It was the early 1990s and I had gone to a school for an interview. The school was experimenting with “resource based learning” and I was invited to observe a class. It was a German lesson. The members of the class I was observing were involved in carousel activities (basically they could choose what to do from resources laid around the room.) One little group of girls could not have been more enthusiastic. The first girl picked up a card from the pile.
“Ick farra natch…. Ingland” she proclaimed triumphantly.
The second girl picked up a card
“Ick farra natch Ingland und.. Frankreetch!” she said confidently.
It was the third girl’s turn. A slight frown appeared on her face.
“Ick farra natch Ingland, Frankreetch and.. what’s Dee Dee AR?”
“I don’t know! Julie, what’s DDR?”
“Miss told us. It’s East Germany!”
“OK! Ick farra natch Ingland, Frankreetch and East Germany!”
I remember asking the teacher whom I would be replacing about what she thought and her comments were guarded. It was a good idea “in Prinzip” she said, but the issue as she saw it was that pupils weren’t really ready for it. Yet directly teaching how sound matched to print was not on, so…..
I made my excuses and declined the post which they had offered to me. I felt guilty as it was a lovely friendly school, but I knew I didn’t want to teach like that.
Objections to a focus on phonics usually involve one of the following:
1.We’ve always done it
Well, you might have, but even my anecdote tells you that not everyone did, or if they did, it wasn’t very effective. In my training we were told that pronunciation would just come naturally, provided they did enough listening. And anyway, there was no point reading aloud – silent reading was what we were supposed to do. I travelled abroad to teach in three different countries where I observed teachers asking children to read aloud and insisting on correct matching of sound to print. This gave me the confidence to do likewise on returning to the UK, but over the years I remember hearing that because dyslexic children found reading difficult, it was something that MFL teachers shouldn’t really be doing. I enjoyed my PGCE and learnt a lot of useful things. I am certainly not one to trash everything I was taught and my introductory lessons still follow an idea I was given. I think my PGCE was valuable. But on phonics and pronunciation, I have concluded that what we were told was just plain wrong.
2. Well is your pronunciation perfect? Thought not. But when you go to the TL country, I’m sure they understand you.
I was chuffed when asked in Austria if I was from Holland! Usually my English accent is detected after a bit. I have always struggled with the “ell” sound – I remember my tutor saying “vorne das l” when I was reading out loud. Having an accent is one thing. But mispronouncing the ie and ei sounds in German? Or ignoring the effect of the umlaut on how vowel sounds are pronounced? An entirely different ballgame in my opinion.
3.OK, we need to do it, but look, listen repeat is far too boring! There are more interactive ways.
There are lots of tasks children can do to practise pronunciation. But I can’t see how you get round look, listen and repeat in the early stages. However, I am ordering my copy of Breaking the Sound Barrier by Steve Smith and Gianfranco Conti and maybe I will be converted! There are indeed lots of games one can do, but some of those I have seen so far rely greatly on peer assessment. Observing lessons over the years, I have seen peers nod through all kinds of misconceptions. In my view, pairwork and peer assessment is good for communicative activities, but I am sceptical as to whether it is truly effective for grammar or pronunciation tasks, where a lot will depend on how effective the peer is.
4. When they don’t pronounce correctly, it’s just because they’re not motivated enough.
Children often giggle the first time they have to say something in a foreign language. Like any drama teacher, I tell them about physical control. “We make funny noises when speaking MFL, so get over it” is my view. I personally have not encountered someone who deliberately mispronounces because they think it uncool to say it properly, unless they have learnt in an environment where pupils have been allowed to giggle at each other when speaking the MFL. So yes, in those circumstances, the disaffected pupil trying to raise a laugh might do so. In my view, if a child is afraid to pronounce something correctly for fear of being mocked by their peers, then the teaching and learning environment needs to change. But the group of girls saying “ick farra natch” to each other were trying to impress. They thought they were saying it properly….
5.It’s pointless as there are exceptions to the rules.
The fact that there are exceptions to rules leads some to conclude that we shouldn’t teach any rules at all. I have seen this argument used for grammar rules as well as phonics. I don’t see why exceptions to rules mean not teaching any rules at all. In the late 1980s I remember some lecturers getting agitated about rules such as “adjectives describe a noun” or ” a noun is the name of a person. place or thing”. Unless definitions were 100% accurate, we shouldn’t teach them – that seemed to be their view. Again, I don’t see the problem with teaching a simplified form of a rule in the early stages. And then being delighted when a pupil discovers an exception.
6. There are lots of variations among native speakers. We shouldn’t be pulling out one particular pronunciation and teaching it, as that discriminates against native speakers who pronounce it a different way.
It’s fun to point out regional nuances. I do. I believe we should be doing this. But I don’t buy the argument that there is no such thing as standard pronunciation and therefore anything goes. Maybe there is somewhere in the German speaking world where the pronunciation of bleib and blieb is interchangeable, but I doubt it.
7. There’s no firm research in favour – evidence is conflicting. So we shouldn’t promote it.
Like most teachers, I admit that I don’t have time or am too tired on evenings or weekends to read a lot of research papers. Much SLA research I have seen seems to envisage a different scenario to that of the average UK MFL teacher, who is looking for practical ways to enable pupils to progress on one or two hours a week, when those same pupils are quite rightly learning lots of other subjects as well. All I would say is that I don’t think it is acceptable to apply English SSCs to a foreign language, which is what pupils will do if not told otherwise. And letting them do so is reinforcing a belief in English cultural superiority (a rule in English must automatically apply elsewhere).
8. Phonics are important, but we shouldn’t test them on it in the GCSE
I sympathise with that argument. We have to beware of the backwash effect. But equally, I don’t buy the argument that “exam boards will have to resort to tricks, since at GCSE they need a range of marks and some people will have to fail”. The phonics is just one part of the test – they could in theory allow everyone to pass that particular section – the range of marks will occur in general conversation. And even so, some people will mispronounce some words, even if they have been taught and practised, because English SSCs still raise their heads and interfere.
In conclusion, while I have reservations about frequency lists, I welcome the focus on phonics in MFL teaching and don’t see an issue with phonics and/or dictation being tested. The lockdown has had a pernicious effect on pronunciation in general, as far as I can see. A focus on phonics will mean that hopefully, we can bury the ghost of “it will all come naturally” and really ensure our pupils can decode words. Once they can decode the words, we can then introduce longer texts to widen pupils’ vocabulary.