Introduction

If we are honest, most teachers still treat listening as an assessment tool rather than a teachable skill. We press “play,” provide a set of questions, and call it “practice.” Then—when the real paper comes—students freeze, panic, and guess. We insist that we “taught them the vocabulary,” and yet the marks vanish into thin air.

The painful truth is this: listening success in listening exams has almost nothing to do with being able to recall words in silence. It hinges on dozens of micro-skills that operate in real time, under cognitive pressure, with incomplete information, unpredictable pronunciation and messy discourse. The candidates who survive are the ones who can decode, infer, track, and emotionally self-regulate.

This article breaks down those micro-skills into 10 clusters. Each cluster has a short explanation and a crystal-clear mini-table you can use in lessons, CPD, revision banks, or student training.

If you do want to know more on each of the above points and on how to implement instruction in every single one of the micro-skills listed in this post, join my brand new workshop on this topic here: https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2026-01-25/epi-ks4-phonics-1-jul-2024-dudley

1. Perceptual Skills (Bottom-Up Decoding)

As John Field and other prominent researchers have evidenced, listening begins at the ear, not at the memory. No amount of grammar teaching or vocabulary drilling can compensate for a student who cannot segment the sound stream! When the brain receives speech, it needs to ‘chop’ it into meaningful parts—phonemes, syllables, chunks—and match them to stored representations. Fail here and everything else collapses like dominoes. These skills are not remedial; they are the neurological foundation on which higher comprehension sits. This is, of course, a recurrent theme on this blog and in my book “Breaking the sound barrier’.

Table 1

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Phoneme discrimination	Recognising minimal sound differences (/u/ vs /ou/, /é/ vs /è/)	Avoids lexical confusion: mer ≠ mère. Small sound errors trigger wrong interpretations.
Syllable segmentation & stress	Hearing rhythm, breaks and prosody	Enables chunking; prevents “audio soup” in languages with compressions (e.g., French).
Coarticulation decoding	Recognising liaison, elision, reduction (j’sais pas)	Real speech ≠ orthography; failure blocks comprehension even with known vocabulary.
Phonological→lexical mapping	Matching sound to stored word form automatically	“Nearly recognising” words collapses meaning; automation preserves working memory.

2. Lexical Access Skills

Unfortunately, students do not have the luxury of pausing a speaker – not in most exam tasks, at least. The exam demands instant recognition. When the brain needs two seconds to recall “samedi,” the next six seconds of input are already gone. Skilled listeners know that listening is not about individual words; it’s about clusters of meaning. Chunks, paraphrases, contextual interpretation—they allow students to retain speed and control.

Table 2

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Rapid high-freq retrieval	Instant recognition of everyday vocabulary	Listening is speed-based; slow retrieval = missing subsequent segments.
Chunk recognition	Recognising multi-word units (il y a, c’est pour)	Cuts cognitive load; improves resilience to accent and speech rate.
Semantic flexibility	Accepting paraphrase / approximate meaning	Exams rarely match textbook wording; prevents panic.
Sense disambiguation	Choosing correct meaning via context	Avoids false friends (e.g. stage, coin).

3. Grammar-in-Listening Skills

Grammar here is not a worksheet. It is auditory navigation in a ridiculous narrow time window (2 seconds per sentence!). In spoken language, tense, person and agreement are lightning-fast signals which in our first language we interpret in a few milliseconds. They tell you who is acting, when it happened, and how ideas connect. A listener who cannot hear tense markers or subordinate clauses spends the exam chasing nouns and building wrong timelines.

Table 3

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Tense recognition by sound	Detecting time reference in speech	Timeline answers hinge on morphology, not vocabulary.
Pronoun identification	Tracking je/tu/il/elle/nous/vous/ils	Correct agent = correct interpretation; mistakes spread through the entire item.
Adjective agreement (audio)	Hearing gender/number cues	Reveals who is being described; essential in dialogues.
Subordination cues	parce que, quand, si, bien que	Marks clause boundaries; filters essential vs padding.

