Cymraeg 2050 - The Challenge We Are Facing (Part 2)

 

Guest Post - Mathias Maurer

Welsh in English-medium primary education:

Cymraeg 2050 - The challenge we are facing

 

Part 2: Key obstacles in the English-medium sector

 

Introduction

In Part 1 of this blog I described the challenges we face in the EM primary sector, and why we might not yet be on the right path to achieve the EM goal in the Cymraeg 2050 strategy paper. I have shown why I think the approach in the EM sector needs to be distinctly different from the approach in the WM sector and suggested that we should focus our efforts on three key issues: teacher’s Welsh language proficiency, teacher pedagogical knowledge and curriculum design. 

In Part 2 I will now look at these 3 key issues in more detail and explain why I believe they are so crucial and must be addressed urgently.

 

Welsh language proficiency of EM primary teachers

A language teacher’s proficiency in the target language is one of the key factors affecting learning outcomes. Suzanne Graham et al. (2017), for example, came to the conclusion that, together with teaching time, primary school teachers’ French proficiency had the biggest impact on pupils’ progress in grammatical and lexical knowledge.

It is reasonable to assume that, in the EM primary sector, the variation in Welsh language proficiency between different teachers and schools is significant. This is likely to have serious implications for the quality and consistency regarding the design and delivery of Welsh curricula at school level.

I believe that coherence and progression across year groups, especially in KS2, can only be achieved if support and professional learning take into account and specifically target this variation in proficiency. The aim has to be that those schools and teachers whose Welsh might not be as strong as that of their colleagues in the class below or the school down the road can still plan and deliver their Welsh lessons with confidence, at a level that ensures coherence and progression across year groups and from primary to secondary school.

Let me explain one of the ways in which, in the context of Cymraeg 2050, a lack in Welsh language proficiency can seriously impact the quality of the teaching of Welsh, even at primary level:

In a key passage regarding the contributions the EM sector will have to make to achieve the 1 million goal, Cymraeg 2050 expresses the intention

to develop a single continuum for the teaching of Welsh as a language, with an emphasis on learning Welsh predominantly as a means of communication, particularly oral communication. (Welsh Government, 2017)

The emphasis on oral communication is significant and should guide us in our efforts to reform the EM primary sector. We need to reflect on the balance between speaking and writing tasks for example, and on how our Welsh skills might affect our task choice: For a less proficient teacher with limited resources and professional training for example it might be easier and therefore appear tempting to shift focus to highly scaffolded written work in books rather than spend more time developing oral communication skills.

For learners to be able to communicate orally, it is vital they acquire meaningful high frequency language items that are relevant to their communication needs. This is a problem for less proficient schools and teachers: In the Welsh language, many of the most frequent language items that are relevant to primary pupils and which they need to communicate effectively happen to have grammatical properties, such as mutations, that go beyond the basic Welsh that is traditionally taught to beginners. Here are two examples:

             fy mrawd i; dy frawd di; Mae un brawd gyda fi

            dod o Gaerdydd; byw yng Nghaerdydd; Prif-ddinas Cymru ydy Caerdydd

Less proficient teachers might not have the knowledge and the confidence to generate these items correctly and independently for use in their own teaching. In many instances, this is likely to lead to the avoidance of such items, and as a result, pupils miss out on learning important language items they need to communicate meaningfully and naturally. In other words, a teacher’s lack of Welsh language proficiency directly impacts their ability to teach the communication skills at the heart of our Cymraeg 2050 strategy for the EM sector.

 

Pedagogical knowledge and skills of EM primary teachers

In Curriculum for Wales, the Descriptions of Learning offer guidance on how learners should progress within each statement of what matters. Expressed from the learner’s perspective as ‘I can’ statements, they provide reference points for the pace of progression and aim to help sustain learning over a prolonged time.

When designing their school-level curricula, EM primary schools and teachers will have to translate these prose statements into actual language and lesson content. This process should be informed by the Principles of Progression which are part of the curriculum guidance.

