I have spent more than an average amount of time perousing material from different sources across the world and engaging on social media with teachers from different countries. I have also been lucky enough to do occasional events in Scotland, Ireland and Australia, as well as in my home country England. So I have seen that teachers come at pedagogy from different angles. I have always thought, however, that we can be rather parochial in our thinking about language teaching.
By parochial, I mean that we tend to view language teaching through the lens of our own national curriculum, exam system, official guidance and professional debates. Each country, and sometimes each region within a country, develops its own language for talking about pedagogy, its own priorities and its own assumptions about what constitutes good teaching. I guess there's nothing particularly surprising about this. Teachers have to work within the systems in which they're employed. But I wonder whether this sometimes narrows our thinking more than we realise.
In England, for example, in recent years, some professional discussion has revolved around the so-called three pillars of phonics, vocabulary and grammar, promoted particularly through the TSC pedagogy review from 2016 and Ofsted's (highly flawed) research review and subsequent curriculum guidance. Teachers debate sequencing, high-frequency vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and the implications of the reformed GCSE. These are understandable concerns, given the influence of inspection and high-stakes exams. Teaching materials lean into these concerns, for example text books sponsored by exam boards and EPI materials written partly with exam topics in mind.
Across the Atlantic, however, the language can be quite different. In the USA, ACTFL places considerable emphasis on communicative proficiency, with its focus on interpretive, interpersonal and presentational modes of communication. Teachers talk about proficiency targets, Can-Do Statements and performance-based assessment. In England, by contrast, no one talks about those three modes — we talk of the four skills of listening, sepaking, reading and writing. The fact that the GCSE examines these skills dicretely reinforces the language we use.
In Ireland, the Junior Cycle framework provides another perspective. Its modern foreign languages specification changed a few years ago to put greater emphasis on communicative competence, language awareness and sociocultural and intercultural understanding. The revised specification also gives attention to language portfolios and oral communication tasks. When I gave a talk to a conference in Ireland back in around 2018, that change was seen as quite revolutionary.
Meanwhile, Scottish teachers work within a different qualifications system, with National 5 and Higher courses shaping curriculum planning and assessment. I daresay geographical proximity leads teachers in Scotland to be influenced by what's happening in England. To what extent, I can't honestly say.
Of course, these are all broad generalisations. There is considerable variation within each country, and many teachers draw on ideas from well beyond their national borders. I am reminded by something Patsy Lightbown wrote somewhere about how many teachers often end up doing very similar things in classrooms, whatever the latest method or government guidance! PPP remains a very common paradigm everywhere, it seems, inlcuding in ELT world.
A further word about exams. We know about washback (aka backwash): the effect of exams on what teachers teach and how they teach it. If an exam rewards particular vocabulary, grammatical structures or task types, teachers will understandably devote considerable attention to them. They are wise to do so, even if it need not dominate pedagogy. In England, for example, it is not surprising that teachers spend time discussing prescribed GCSE vocabulary lists, dictation and translation tasks. These are immediate practical concerns which inspectors will want to pick up on when they come to visit. The risk is that teachers may not question the value of such tasks, or give them too much prominence. I imagine many teachers outside England would find some of our practices out of the mainstream.
Of course, the requirements of a particular exam are not the same thing as the requirements of successful language acquisition. An exam is a locally designed means of assessing certain aspects of language competence. It reflects educational traditions, political decisions, practical constraints and sometimes compromises. It shouldn't automatically become our theory of how languages are best learned. Teachers may get so concerned about exams that they reflect less on fundamental pedagogical issues, such as the role of motivation, implicit learning and interaction as fundamentals of language acquisition.
Parochialism creates the risk is that professional discussion becomes a bit of an echo chamber, with teachers repeatedly exposed to the same ideas, assumptions and controversies. In some cases, it can even lead to tribalism, as teachers defend their method against others. An MFL teacher in England may know little about TPRS or even Task-based Language Teaching. A teacher in the US may be unaware of EPI. We have a lot to learn from each other.
What might we gain from a less parochial outlook? An English teacher might find it refreshing to examine ACTFL's emphasis on what learners can actually do with language, rather than primarily what vocabulary and grammatical knowledge they have accumulated. They may be illuminated by common practices in the CI/TPRS tradition. American teachers may have things to learn from the growing popularity of EPI in England and elsewhere, along with systenatoc phonics instruction. MFL/WL teachers in general can always learn from the communicative and task-based practices found frequently in the TESL world. As a young teacher, TESL books were a source of new ideas after my training in the British Oral Approach.
And we could all benefit from engaging more fully with international research into additional language acquisition, rather than relying mainly on the interpretations promoted by our own professional networks or government body. Things in England have taken a curious turn in recent years, it has to be said!
When we encounter different models, we're forced to question our assumptions. Why do we organise the curriculum around grammatical structures? Why do we assess these particular skills? Why do we give so much attention to certain types of exercise? Could we do things differently?
I wouldn't suggest that teachers should ignore official guidance or exam specifications. Nor do I think that everything done elsewhere is necessarily better. There is plenty of excellent language teaching in every system, alongside approaches which could no doubt be improved. But perhaps teachers could spend a little more time discovering what colleagues in other countries are thinking and doing.Professional organisations, international conferences, research journals, blogs and online communities such as Facebook groups provide many opportunities to exchange ideas across borders. After all, if there's one thing our subject should teach us, it's that the world looks rather different when viewed through somebody else's language and culture!
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