4. Information-Processing Skills

Real listening is messy! People talk in tangents, change topics, contradict themselves, and correct what they just said. The new GCSE (16+ English examination) exploits this. It throws lexical echoes, decoys and story fragments at students. Those who hunt for every word…drown. Those who track meaning—the communicative core—surf.

Table 4

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Key idea extraction	Understanding core message	New GCSE prioritises communicative comprehension.
Selective attention	Following one thread amid noise	Protects working memory; prevents narrative derailment.
Rejecting irrelevant detail	Ignoring lexical echoes & decoys	Examiners deliberately plant traps.
Listening through ambiguity	Continuing despite unclear segments	Fuzziness tolerance = expert listener behaviour.

5. Discourse & Pragmatic Skills

Students who treat listening as word matching will always be outplayed by students who listen like humans. Inference, tone, speaker stance—these are quietly assessed. A teenager talking about school, a grandma describing her holidays, a customer complaining about a delayed bus—each has a different pragmatic fingerprint. The exam rewards those who can read it.

Table 5

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Topic boundary detection	Spotting shifts in topic/time	Prevents cross-segment contamination.
Speaker intention inference	Detecting stance: complaint, praise, irony	Many tasks ask “What does the speaker think?”
Register recognition	Formal vs casual vs polite	Context and tone shape meaning.
Pronoun reference resolution	Who is “they/her/him/it”?	Multi-speaker texts require correct referents.

6. Top-Down Knowledge Activation

Expert listeners don’t walk into an audio blind. They predict.
Holiday → transport, accommodation, activities.
Restaurant → ordering, prices, complaints.
School → homework, teachers, schedules.
These schemas filter noise and create a safety net when perception falters.

Table 6

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Scenario prediction	Anticipating typical content from topic	Shrinks semantic space; speeds matching.
Schema use	Using real-world scripts (shop → price)	Filters noise; stabilises comprehension.
Cultural inference	Interpreting norms, politeness, understatement	Prevents literal mis-translation of speaker intention.

7. Metacognitive Skills

Metacognition is the secret weapon of powerful listeners.Students who plan before listening, who monitor while listening, and who evaluate afterwards learn from every exposure. Students who just “sit and hope for clarity” never improve. The new GCSE favours candidates who regulate themselves.

Table 7

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Planning	Prepare vocabulary & mindset pre-listening	Pre-activation reduces processing cost.
Monitoring	Tracking comprehension during audio	Prompts recovery rather than panic.
Evaluation	Post-audio reflection	Builds procedural memory; reduces repeated errors.
Strategy switching	Pivot between bottom-up and top-down	Experts adapt; novices stay fixed.

8. Numeracy & Quantification Skills

The examiners adore numbers. Not because they’re difficult, but because they are unforgiving. A single misheard digit, a misinterpreted 24-hour clock, or an unspotted discount instantly annihilates otherwise perfect work.

Table 8

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Cardinal & ordinal decoding	vingt-et-un, trois cents, premier	Single-digit mistakes kill entire answers.
Time & scheduling	24h clock, timetables	Core authentic domain; fast and unforgiving.
Prices & currency	2,50€, réduction, moitié prix	Common exam ambush; requires rapid accuracy.

9. Resilience & Cognitive Control

The hardest truth when it comes to high-stake examinations: good listeners are emotionally stable listeners. In my experience – not merely as a teacher, but as a language learner too – when average students miss a sentence, they panic. Markers stop, attention collapses, and everything becomes a blur. High performers, instead, simply keep going. They don’t need perfection; they need enough cues to maintain coherence.

Table 9

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Noise tolerance	Continue processing despite uncertainty	Mirrors native listening; prevents collapse.
Decoy resistance	Ignoring lexical bait	Protects against superficial matching.
Global coherence tracking	Holding the big picture	Local errors matter less when global meaning remains.

10. Task-Handling Skills

Finally, listening is not just hearing—it is scoring. Understanding is useless unless students can map it correctly into exam answers. Most students who “understood” still lost marks because they listened for the audio, not the question.