Their Welsh language proficiency will determine to which degree they are able to do so, but there are also further challenges, independent of teachers’ Welsh language proficiency:

The problem is that knowing ‘what’ to teach will still not be sufficient on its own – teachers also require the pedagogical skills and knowledge so they can make the right choices about ‘how’ to teach the language. Teachers’ pedagogical knowledge is not linked to their language proficiency – those are two separate, distinct entities. Being a fluent speaker does not automatically make you an effective teacher of Welsh, unless you also have developed a good understanding of language acquisition processes and effective pedagogy. Similarly, being a great teacher of primary maths or even English as a first language does not guarantee an ability to teach Welsh equally well without further, specific training. And here is why:

The cognitive processes that take place when we learn a new language are different from the cognitive processes that occur when we acquire new knowledge and skills in other domains. For example, one particular aspect of language acquisition which I would argue is not widely enough acknowledged in the EM primary teaching community is the role that priming plays in language acquisition.

Whereas language learning might superficially appear to merely be the process of learning new words and learning to combine them using grammatical rules, the work of Hoey (2005) and Bock and Griffin (2000) for example shows the importance of lexical and structural priming: Through repeated hearing and reading of lexical items and grammatical constructions we subconsciously take note of the combinations and grammatical forms that certain words are most likely to form, and of common sentence structures.

Crucially, this essential learning happens subconsciously, without any explicit effort to memorise. In a study involving brain-damaged learners who had no explicit memory of the sentences they were primed for, the subjects were still shown to have acquired the prime sentences, which led Ferreira et al. (2008) to the conclusion the learning must have happened implicitly.

The difference between implict and explicit learning is one of the most important reasons why effective language pedagogy is distinctly different from effective pedagogy in other domains. Unless EM primary teachers have received relevant high-quality training, they are unlikely to be able to take advantage of the most effective pedagogy for the Welsh language classroom. Indeed, I believe it is reasonable to assume that the current unsatisfactory outcomes for Welsh in KS2 as described by Estyn in the 2019-2020 Annual Report (Estyn, 2020) are in part caused by a lack of training in and knowledge of effective language teaching pedagogy across the EM primary sector. This further aggravates the problems that a lack of Welsh language proficiency can cause, but also affects those teachers who might be proficient speakers on the one hand, but lack the pedagogical knowledge to teach effectively on the other hand.

 

Knowledge, skills and capacity to develop an evidence informed Welsh language curriculum

In September 2022 Curriculum for Wales will become mandatory for all maintained primary schools in Wales. Rooted in the principle of subsidiarity, the expectation is on all stakeholders to co-construct a curriculum that enables learners to progress towards the four purposes.

In the current phase of the rollout, primary schools are developing their individual school-level curricula, based on the four purposes, the six Areas of Learning and Experiences, the Principles of Progression and the Descriptors of Learning which outline progression within the statements of what matters that underpin each AoLE.

Designing a primary school curriculum is a challenging task at the best of times, but doing so in the midst of a pandemic has put previously unimaginable strains on the sector. Priorities had to be adjusted, and it is not unreasonable to assume that many schools have been unable to take full advantage of the professional learning support in curriculum design that has been offered by the consortia and other providers.

So what constitutes an evidence-informed Welsh language curriculum? Here are some of the elements that I consider essential`:

 

Language selection

With the overall Cymraeg 2050 ‘emphasis on learning Welsh predominantly as a means of communication, particularly oral communication’, it is vital that the language we teach our learners is relevant to their communication needs. Communicative language can be categorised into communicative functions, with related sub-functions. Planning language from such communicative functions and sub-functions helps to keep the focus on communication needs and avoids the trappings of topic-based language planning, which comes with the inherent danger that a considerable proportion of the topic-based language, especially vocabulary, might be relevant within this topic, but not in any other context.

 

Language recycling

Linguists distinguish between receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary. In mother tongue and additional languages alike, there are words we recognise and can make meaning of when we hear or read them (receptive vocabulary), but that we don’t use in our speech and writing (productive vocabulary). In order to become confident oral communicators, it is vital for our learners to develop their productive vocabulary and become increasingly fluent in using it.

Shifting vocabulary from receptive to productive knowledge is a long process that requires skilful long-term planning: Teachers need to decide what vocabulary they want their learners to be able to use actively, and then make sure their curriculum offers many processing and retrieval opportunities for this vocabulary over an extended period of time, and in a variety of contexts. The process of revisiting previously taught language is commonly referred to as ‘recycling’.  By providing ample recycling opportunities while moving along the language progression and introducing new language as well, an evidence-informed, cumulative language curriculum ensures that learners have the numerous processing and production opportunities they need to become increasingly fluent and confident in the use of the target language.

