Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Positively Speaking


My latest lesson  teachingEnglish and  I am left pondering how to encourage more speaking, how I can get the French children to venture into the vital world of verbal communication,


There's something about the formality & grammatical correctness of teaching in France which means the children are fine with the written or read word / with the convergent and single answer response, but struggle with choice or possible different answers. They are used to everything being marked, its right or wrong; no maybe, no nearly and certainly no points for initiative or effort.

So today I began to wonder if their system & way of working was making me adapt my teaching; was I asking for one word answers, expecting single correct answers? I was trying to get them to remember and talk about the days of the week and latterly the concept of 'next' as in the next day or the person next to you, but because they didn't want to make a mistake verbally they were hesitant. They knew the names & order of the days, they knew the concept of  'next / prochaine ', but choosing to take a chance and answer, no thank you. Better if they could take turns or be chosen to speak.And then there were the multiple choice questions, now they're a nightmare!

Our previous 'Let's Speak' language students (French wishing to improve their spoken English) had told us that every error was marked even if the sentence worked, if it was not formally the 'one correct' answer, then it was wrong. Hence for them, written grammar or read prose with closed (single answer) questions were easy to score highly, but they felt inadequate orally because they misused a word, shortened a phrase or mispronounced a.... But language is about communication, getting the message across and 'guessing', 'having a go', trying to put words together, even reading inflection & body language are all vital facets to fluency.

Strange then that in the teaching of a language in France more emphasis seems to be put on correctness and less on actually getting the meaning across.After all we don't normally assess oral / aural communication by how correctly its written or spelt. That would be like measuring land in fathoms or the sea in acres. So most French people pass through the education system with a good grounding of grammatical English but no confidence to speak it, afraid that if its not perfect it will be wrong & ridiculed.

This concept of failure is,it seems, deeply woven into the education system. Children pass  through the primary school system ('marernalle' & 'primaire') in descending numerical order, unlike their UK counterparts who ascend in order. However if they do not make their grades for that year, they fail the year  and have to repeat that year. This is not an uncommon event and is accepted by students who then must repeat the year with children younger than them. Akin to the Victorian 'Standards', whereby you only passed through the standards if you achieved the grade and passed the tests, this is a system which, from the very start acknowledges failure and advances success.  

So when it comes to getting the children to take a risk, have a go the failure is not just a fear of, but a probable reality. So I wonder what those children & their families would make of a letter  recently sent by a Welsh school to all their pupils about to take Standard Attainment Tests. All credit to the school in question, this is a brilliant piece of positivity and I thoroughly approve.



   

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