Table 10

Micro-Skill	What It Means	Why It Matters
Mapping input → answer	Converting understanding into mark format	Students often “understand” but don’t score.
Scanning (listen for X)	Filtering by target info	Reduces working memory overload.
First vs second pass	Pass 1 = gist, Pass 2 = precision	Professional listeners layer comprehension.

Conclusion

Listening exams have – fortunately – quietly moved beyond “hear the keyword → tick the box.” They test the way real people listen, not the way textbooks pretend they do. Students who cram vocabulary lists and stare at worksheets will drown. Students who build automatic decoding, flexible interpretation, cultural competence, number sense and emotional resilience will thrive.

The message of this post is quite simple: Train micro-skills explicitly and repeatedly. And most importantly—teach your learners to stop hunting for words and start listening for meaning.

In the second part, which I will publish over the next few days, I will deal with the tasks you can stage in order to practise the above skills.

PLEASE NOTE: If you do want to know more about each of the points above and on how to implement them in the classroom, join my brand new workshop on this topic on 10th December here: https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2026-01-25/epi-ks4-phonics-1-jul-2024-dudley. If you are in the Coventry area, you can join me at President Kennedy School on 5th December for a whole-day workshop on Listening (morning) and Metacognition (afternoon).

Introduction

In 28 years of teaching Modern Foreign Languages, I’ve noticed something both astonishing and depressingly predictable: misbehaviour does not explode randomly; it clusters in certain hotspots where the cognitive, social, emotional and organisational load of our subject crashes headlong into teenage psychology. When these elements align, behaviour unravels quickly. Even relatively “good” groups can become difficult in a matter of seconds, especially when there is ambiguity, downtime, or a loss of teacher presence. If I’m honest, most classroom disasters I’ve lived through didn’t come from bad content… they came from bad conditions, which is something we don’t often want to admit to ourselves because it feels like accepting a personal failure rather than recognising the structural mechanics at play in the adolescent brain.

Here are ten such hotspots and the solutions that I have devised and applied in my classrooms over the years.

1. Transitions — The Bermuda Triangle of MFL Lessons

Transitions are the pedagogical equivalent of leaving the front door open. For 20–40 seconds, the scaffolding that was holding the lesson together suddenly disappears and students enter a strange limbo where the “rules” feel suspended. They haven’t started the new task yet, and the old one is no longer active, so behaviour pours into the void. Because your attention is divided, you simply don’t have the bandwidth to micro-manage thirty teenagers simultaneously. In my observation, they smell this gap instantly… and once the domino falls, who stops the chain, especially when the task change was poorly framed and three students decide to interpret “put your boards away” as “take a tiny social holiday”?

Solutions

1. Script the transition with short, clear commands.
2. Front-load instructions before any movement happens.
3. Rehearse transitions early in the year so it becomes muscle memory.
4. Keep transitions under 30 seconds — slow transitions invite chaos.
5. Pre-position resources so nobody needs to move unnecessarily.

2. Pair Work — Mini-Social Experiments With Real Behavioural Consequences

Pair work seems innocent on paper, but in reality it exposes hierarchies, insecurities and alliances. One pupil becomes the “boss,” the other the follower; one speaks, the other disappears into the wallpaper. The loud students dominate, the timid ones vanish, the middle ones negotiate roles instead of doing the task. If I’m honest, half of what looks like “bad behaviour” in pair work is really survival behaviour — “I’d rather be quiet than wrong.” In my observation, this is the moment where the socially skillful child thrives, effortlessly controlling the conversation while the anxious or less confident one retreats, and that retreat isn’t just verbal but cognitive: they stop engaging altogether, and you’ve lost them for the next 10 minutes.

Solutions

1. Keep pairs stable to remove constant renegotiation.
2. Assign roles explicitly (speaker, listener, note-taker).
3. Use micro-tasks with strict limits so there’s no time for drama.
4. Circulate from the moment students begin to signal presence.

