Memo for Oxford Linguists from The Queen’s College Translation Exchange
Questions & suggestions to: translation.exchange@queens.ox.ac.uk
This document is designed to help inform submissions to the Government’s Curriculum and Assessment review, open for submissions until 22nd November 2024. However, this information more broadly underpins QTE’s general approach and we hope is useful for current linguists and prospective teachers.
- You’ll find all the Review’s questions here, where you can also submit your answers: https://consult.education.gov.uk/curriculum-and-assessment-team/curriculum-and-assessment-review-call-for-evidence/
- We include below our view on some of the key CAR questions, making the case for increasing the amount of cultural, creative content in the curriculum. Please feel free to use any of this resource in your own submission.
- The points below are based on evaluation of our Translation Exchange programmes, action research on programmes run by our sister organisation Stephen Spender Trust, and broader research listed at the bottom of this page. Your experience of language learning at school and university is also relevant evidence, and we encourage you to give a personal view reinforced by the research evidence. What would you change about school languages curriculum and assessment, if you had the opportunity?
Key sections for linguist contributions:
Section 2: General Views
a. Our core message is that enriching, authentic cultural content motivates teachers as well as pupils. Graduate linguists should be able to use the cultural skills gained in their degree in the classroom. The current narrow curriculum discourages linguists from pursuing a PGCE or teacher training.
b. If you have participated in our Creative Translation programmes (e.g. the Anthea Bell Prize), please consider mentioning them. Would these programmes make you consider teacher training, if the curriculum were broader? Did you benefit from these programmes as a school pupil? Would you have liked to?
Section 3: Social Justice and Inclusion
Q12, 13 and 14: How can the curriculum, assessment and qualification pathways be changed to improve attainment, progress, access or participation for pupils experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage, or affected by gender and ethnic inequality, as well as SEND provision?
Our view:
a. Embedding language instruction in meaningful content positively impacts motivation and language acquisition. It improves access to culture and builds a diverse, inclusive, representative learning community.
b. Teaching language through cultural content is inclusive. It breaks the ‘class ceiling’ and low expectations that often restrict socioeconomically disadvantaged pupils from accessing the cultural capital needed to make sense of and benefit from the world around them.
c. Using diverse, authentic material means language learning becomes relatable and relevant to pupils’ age and stage, and therefore increases participation and engagement in the subject matter, particularly necessary when teaching complex language.
d. Learning grammar or vocabulary through reading and translating an authentic text provides tangible progress through accessible content. Texts model how to use the language, and resources can provide scaffolding (e.g. glossaries) so that pupils of all attainment levels are able to access the content.
e. We have found that this ‘levelling of the playing field’ is also especially productive for SEND pupils.
f. Culture-based activities taught through translation provide tangible benefits for EAL pupils, and improve their attainment in English.
g. The cultural content of language learning is what pushes pupils to pursue language degree combinations at university. It is thus essential for the recruitment and retention pipeline.
Enriching cultural content also stimulates teachers, making the most of their skills as graduate linguists. It improves morale, recruitment, and retention.
Section 5: Curriculum and qualification content
Q24: To what extent does the current curriculum support students to positively engage with, be knowledgeable about and respect others? Are there elements that could be improved?
Q23: Are there particular changes that could be made to ensure the curriculum (including qualification content) is more diverse and representative of society?
Our view:
a. Languages are the subject best placed to represent and engage with the cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity of British society. A broad languages education reflects the diverse British society pupils are living in, and positively supports social cohesion.
b. A sufficiently diverse, culture-based languages curriculum provides the unique space for all pupils to see themselves represented in the content they learn, as well as enabling them to engage with lives, experiences and forms of expression different from their own.
c. Many pupils already speak a second language (Home, Heritage and Community Language/HHCL). Accreditation and access to qualifications in these languages should be promoted and not stigmatised compared to mainstream taught languages. Valuing HHCL raises the profile of MFL across the school.
Q24: To what extent does the current curriculum support students to positively engage with, be knowledgeable about and respect others? Are there elements that could be improved?
