The Literacy Approach for foreign language teaching

In one of the first entries we talked about backward planning  as one of the key principles in the approach. In this entry I'd like to talk about the learning path. Backward planning means that my first thought in the process of planning a lesson is about what I would like to achieve with my students, or what my students will have to produce at the end of the unit. To further clarify my expectations, I ask myself about the characteristics of this production, what it should look like, and what my students can be expected to achieve in the unit. This is what goes into the "level expected" column on the first page of the planning grid. This process is essential, as it will give me - and my students - a clear sense of direction, and everything we do in class will help them achieve this final production.   However, so far this is no more than an aim, and my students are not able to reach it by themselves - they need to reflect on the characteristics of the text they have to pr...

This week, rather than talking about the Approach as such, I'd like to share with you something that happened a few days ago in my classes at university. On Monday I asked the students to think about a frightening experience they had had, and eager as they are as first-year students, and seeing that writing about a frightening experience was their first task, by our next class on Wednesday some of them had already uploaded their assignments for me to correct. We spent the whole two-hour session working on stories, distinguishing between stories and reports, talking about plots, looking at plot diagrams, and correcting a story written by a former student. At the end of the session the students confessed that they had already uploaded their stories and asked me if they would be able to delete them. When I told them I would have to do so for them they were dismayed and begged me "not to look at them"! For me this was the best feedback I could have wished for. The students ha...

 After a long and restful summer break (the heat made it a rather challenging summer!), I am back to complete the work on the unit about Florence Nightingale and biography writing. You will remember that we already looked at the reception phase, so now it's the turn of the production phase  divided into a guided production phase, where students have the possibility of doing more controlled practice on some aspects of the text, and a free production phase, where they acually write the biography. I must admit that while the structure is very clear for me, I tend to take it for granted that students will be able to write good texts once we have worked on their characteristics. I  have to make a conscious effort to allow enough time for their guided practice, and if I don't, the result is often disappointing. In the unit designed for the Florence Nightingale text, the focus is on three different features of the model text: the need to include factual and specific information,...