3. Speaking Tasks — Where Anxiety Meets Opportunity

Speaking tasks are emotional minefields. Students know their pronunciation is imperfect, their grammar uncertain, and their fluency patchy. Hence, they preemptively protect themselves from embarrassment. They become silly, adopt jokey accents, or hide behind “I don’t know” because it is safer than trying. In my experience, the “clown” is often the most terrified student in the room… they just wear a different armour. In my observation, the student who does the fake accent is not trying to be clever—he is trying to distance himself from the vulnerability of being judged, because if it’s “just a bit of fun” then nobody can accuse him of actually trying and failing, which is a fate worse than death in the teenage social economy.

Solutions

1. Start with choral repetition to diffuse spotlight anxiety.
2. Give sentence starters so students don’t start from nothing.
3. Let them rehearse in pairs first before you invite the whole class.
4. Praise approximations, not perfection, to normalise risk-taking.

4. Listening Tasks — Cognitive Overload = Behaviour Dip

Listening is brutal for many students because it combines decoding, memory, concentration, prediction and note-taking. Their brains juggle too many things at once, and the first wobble hits hard: “I didn’t get it.” The second wobble hits even harder: “Everyone else probably did.” That’s when avoidance starts — not because students are malicious, but because their nervous system is overloaded. In my experience, behaviour in listening tasks isn’t rebellion… it’s embarrassment wearing invisibility. And in my observation, it is often the quietest students who suffer the most, because they freeze internally before they ever act externally, and by the time you notice, their motivation has already slipped out of the room and is waiting by the corridor door.

Solutions

1. Pre-teach key chunks so students aren’t decoding from zero.
2. Gist first, detail second — don’t drown them in precision immediately.
3. Use micro-listening activities that isolate tiny skills.
4. Keep audio segments short so students never hit panic mode.

5. Resource Distribution — The MFL Olympics

Movement is behavioural lighter fluid. The moment pupils stand up, the room becomes a social space, not a learning space. Eyes meet; gossip restarts; objects travel; boundaries weaken. In my experience, even “well-behaved” groups fall apart during handouts — because handing out sheets isn’t just giving paper, it’s activating a dozen micro-interactions. And the worst bit? It happens quietly and slowly, so you don’t notice until it suddenly becomes noisy and you realise that you have managed to create, without intending to, a miniature bus station with zero supervision. The result is always the same: chaos that takes twice as long to fix as it took to create.

Solutions

1. Put all materials on desks before students arrive.
2. Use resource monitors, so you don’t become the distribution bottleneck.
3. Minimise the number of paper items, because loose sheets invite mischief.

6. L1 vs L2 Use — The Great Escape Route

Students use L1 not because they hate the subject, but because it’s a refuge. When comprehension falters, they flee to where identity is intact. Once they start chatting in L1, the linguistic risk evaporates — and so does your task. In my observation, a single whispered joke in the dominant language can wipe out ten minutes of careful preparation, especially if the joker is a high-status student. And if you try to fight it with brute force, you loose the room, because you’ve turned a linguistic struggle into a power struggle, and that’s a battleground you will definately regret stepping into.

Solutions

1. Use the target language strictly for routines, not for complex instructions.
2. Dual-code instructions (spoken + visual) so students truly understand.
3. Model the desired behaviours, practise them, then ask for independent performance.

7. Mini-Whiteboards — High Engagement, Higher Risk

Students love MWBs because they’re informal, reversible, playful. That same informality is also why they often get abused if you let them. Once the “boards up / boards down” protocol slips, MWBs become shields, sketchpads, punching bags, or theatre props. And the moment someone draws an eyebrow, a sword, or a meme, you’ve not just lost the task — you’ve created a performative object ! – and the entire row will now compete to produce something “better” and more amusing, because adolescence thrives on humour-as-escape. In my experience, this is the hotspot teachers always underestimate.

