190 reasons why the British are learning to love knowing more than just English

The Early Language Learning and Language Colleges project was established by the Centre for Information on Language Teaching ( CiLT) in June 2002. There are currently 190-plus Specialist Language Colleges (SLCs) involved, each working with a key primary partner and its wider family of schools. This project impacts therefore on some 1,000 plus schools across the country.

CiLT has held four annual conferences to launch and disseminate good practice from all phases of the project; the most recent was held in Loughborough in September 2005. Each delegate from a specialist language college attended with a primary partner in order to reinforce the principle of working in partnership. CiLT support for this project includes regional, national and electronic networking. CiLT Language Teaching Advisers are working with clusters of language colleges and primary partners and with individual schools.

The impact of the project so far

Specialist Language Colleges continue to report that the Early Language Learning and Language Colleges project has sharpened up the focus of their Languages work with primary schools. There is a huge amount of respect for and a greater understanding of primary pedagogy from specialist teachers of secondary modern foreign languages (MFL) in language colleges.

Mutual observation of lessons by both primary and secondary teachers is giving a clearer steer to what is meant by linguistic progression thus opening up the debate on tackling KS2/KS3 — primary/secondary — transition in the most positive way possible for both teachers and pupils. Primary teachers show excellent examples of cross-curricular work e.g. literacy, numeracy, music, P.E. and science, and make natural and effective links between the foreign language and other curriculum areas. Secondary teachers feel they have much to learn from this approach and there are some examples of secondary teachers adopting similar strategies in the Year 7 curriculum.

Developing teachers’ skills

Primary teachers want to feel confident in the classroom and provide an excellent linguistic model for young learners. They realise that accuracy, pronunciation and intonation are key to success. Tapes, CD Roms, DVDs, Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and courses abroad are all acknowledged as extremely useful, as is a good working relationship with secondary specialists who are on hand to support the primary teacher’s development in the foreign language.

In some cases foreign language assistants are producing tapes to provide accurate models of pronunciation. A number of language colleges in collaboration with their primary partners are using Power Point presentations to provide accurate models of pronunciation through storytelling. This benefits both learners and non-specialist teachers.

Colleagues in language colleges have begun to develop their role as trainers and there are many examples of them providing excellent and sustained support to primary colleagues. Of the 800-plus regional trainers for the Key Stage 2 framework, high numbers come from language colleges and primary partners, whose partnerships are a direct result of the Early Language Learning and Language Colleges project.

As a result of CiLT’s work with the Training and Development Agency for Schools, language colleges and their primary partners are beginning to involve themselves closely with the primary strand of modern foreign language teacher training.

Key issues arising from project work and dissemination conferences

Early evidence suggests that the key to successful transition lies in teachers feeling comfortable in working together, recognising each other’s experience and expertise and actually getting to know the pupils involved and what they can do and achieve. Secondary teachers are then much more able to build on prior knowledge and understanding both in terms of the modern foreign language and in pupils’ general awareness of the principles of language.

There seems to be an increasing understanding that working across phases is a key way to address progression, and that challenges of progression in languages can be addressed by looking at and learning from how KS2/KS3 progression is effectively handled in other curriculum areas.

Many teachers are making the links to literacy far more explicit than they would have done in the past, building on pupils’ knowledge and understanding of language learned through work done via the National Literacy Strategy in order to develop foreign language skills. From talking to teachers involved, it seems that KS3 pupils may be beginning to benefit from the application of new techniques based on good primary practice.

A growing number of language colleges mention use of the European Languages Portfolio to record progression. This is popular with schools and pupils and parents and particularly useful as a record of all the languages that a pupil speaks including home and community languages.

The main focus of work in the last year has been on the KS2 Framework for Languages. We will continue this in the academic year 2006/7 and use the project as an opportunity to develop more primary and secondary teachers to work as trainers and coaches.

Next steps

In the coming period CiLT’s objective will be to build on this initial progress and in particular to:

- support schools in building capacity and developing sustainable models;

- develop the ‘training trainers’ agenda;

- develop greater understanding of the nature of primary entitlement to foreign language education and the role of the language colleges and other secondary schools within the National Strategy for Languages;

- make sure that language colleges and their partners are closely integrated with the wider Early Language Learning initiative, and that all parties are aware of and build on the good practice of recent years;

- continue to work closely with the Training and Development Agency for Schools, language colleges and their primary partners in supporting excellent placements for trainee teachers of modern foreign languages at KS2;

- ensure that languages other than French are given fair coverage and support;

- support both primary schools and language colleges in implementing and evaluating the impact of the KS2 modern foreign languages framework;

ensure that continuing language education becomes as exciting a part of primary languages work as ‘getting started’;

- continue to work with and support language local authority partnerships in order to ensure consistent messages, a coherent strategic approach and best use of experience, expertise and resources. 

Both language colleges and their primary partners are overwhelmingly positive towards the introduction of a new language into the primary curriculum. Many schools report that this has opened up the whole debate about valuing and respecting all languages within the school and community. Pupils as well as parents and teachers are proud to display their bilingualism, and indeed mutilingualism, in a wide range of home and community languages as well as those formally taught within the curriculum.

Carmel O’Hagan is Senior Language Adviser at the National Centre for Languages.