Confidence in the teaching of MFL

[Anna]

For my Research project at Uni I am considering the confidence of teachers in the teaching of MFL in the primary school. I was just wondering if anybody would be happy to discuss their level of confidence in teaching MFL and the reasoning for this? How could your confidence level/the confidence levels of others be improved?

[Ruth]

Hi Anna!
I thought I'd answer your question as it seems to be for a good purpose. Personally I would say my confidence level is very high. I hate to sound cocky because I'm not! Let me explain. Before getting into teaching MFL in primary I had taught TEFL for over twnty years. Even though I taught English as a foreign language, I find that the mechanics and the tools are nearly always the same for teaching another foreign language. I am fluent in Spanish, but due to secondary schools we were strongly recommended to go with French when we introduced MFL. My forst reaction was that it was a pity not to be using my Spanish. However I soon changed my mind. Even though my French was rusty, I have more than enough to teach at this levwl.
I have also found it to be a refreshing experience and have surprised myself at how quickly my Frenc is coming back.
I am a HLTA at my schoo as well as MFL Leader and EAL coordinator.Going with French has put me in the same position of any of the other teachers. If we had gone with Spanish I think it would have bee more difficult to encourage other people to come on board!

[Virginia Bucci]

Hello Anna

You may not wish to count my reply as I am in the USA, and I teach Spanish & French enrichment classes to preschools (ages 2-1/2 to 6). I have been doing this for 8 yrs.

If my input is of use to you, I feel very much as Ruth does, for similar reasons. Although I was a French major, and had experience teaching high school French, I found when designing a program for early learners that what was most desired by parents of young children in my area is Spanish. I had a minor in Spanish and long ago was fluent due to schooling in Mexico, but was a bit underconfident at first. I built my confidence up quickly by (1)returning to reading Latin American novels as I did eons ago in college (with dictionary in my lap for the first month or so!!) and (2)purchasing a set of practice CD's that covered beginner through advanced level Spanish. Since I also teach a few French classes, I found it advantageous to pick up a set of Michel Thomas Advanced French CD's-- this was mainly so I could practice, in my car, on the way from a Spanish class to a French class, so that I would not mix up my words!!

Even after 8 yrs I still use the CD's to get my tongue untied and going quickly, mornings. And I stock up on light modern reading in French & Spanish (mostly murder mysteries) as insurance that my locutions do not become too antiquated.

Señora Vigi

P.S. my tiny charges, of course, would not know the differences if my vocabulary was out of date-- however, several of the preschools in which I teach have Latin American aides who sit in or stop to chat--- they keep me honest!!

[Gill]

I have been a primary teacher for 20 years and last year started teaching Spanish in a primary school. Initially I was fairly confident as although I have no formal language teaching training I had a lot of teaching experience. Now I am beginning to see the results during the second year I am more confident and am team teaching Spanish in one classroom to share skills with another teacher. This is proving very successful and is raising her confidence to teach Spanish. Some teachers who are not teaching it with me feel the children are over taking them.
I am not a linguist, I learnt Spanish whilst living in Spain, I am enthusiastic about teaching it and admit to the children that I am still learning.
Hope this helps.
Gill

[Helen]

Hiya Anna
I have been teaching as a normal classroom teacher for 19 years but gave it up to start teaching Spanish. I started with one school just on one morning a week and have now got my second school. I have been doing it just over a year now and I do feel very confident. A lot of the games/ exercises and activities we do are things I feel are used in the primary curriculumanyway- it's just a different slant.
I do feel very confident in Spanish which I know does help! I lived in Spain for five years and went to lessons to learn the language from scratch. I also taught EFL in a Spanish school so feel happy with the methods.
However I have recently started a new job which involves training other teachers to teach MFL and it was suggested to me that I do it in French! Although I got A level in French (a long time go!) my first reaction was to panic! After calming down I have realised that I may need to go down the route of offering French as well as Spanish. I think I may need a refresher course- a LONG one! Am hoping that it will all come flooding back to me!
Hope this helps
Good Luck
Helen

[Mark Purves]

Hi Anna

I am a secondary language teacher with 27 years experience who has moved into Primary Languages. I have had a discussion about this on the mflresources yahoo group page but in essence I feel that the support currently offered, whilst well intentionned and at times very good, is a bit piecemeal. Essentially I feel that to really deliver this effectively you need to break support down to a much more focused level. There is a Primary MFL coordinator working on a city wide basis where I live but her time and resources are spread pretty thin. I feel that a secondary school needs to group with its main feeder primaries and put money onto employing someone on a 2 - 3 year contract to establish a coordinated approach. That person could help set up the curriculum, develop them in partnership with the secondary school, help provide inset and materials. You need a close and ongoing partneship to get this to work. There is a lot of good INSET available but again it comes around too infrequently to offer the immediate support necessary in the school. I feel too that lack of confidence with pronunciation and accent is an inhibiting factor. You can overcome this by using video clips and the soundfiles that accompany courses but teachers still feel exposed and vulnerable.

To some extent time will solve some of these issues. You have to get the right people in the right place and as more students with a language are trained to take up posts, things will improve. Hope this gives you some food for thought.