Solutions

1. Create simple, fixed signals (“boards up”, “boards down”).
2. Limit response time to 10 seconds so boards don’t become canvases.
3. Use MWBs for micro-tasks only
4. Keep the pace as high as possible, without excluding ‘slower’ learners

8. Group Work — Democracy at Its Noisiest

Group work reveals power structures immediatly. One pupil becomes moderator, another critic, another retreats, and someone else turns into the entertainer. Once emotional energy rises, the task becomes irrelevant. In my observation, group work isn’t collaboration unless it is tightly framed — otherwise it’s a miniature parliament with no speaker. And because each student thinks someone else is responsible, nobody feels personally accountable. The result? The task becomes theatre, and you become the reluctant observer of a social experiment no textbook warned you about.

Solutions

1. Never exceed three students per group.
2. Assign roles clearly, otherwise everything becomes “someone else’s job.”
3. Use timed challenges, which compress focus and limit drift.

9. Retrieval Tasks — The Confidence Cliff

Retrieval is a form of exposure. The confident student sees competence; the insecure student sees humiliation waiting to happen. When they don’t know the answer, the protection behaviours activate: humour, sabotage, indifference, refusal. In my experience, “I don’t care” almost never means “I don’t care”… it means “I’d rather be seen as stubborn than stupid.” And in my observation, this is strongest in mid-range ability students, because they sit between high performers they admire and lower performers they fear being compared to… a perfect storm of insecurity.
One strategy that works wonders is turning retrieval into peer-testing games: two students quizzing each other quietly, privately, score kept between them, not projected to the class — because suddenly retrieval isn’t a public performance, it’s a partnership, and students laugh together at mistakes rather than at each other; the social shield becomes collaborative rather than adversarial.

Solutions

1. Present retrieval as low-stakes so errors are normalised.
2. Use paired correction so students fail privately, not publicly.
3. Keep the format predictable, because predictability lowers anxiety.
4. Integrate peer-testing games where partners quiz each other, swap roles, and keep their own mini-scores — this reframes retrieval as cooperation, not exposure.

10. Teacher Turned Away — Goodbye, Withitness

I strongly believe that behaviour control is profoundly visual. The moment your gaze leaves the class—loading audio, fixing the projector, adjusting a cable—the social contract between you and your students evaporates! Whispering begins, objects migrate, and the illusion of adult supervision collapses. In my experience, students don’t need freedom to misbehave; they need the belief that they are unobserved. And when they feel unseen, even if only for five seconds, the fragile web of attention and authority collapses like a poorly built card tower trying to accomodate one extra card.

Solutions

1. Prepare tech in advance, before pupils enter.
2. Maintain visual scanning, even while managing devices.
3. Move physically around the room during setup.
4. Give students a clear “setup task”, so dead time disappears.

Conclusion

Behaviour in MFL is not a seperate issue from teaching; it is teaching. Our lessons contain more social, linguistic and organisational transitions than almost any other subject, which is precisely why routines must be rehearsed, transitions scripted, instructions dual-coded, and tasks predictable.
If we treat behaviour as “something that happens to us,” we are forever reacting; if we treat it as something that is engineered, anticipated, designed for, we stop firefighting and start teaching.

Because what’s the alternative???
More chaos, more interruptions, more students performing avoidance, and more teachers quietly asking themselves why their meticulously prepared linguistic activities keep crumbling mid-lesson.

When we plan behaviour as deliberately as we plan input, practice and output, everything changes: the room calms, cognitive load drops, and—almost inevitably—students start learning.

Introduction

One of the most under-discussed sources of disruption in MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) classrooms is not the listening exercise, not the dialogue drill, not even the grammar explanations (which, if I’m honest, can test even the saintliest patience!). It’s the transition — those fragile 20–40 seconds when students glide (or stumble…) from one activity to another.

Emmer & Evertson (2013) suggest that up to 25% of classroom misbehaviour occurs during transitions!, and I must confess, having survived nearly 30 years of lively MFL rooms, I’d say that in languages itsometimes feels more like 40%. Why? Because unlike other subjects, MFL lessons are transition-packed ! : book → sheet, sheet → mini-whiteboard, whiteboard- device, pair → whole class, listening → oral rehearsal, and so on.