Our view:
a. Culture-based language teaching presupposes that to speak a language is to engage with other people in complex ways. The aim is to prepare students for real-life engagement with people from across the world, that is, to produce language for a purpose, not for its own sake.
b. A more diverse languages curriculum should include authentic cultural material. Literature, film, music and history from a broad linguistic landscape, rather than single nations, allow students to access the multicultural and multiethnic world of the languages they study e.g. Latin American as well as Iberian Spanish or Francophone Africa, alongside diaspora cultures. This also reflects the exciting possibilities presented by university-level study of languages.
c. As research by the British Academy shows, learning a language by engaging with authentic content provides a host of interpersonal cognitive benefits, particularly on empathy, sociability, and cultural literacy.
Section 6: A broad and balanced curriculum
Q29: To what extent does the current secondary curriculum support pupils to study a broad and balanced curriculum? Should anything change to better support this?
Our view:
a. Languages are uniquely placed to link traditional core subjects with creative subjects, if the content used is sufficiently rich, interesting and foregrounds that knowing a language is a creative skill and not just a body of knowledge.
b. A language is also a valuable workplace skill. It aids social mobility in helping disadvantaged groups access higher-paid and higher quality jobs across the world. Languages can play a positive role in vocational pathways. However, only by introducing useful, authentic content will the image of languages as a positive practical choice be improved.
c. Authentic content demands that pupils engage with cultural production emotionally, linguistically and creatively. Culture-rich languages lessons can intersect productively with other curricular subjects, notably English Language and Literature, as well as Geography, History, Art, Food Tech, therefore giving pupils a more meaningful and integrated experience of the curriculum.
d. Encouraging language uptake helps diversify increasingly narrow GCSE and A-Level choices and keep doors open for different university or vocational courses.
Useful Links
Alison Phipps (2019) Decolonising Multilingualism. De Gruyter: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.21832/9781788924061/html?lang=en#APA
Michael Rosen, What does it mean to understand a text? https://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2018/12/what-does-it-mean-to-read-and.html
Sam Holmes, Promoting Multilingual Creativity: Key Principles from Successful Projects. https://www.stephen-spender.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/MultilingualCreativityReport.pdf
Paul Collard, Executive Functions – Annual Review of Psychology Vol. 64: 135-168 (Volume publication date January 2013) https://education.gov.scot/resources/creativity-and-learning-what-is-the-connection/
Ali al-Jamri, Multilingual inclusion in a UK secondary school: translating poetry at Creative Writing Club: https://worldkidlit.org/2023/03/27/poetry-translation-schools/
Stephen Spender Trust, Research on the impacts of Creative Translation: https://www.stephen-spender.org/research-on-the-impacts-of-creative-translation/
British Academy, Cognitive Benefits of Language Learning. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/projects/cognitive-benefits-language-learning/
Charlotte Ryland, When Linguists Become Learners: content, culture, community. A response to the GCSE MFL review.https://www.meits.org/opinion-articles/article/when-learners-become-linguists-content-culture-community-a-response-to-the-gcse-mfl-content-review
https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Ryland_Revitalising-Modern-Languages_OxMag.pdf
Durham Commission on Creativity & Education – https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/durham-commission-creativity-and-education
Barnes, Katrina. 2021. ‘Translation in the UK language classroom: Current practices and a potentially dynamic future’, Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 7.1: 41-64
Barnes, Katrina. 2018. ‘Reviving pedagogical translation: An investigation into UK learners’ perceptions of translation for use with their GCSE Spanish studies and beyond’, Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 4.2: 248-281
Beauvais, Clémentine. 2019. “An Emergent Sense of the Literary: Doing Children’s Poetry Translation in the Literature Classroom.” Journal of Literary Education 2: 8–28. https://doi.org/10.7203/JLE.2.14827
Woore, R., Graham, S., Porter, A., Courtney, L., & Savory, C. (2018). Foreign Language Education: Unlocking Reading (FLEUR) – A study into the teaching of reading to beginner learners of French in secondary school. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4b0cb239-72f0-49e4-8f32-3672625884f0/files/mf8accba424448357af6872cdfe8f5870
Lawes, S. (2021). Foreign languages. In A. S. Cuthbert & A. Standish (Eds.), What should schools teach? Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth (pp. 122–137).
Lamb, T., Hatoss, A. and O’Neill, S., 2020. Challenging social injustice in superdiverse contexts through activist languages education. Handbook on promoting social justice in education, pp.33-69.