Skip to main content

English baccalaureate for GCSEs?

Thanks to Martin Lapworth of Taskmagic fame for this "heads-up" (ouch!).

This is from the Press Association:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5iSlHn-4caDgT3CHSYjQEdEiRH_eQ

This could have huge implications for modern language teaching since schools would immediately place a higher value on languages, effectively awarding them a similar status to maths, English and science. Could be good news for history and geography too.

Not sure what it means yet. It looks like giving a name given to a collection of subjects which many students already study. I can already hear the debate about sheep and goats, creating two classes of students, those with the bac and those without, like returning to O-level and CSE. Some other subject areas would feel devalued. What would having this bac gain a student? Would it become a prerequisite for entry to some universities? Almost certainly. If the aim is to produce more scientists, linguists, historians and geographers, then are there other ways of doing this apart from inventing a new certificate? Do we need GCSEs anyway?

However, as a French teacher, my first reaction is positive. It could be a cunning plan. Mr Gove is responding to views teachers have been expressing for some time.

As for reforming and simplifying A-levels, this could also be welcome. The words devil and detail spring to mind.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the natural order hypothesis?

The natural order hypothesis states that all learners acquire the grammatical structures of a language in roughly the same order. This applies to both first and second language acquisition. This order is not dependent on the ease with which a particular language feature can be taught; in English, some features, such as third-person "-s" ("he runs") are easy to teach in a classroom setting, but are not typically fully acquired until the later stages of language acquisition. The hypothesis was based on morpheme studies by Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt, which found that certain morphemes were predictably learned before others during the course of second language acquisition. The hypothesis was picked up by Stephen Krashen who incorporated it in his very well known input model of second language learning. Furthermore, according to the natural order hypothesis, the order of acquisition remains the same regardless of the teacher's explicit instruction; in other words,
4 comments
Read more

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).
Post a Comment
Read more

12 principles of second language teaching

This is a short, adapted extract from our book The Language Teacher Toolkit . "We could not possibly recommend a single overall method for second language teaching, but the growing body of research we now have points to certain provisional broad principles which might guide teachers. Canadian professors Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada (2013), after reviewing a number of studies over the years to see whether it is better to just use meaning-based approaches or to include elements of explicit grammar teaching and practice, conclude: Classroom data from a number of studies offer support for the view that form-focused instruction and corrective feedback provided within the context of communicative and content-based programmes are more effective in promoting second language learning than programmes that are limited to a virtually exclusive emphasis on comprehension. As teachers Gianfranco and I would go along with that general view and would like to suggest our own set of g
2 comments
Read more