And each of these tiny shifts, if not tightly handled…becomes an invitation for things to go, as my grandmother used to say, a ramengo.

1. Transitions create behavioural “grey zones”

During a transition, the whole structure of the lesson, which a second earlier felt solid enough, suddenly dissolves into a sort of temporary void: no immediate task, no strong focal point, and—crucially—your attention is split between giving instructions, loading audio, locating the right slide, and wondering where that worksheet has vanished to…arggggggh!

This is what I often refer to (half-jokingly, half-traumatically) as the behavioural vacuum where disaster can happen. Why? Because vacuums get filled quickly—with chatter, shuffling, “accidental” pencil tapping, partner-related negotiations, and… the occasional tango-style manoeuvre in the aisles.

I remember once, in a tough school in Bedfordshire, during what I thought was a perfectly innocent “move to your new speaking partner” transition, one of my Y8s decided—completely spontaneously—to stop on the way to inspect another pupil’s pencil case collection. Ten seconds later half the class was involved! All because I’d left a 3-second clarity gap.

Implication for MFL:
If transitions aren’t scripted like micro-routines, students will improvise. And their improvisation rarely matches ours.

2. Ambiguity is the enemy

Transitions force pupils to juggle quite a few thoughts:

• What do I put away?
• What do I take out?
• Where do I sit?
• Who’s my partner now?
• Have I lost my pen again?
• And (inevitably): “Sir, is this due in today?”

If instructions are drip-fed (“Take out your whiteboards… no, don’t write yet… wipe them first… actually, swap with your partner… wait, sit down…”), students are likely to fill those blanks with disruptive behaviour.

In my experince, ambiguity during transitions is rocket fuel for misbehaviour. Pupils aren’t misbehaving because they’re malicious; they’re misbehaving because the situation invites too much choice.

Implication for MFL:
Give complete, front-loaded instructions.
Say it once, say it clearly, check it.
Visual cues help massively—a tiny icon in the corner of the slide can do miracles.

3. Slow transitions invite trouble

A 40-second transition feels short, but multiply that across a lesson and you’re looking at four or five minutes of semi-unmanaged time. Enough to fit in:

• three whispered conversations
• two desk rearrangements
• the great pen-lid hunt
• and, on particuarly bold days, a semi-philosophical debate about why they have to do listening at all.

In my experience, the slower the transition, the more some students interpret it as “down time.” And once they’ve slid into that mindspace, recovering them is like trying to herd caffeinated cats.

Implication for MFL:
Aim for 30-second, high-clarity transitions.
Use timers, model what “fast” looks like, celebrate improvements.
Speed is structure.

4. Teacher presence weakens during transitions

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: during transitions, we often turn our backs at the exact second when we should be most present. Loading the listening track… switching worksheets… pulling up the next slide… and bang—your withitness evaporates.

Students are masters at sensing microscopic shifts in teacher attention. If they sense you’re half-occupied, they fill the gap.

I vividly remember a class in which I simply turned to plug in my laptop charger. Five seconds, tops. When I turned back, one pair had built a tiny Eiffel Tower out of glue sticks. Slow transitions create opportunities; reduced presence magnifies them.

Implication for MFL:
Move through the room as the transition unfolds.
Narrate what you see: “Table 1 is ready… fantastic… back row almost there…”
This creates presence without confrontation.

5. MFL has inherently more social transitions

Because MFL is built around interaction—pair work, role swaps, dialogue practice—our transitions are naturally social, which makes them, of course, inherently much riskier than other subjects, especially if you are big on Communicative tasks. More talking, more movement, more negotiation = more chances for distraction.

Implication for MFL:
Reduce unnecessary movement.
Keep pairings stable for whole phases, not for micro-tasks.
Train “instant roles”: Partner A speaks first; Partner B listens; swap on the signal.

So what should language teachers actually do?

Below are the high-yield practices that, over the decades, have kept my lessons more or less sane—even on those days when the behaviour gods were in a particularly mischevious mood.