 

Task-sequencing

Evidence-informed language teaching makes use of what we know about the cognitive processes involved in language acquisition. For our learners to become confident and competent oral communicators, it is vital that we structure our teaching in a way that allows them to develop a degree of automaticity in their oral communication. The ultimate goal is listening and speaking fluency.

The cognitive process involved in developing the receptive and productive automaticity required for oral communication is different from the retrieval process we use to recall declarative knowledge in other domains.

In many subjects and contexts, explicit instruction, followed by spaced retrieval practice, is an efficient way to commit declarative knowledge to long-term memory, from where it can be retrieved when needed (I simplify!). The consequence of Hoey’s (2005), and Bock and Griffin’s (2000) findings about semantic and syntactic priming is however that effective language instruction ideally should start with a phase of receptive processing and implicit learning, giving learners multiple opportunities to process the target language through listening and reading, activating different levels of cognitive processing first.

Once listening fluency is achieved (instant recognition of the target language items), learners are then ready to move on to producing the language orally, through a series of progressively less structured tasks that allow them to eventually produce the target items in their speech, without additional support.

An evidence-informed language curriculum supports this acquisition process through a series of carefully sequenced tasks, moving from listening to speaking, and from reading to writing. Offering multiple opportunities for implicit learning through processing of the target language items in the initial stages is a key element of this approach.

 

While the three elements described above - language selection, language recycling and task sequencing - are essential for an effective language curriculum, there are others, such as effective phonic and grammar instruction, that should also be carefully woven into the teaching sequence.

I believe that designing a EM Welsh curriculum based on the principles outlined above goes well beyond the means of most EM primary schools and teachers. Crucially, I would argue that even teachers with a significant amount of pedagogical knowledge and skills require additional specialist training to design such a curriculum.

Once in place, a high-quality language curriculum facilitates impactful teaching and thus improves outcomes for all learners: It is easier to teach, not harder. Novice and less proficient teachers will benefit from the structure and resources it provides, and more experienced teachers will use it as a stepping stone to build their individual curricula that are tailored to their own skills and responsive to the needs of their learners.

My concern is that even in normal times the task of designing such an effective, evidence-based Welsh language curriculum would be too much of a challenge for many EM primary schools. Given the challenges we had to overcome and the situation in which we now find ourselves, I fear that even more EM schools will have to prioritise and, as a result, compromise on the quality of their Welsh language curriculum.

The question is, how can we use what we know about the specific challenges the sector is facing to optimise support?

How can we join up professional learning and supporting resources so we can realistically expect a positive impact across the whole sector, not just in those EM primary schools that are lucky enough to have specialist teachers of Welsh among their staff?

 

Conclusion Part 2:

In Part 2, I have explained what I believe to be the three main obstacles that hold the EM primary sector back from improving outcomes in Welsh:

· A lack of Welsh language proficiency is likely impact on a significant amount of EM schools’ and teachers’ ability to develop their pupils’ oral communication effectively

 

· Effective pedagogy requires an understanding of language acquisition theory and specialist concepts such as lexical and structural priming that goes beyond most EM primary teachers’ expertise.

 

· Key concepts of a successful language curriculum, such as language selection, language recycling and task-sequencing require specialist knowledge and skills that many EM primary schools are unlikely to have the capacity for.

In Part 3, I will suggest what I believe to be a realistic and manageable approach to tackling these challenges and set the EM primary sector on the right track for Cymraeg 2050.

Thank you for reading!

 

References:

Bock, K., and Griffin, Z. M., 2000. The persistence of structural priming: transient activation or implicit learning?. Journal of experimental psychology. General, 129(2), pp.177–192.

Estyn, 2020. The Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education and Training in Wales; available online at: https://www.estyn.gov.wales/system/files/2021-12/ESTYN%20Annual%20Report%202019-2020.pdf [last accessed on 07/01/2022].

Ferreira V. S., Bock K., Wilson M. P., Cohen N. J.,2008. Memory for syntax despite amnesia. Psychological Science, 19 (9) pp. 940-946.

Graham, S., Courtney, L., Marinis, T. and Tonkyn, A., 2017. Early language learning: The impact of teaching and teacher factors. Language Learning, 67(4), pp.922-958.

Hoey, M., 2005. Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. London: Routledge.

Welsh Government, 2017. Cymraeg 2050: Welsh Language Strategy; available online at: https://gov.wales/cymraeg-2050-welsh-language-strategy [last accessed on 07/01/2022].