[Linda Owen]

Hi Anna,
I am currently running a training course for Y3/4 teachers, based on the La Jolie Ronde/Wakefield SoW in French for Y3/4. There are 3 cohorts of 25 - 30 teachers, it's 4 1/2 days spread over the year. We have had session 1 so far, and session 2 is this week. A large proportion of all the groups have no qualification in French at all, some have O-level and a very few have A-level.
At the beginning of the first session I asked the teachers to write down on post-its what they were Confident, Optimistic or Worried about re attending the course/teaching French. I am hoping to show them in June that they are less worried...!
In quite large groups, they then collated their responses and made a group response. It is called a COW chart, and each one is the summary of 6 - 10 teachers' feelings. For example the cohort A file shows the results of 4 groups.
I am attaching them as you may find them interesting. If you use them in any way perhaps you could delete the initials of the teachers, which are in the bottom left hand corner of each grid (if any of them put their initials on). I have also got the photos of the COW charts before the groups discussed them together if that's any use to you (my typed up ones are from after they had discussed them).
Good luck!
Linda

[Helen Dunford]

Hi Anna,

When our HT asked the staff who was prepared to take the lead in MFL nearly two years ago, I jumped at the chance! I have been teaching since 1989 and felt very secure in my abilities as a classroom practitioner. I was ready for some stimulation and challenge! Having taken French at A level in 1985 I had a good grounding and felt I could give teaching French a good go!

No other staff offered!

So, in Jan 07 I went on a course about introducing Primary langauges...and set about building a bank of resources and scheme of work for our KS2 classes. We now have all our KS2 class teachers delivering French to their own classes once a week. They use the lessons I have prepared. They have varying degrees of confidence...some did GSCE, others O level, others none but have attended up skilling courses provided by County.

I would say their confidence is growing but they like to know the preparation work has been done. The find pronouncation difficult sometimes but there are many could audio resources that show the way!

Hope this helps.

Helen Dunford

[Anna]

Hello Anna,

I think your question is a great one. I am a MFL student as well and am at present working in a school where they only get 15 mins of French teaching a week. I think this is way to little and the results of what the children produce on the back of this small amount of tution is of a very low level (even at Year 6).
Confidence does play a huge part in any teaching - my real question/comment is can we as teachers 'be all things to all people'. At present my honest answer is no we cannot. It is one thing to teach the Core subjects as well as History, Geography etc as 'mugging up on the subject matter of this lessons is not that hard. However with languages if as a teacher you have little interest/little or no confidence than i think the teaching of MFL should be left to people such as you and I - who clearly have the correct knowledge base and more importantly the interest and confidence to teach.
If we are expecting all teachers to teach MFL in 2010 - then we will need to send them on courses tailored to increasing their knowledge and confidence. I have not heard to any of these courses happening yet. Have you? I would love to know if i am wrong.
I think that without these courses (or leaving it up to MFL people to teach) the govenments aims in 2010 and will not be achieved and instead of inspiring children to contiune learning MFL at Secondary school it will have the direct opposite effect.

Not sure if any of the above is helpful- do contact me if you want more comments or if you want to respond to the above.
Either way i wish you all the success with your project and i would be very intrested to hear your findings.

Kind regards
Anna

[Helen]

Must say I agree with all of the above! It is a big ASK to ask all teachers to be able and confident to teacher a MFL without a lot of support and training. They do have to teach alot of other subjects as well and can't, in my opinion, put the same amount of effort into lessons as someone who is only working on that one subject. My fear is that non specialists will just switch on the DVD and let the kids watch but don't know if that will happen???? Am I being cynical?
Hx

[Louise]

Hi Anna,
I can't say I really agree with the previous two posts. I work as a primary languages consultant in a large authority and we have a mixed range of abilities and confidence. In answer to the first comment we run specialised courses for primary class teachers who will be delivering languages. We run sessions on both methodology and language upskilling; overwhelmingly teachers leave the courses enthused and excited to start teaching. Most people's anxieties are based on the fear of the unknown - what does a langauge lesson look like? How do we use the framework? What level are pupils' expected to arrive at in four years? When these questions have been tackled people feel much more confident to have a go. I think your question is an interesting one - it certainly has more to do with confidence than competence.
There are also other residential courses specifically tailored for teachers focussing largely on language upskilling. They are run by www.cilt.org.uk and www.lfee.co.uk - both of which I would thoroughly recommend.
I would never downplay the capability of primary teachers to teach languages. They really are jack of all trades, but at the same time master of all. Primary teachers are specialists in their own right and are often based placed to teach their own class languages because of their knowledge of their class and understanding of primary methodology. I have written a research project on this, focussing on the child's perspective, which you may or may not find useful (see attached).
We work with approximately 300 schools in the county - most are apprehensive to start with, but even with minimal training people's confidence grows quickly. We have seen very little evidence of people just putting DVDs on and leaving the children to it. We have seen some amazing lessons from people who have a GCSE in French which really shouldn't be ignored.
In conclusion, I think primary languages will be a sucessful initiative if teachers are encouraged and training available to them, rather than questioning their ability to do it.

[Helen]

I don't think I made myself clear- sorry. I don't think that teachers are not capable- I was a class teacher for 18 years before I came out to teacher languages and I know that we are a very capable bunch- BUT i do believe that teachers do need training and support to develop confidence. It is a BIG ask!

[Nicole]

My role is that of teaching French in KS2, I thoroughly enjoy it but knew that as it was so long since I took French at school that some areas might be a bit suspect. I sorted this to some extent by retaking my o'level at night class last year so I have greater confidence in my subject knowledge. I feel that I am very lucky to be part-time and thus was able to commit to the training I feel the teaching demands. Also there are very good CPD and resources provided by the LEA. I still feel that my pronunciation could be better, so I use a lot of the bablezone clips for qca units which will model for the children but also me. I also use a lot of songs, and any film clips such as Early Start which are relavent to the topic.

One thing I would advocate anyone buying for their language teaching is a digital voice recorder, I use it often as part of a plenary session to record children, then upoad it onto the computer, as part of an IWB and use in the recap and intro of the next session. Just hearing how well the children are doing gives me confidence in my teaching.

I think this site is really helpful, the professional but realistic viewpoint is very encouraging to developing confidence. Well done.

Cheers and keep up the good work
Nicole