1. Script transitions like micro-routines

“Books closed → pens down → eyes on me.”
Practise the routine separately. Yes, it feels silly. Yes, it works.

2. Announce transitions before they begin

“In a moment, you’ll switch to listening. You’ll need your book closed and pen ready.”
Pre-cueing reduces anxiety and faffing.

3. Use clear, affirmative language

Not “Don’t talk while you set up.”
But: “This transition is quick and silent. Start now.”

4. Reduce the number of transitions full stop

Chunk tasks. Have everything on desks already. Every avoided transition is a behaviour win!

5. Keep transitions fast

Use a countdown.
Show what a “good transition” looks like (literally model it—kids love the absurdity).
Make it a class norm.

6. Maintain visibility and movement

Presence prevents escalation.

7. Practise transitions deliberately

One minute of practice in September saves ten headaches in March. And trust me, I’ve paid the price of not doing this often enough.

Conclusion: Transitions are where MFL lessons win or lose the behaviour battle

In my experience and according to research, misbehaviour during transitions isn’t merely a sign of “difficult students”, it’s also a sign of unstructured space. When transitions are scripted, predictable, fast, and well-rehearsed, behaviour stabilises—not because students magically become better, but because the environment leaves them little room for drift. This has always been my greatest concern in the challenging schools I worked at.

In languages, where we transition far more often than most subjects, mastering transitions is—not to exagerate— close to a survival skill. It protects pace, it reduces cognitive load, and it creates the calm, purposeful atmosphere in which acquisition can actually happen.

27th November – Face-to-face course at the James Hornsby School, Basildon (Essex) MFL Conference: a deep dive into Dr Conti’s Extensive Processing Instruction. Enroll here: https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2025-12-26/epi-conference-1-jul-2023

1^st December – Online: Implementing EPI at Key Stage 2. Click on the following link to enroll: https://networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2026-02-04/epi-ks2-4-jul-2024

3rd^st December – St Colman’s College Newry (Northern Ireland) – Becoming an EPI teacher.

5^th December –Listening and Metacognition (Coventry) at Futures Education Institute. Enroll by contacting Nick Mort on Nicholas.Mort@futuresteachingalliance.org.uk

8^th December – Broadwater School, Godalming, Surrey. See details below.

10^th December – Beaconsfield High School, Buckinghamshire. Contact Lauren Manney (see details in image below).

9th December – Star Salford Academy (Manchester) – See details in flyer below

Introduction

Every teacher knows one: that colleague who walks into a room and instantly changes the atmosphere. Students sit up, smiles appear, and somehow learning feels lighter, faster, and more human. We call it charisma, and too often we treat it like magic — something you’re either born with or doomed to envy.

In my experience, charisma in teaching isn’t mystical at all! It’s a skillset disguised as personality — a mix of warmth, competence, emotional intelligence, and authenticity, all wrapped in professional purpose. It’s the invisible glue that binds classroom relationships and turns mere instruction into genuine communication.

Research in psychology and education consistently shows that learners engage more, remember more, and persist longer when they feel emotionally connected to their teacher. In other words: how you make them feel shapes how well they learn. So, charisma isn’t decoration, it’s pedagogy. It’s the difference between a lesson that merely ticks boxes and one which transforms .

Here’s what, in my opinion and observation, defines the truly charismatic MFL teacher — the one students listen to, laugh with, and remember forever.

1. Warmth + Competence = Magnetic Presence

Social psychology is remarkably clear — and I rarely say that. The people we perceive as “charismatic” consistently score high on warmth (they are approachable, caring, genuinely human) and on competence (they clearly know what they’re doing and they exude what I call ‘quiet mastery’). Charismatic teachers manage to strike that elusive equilibrium between the two. Simple in theory, mega difficult in practice.

This isn’t just my observation. Fiske, Cuddy & Glick’s Stereotype Content Model (2007) demonstrates that ‘perceived warmth and competence together predict influence and emotional connection’. In education, both dimensions are pivotal. Patrick, Hisley & Kempler (2000) found that teacher enthusiasm and perceived care dramatically enhance students’ intrinsic motivation and engagement.

