36. What free-writing strategies to beginner learners use? • 16 students from three schools (part of larger project on reading and writing) • Data collected at two time points, June of year 7 (Time 1) and March of year 8 (Time 2) • “task-based interview” - to elicit their free-writing strategies. • Could write about anything they wanted; given as much time as they wanted; interviewer asked questions about how they were going about it.

25. Free-Writing at time 1 (June, Y7) • Sample produced on average 5.7 words (range: 0 to 10 words) • After at least 9 months of learning French!

26. How did they go about formulating sentences? “I was thinking about some work we did about after school and stuff and I remembered it and then um, *je mangeay a snack* just came into my mind. Thinking about it I just wrote it” “Iremember back to when we did it…it’s on my graffiti wall”…(meaning a visual image he has? Or, teacher name for a notebook?) • “I keep thinking what I could put but I don’t know how to say these things. That’s my problem”

27. Formulation strategies used • most popular formulation strategy was to try to recall a set phrase which roughly matched the idea that came into their heads • Any formulations were linked to a specific learning episode in a lesson; not created • if the set phrase strategy failed, the only other available formulation strategy was to avoid saying the idea altogether

28. Free-Writing at time 2 (March, Y8) • students produced an average of 17.3 words (range: 3 words to 38 words) • After 16 months of learning French!

29. Time 2:two groups ‘emerged’ 1. Those few who were beginning to move away from the single strategy of trying to recall a set phrase from a specific learning situation: I was just thinking how to start. I adore, no I love football [mumbles and writes] je….play….je joue… I play football on …what’s on ….uh, well I can’t think what “on” is [for “on Fridays”] Eh, vendredi et dimanche avec mescopains [sounds s] because it’s got to be “mes” which is plural.

30. Time 2:two groups… 2. those still limiting themselves to this single strategy: I’m going over the sentences (in my head) which we did in class about how to describe yourself. I think I can kind of write them

31. Conclusion: free-writing • Writing inextricably linked to topic taught • Students do not use clusters of formulation strategies – strategy use limited • Monitoring strategies used, but ineffectively because of lack of linguistic knowledge

32. Proposed solution Based on projects carried out at Oxford with partnership schools See also: Graham & Macaro(2007) “Designing Year 12 strategy training in listening and writing strategies: from theory to practice”, Language Learning Journal, 35/2, 153-174. • Completely rethink they way we teach (or deal with) writing in the L2 • Writing needs to be taught as a skill – develop the skill of writing within limited linguistic resources

33. Processes in writing • Conceptualizing: thinking about ideas to write (matched to the task) • Formulating: converting those ideas into language (in the head and [then] on paper) • Monitoring: (using own resources -what they think they know already about the language) • Checking: (using external resources e.g. Dictionary) ADDITIONALLY FOR L2 WRITERS: • Dealing with feedback: peer and/or teacher

34. Where KS3 and KS4 students have most difficulty Evaluating decisions taken Recombining (set phrases) Formulation strategies Avoiding (content) Restructuring (unpicking set phrases) Generating via Translation (word for word)

35. Workshop task Please look at the two “writing lessons plans” in your folders. • In what ways are they radically different? • How do they address ‘processes’ in writing? • What difficulties do you envisage if you used “writing lesson plan 2”?

36. Post-task discussion Two points to be made first: • this is only one way that we might address the principle. There are certainly other ways. • It is not intended that all writing comes at the beginning of a topic!

37. Teacher starts a new topic by ‘doing writing’! • Teacher says: We’re going to do some writing about (e.g.) ‘my town’, ‘ma ville’. We are going to do this in stages and after each stage I’m going to give you some feedback on how well you have done. The final target is to write at least 100 words in French/ Spanish etc. • NB: apart from stage 1 and (possibly stage 3) all this can be done for homework.

38. New Topic: Task Length: 100 words Here it is essential that students really do brainstorm in L2 without external sources (dictionary or teacher) so that the identify what they already know and can manipulate/adapt. Taking risks etc. this also ensures that they do not always start by translating from English Individually, students brainstorm in L2 What would I like to say? Write in L1. Here the idea is to identify the gap between what they want to say and what they have currently at their disposal. This will inevitably be a big gap Identify gap and reduce the gap In order not to attempt anything too ambitious they identify how to simplify what they want to say (e.g. shorter sentences with no subordination) Use resources wisely to bridge gap & start writing (first draft) Use of prompt sheets for using the dictionary (not overusing); use of strategies prompt sheets There is teacher feedback of some sort at each of these four stages

39. Students can be shown this slide (after explanation) when composing first draft Evaluating decisions taken Recombining (set phrases) Formulation strategies Avoiding (content) Restructuring (unpicking set phrases) Generating via Translation (word for word) 40

40. Students can be shown this slide (after explanation) when composing first draft Strategies in the monitoring process • Auditory monitoring (does it sound right?) • Visual monitoring (does it look right?) • Back-translating (usually shows up extra or missing words) • Common sense monitoring (does it make sense?) • Content monitoring (have I put in the right information?) • Coherence monitoring (do the sentences follow each other) • Conventions monitoring (is this right for a business letter?) • Prompting a specific monitor (what are usual problems with this? E.g. present, future, conditional tenses = 1 verb) • Personalised monitoring (watch out for my usual mistakes) • Evaluating monitoring process

41. Stage 1 • Activity: Individually, students brainstorm in L2 (10 minutes?) • Purpose:They identify what bits of language they already know and can manipulate/adapt. They reduce the strategy of “when did we do this in class/homework? This also ensures that they do not always start by translating from English. • Tips: It is essential that students really do brainstorm in L2 without external sources (dictionary or teacher). It may take some time to get them used to doing this. This could be done as a starter or single activity in one lesson with remaining stages done at different times. • Feedback: Teacher provides individual feedback (written or oral) on how much language they were able to recall which matches the task requirements. Also corrects some or all mistakes.

42. Stage 2 • Activity: Students write 100 words in L1 of what they would like to say. (15 minutes?) • Purpose:To identify the gap between what they want to say and what language they have currently at their disposal. This will inevitably be a big gap. However, it avoids them believing that writing in L2 is trivial and childish. • Tip: Teacher could say already ‘try not to be too ambitious! You’ve got to put some of these ideas across later in French/Spanish etc.’ • Feedback: Teacher provides individual feedback (written or oral) on how realistically they have selected the ideas that they want to write about

43. Stage 3 • Activity: Students make the L1 text simpler in preparation for first L2 draft. • Purpose:Identify the gap between what they already know and what they want to write and try (with the teacher’s feedback) to reduce the gap by a number of strategies (e.g. SVO) • Tip: stages 2 and 3 could be done at the same time as a ‘single stage’ • Feedback: Teacher walks round and provides quick oral feedback as to whether they are ready to produce first L2 draft

44. Stage 4 • Activity:Students begin to write first draft. They have in front of them their first brainstorm, all teacher feedback, a bilingual dictionary, writing strategy check sheets. • Purpose: encourage students to use full range of strategies (including avoidance), not just translating from L1 • Tip: Teacher tells students to use resources wisely. To tick when they have used a formulation strategy and also when they have used a monitoring strategy. Ask them to underline any words they have looked up in the dictionary (support slides) • Feedback: • Use peer feedback sheet for comments on content. • Teacher selects 3 or 4 mistakes s/he wishes the student to ‘deal with’. Underlines them, and hands out the ‘reaction to teacher feedback sheet’ which is then collected in.