What this looks like in the classroom, in my experience:

• Smiling not only with the mouth, but unmistakably with the eyes — students pick up on this instantly!
• Remembering tiny, seemingly trivial personal details about students (“How was your futsal tournament?”).
• Offering crystal-clear explanations and then engineering tasks that virtually guarantee success for every learner without dumbing things down.
• Radiating, in posture and tone, the unspoken but powerful message: “Don’t worry — I’ve got you. You can do this.”

Warm incompetence is endearing but ineffective. Cold competence is respected but never loved. Warm competence — that rare blend of skill and humanity — is charisma incarnate.

And yes, I’ve inhabited all three categories at different points in my career. The real magic begins the day warmth and skill cease to live in separate rooms of your teaching personality.

2. Emotional Contagion: your energy is the room’s energy

Let’s be brutally honest — you are the emotional thermostat of your classroom. Students reflect your mood like mirrors. Hatfield, Cacioppo & Rapson (1994) called this emotional contagion: the subconscious mimicking of another’s affective state. In practice, it means that your tone, your pace, and your posture set the collective temperature.

Hargreaves (2000) demonstrated that teachers’ emotional display has a direct and measurable impact on students’ engagement and classroom climate. Sutton & Wheatley (2003) later showed that teachers who radiate positivity foster greater student motivation, enjoyment, and persistence.

And it’s not about acting like a clown or putting on a performance — it’s about animated authenticity:

• Modulating your voice to reflect enthusiasm and curiosity.
• Varying your pacing to keep the energy fluid rather than monotonous.
• Showing visible, contagious enjoyment when a student nails a tricky phrase.
• Laughing openly when you make your own mistakes in L2 — because you will.
• Being playfully human when monitoring: “Muppets, what did I just say about inversion?”

A flat, monotone teacher equals flat, disengaged cognition. A vibrant, expressive teacher triggers higher dopamine release — which research by Howard-Jones (2010) links directly to improved memory formation.

In my experience, we underestimate how physiological this is. You don’t just teach with your voice or mind; you teach with your nervous system. Dopamine is the brain’s way of saying, “This matters — remember it.”

3. Storytelling

Stories are language’s natural habitat. They are how human brains are wired to think. Charismatic teachers don’t simply explain; they narrate, dramatise, and embellish. They inhabit mini-stories that give abstract grammar or vocabulary emotional weight. These aren’t long epics — they’re micro-narratives that humanise content:

• “When I was living in Madrid…”
• “My friend Pierre always does this ridiculous thing…”
• “Guess what happened to me in the lift this morning?”

Bruner (1991) and Willingham (2009) both remind us that narrative structures activate more brain regions than plain exposition. They promote connection, empathy, and retention.

Even a fabricated story beats a sterile explanation – and trust me, I have fabricated many over the years. No one checks your autobiography at the door — and the brain doesn’t care if it’s true, as long as it’s vivid.

4. Humour (especially self-deprecating)

Humour, as I have observed again and again, is the oxygen of an engaging classroom. Without it, interaction suffocates under the weight of correctness and pressure. Research (Wanzer & Frymier, 1999; Garner, 2006) repeatedly shows that appropriate humour enhances motivation, attention, and affective learning.

The charismatic teacher therefore:

• Makes gentle fun of themselves — never of students.
• Uses playful exaggeration to make a dry concept memorable.
• Employs sarcasm sparingly, for comic effect only, never to wound.
• Turns common mistakes into shared moments of amusement rather than embarrassment.

Laughter breeds rapport. Rapport lowers Krashen’s (1982) affective filter.
Lower affective filter equals more intake and better processing.

In my experience, a class that laughs with you will tolerate almost anything — from dodgy accent to malfunctioning speakers — because you’ve already earned their emotional trust.

5. L2 Presence: you “live” the language (strategically)

Charismatic MFL teachers inhabit the target language — but crucially, they do so strategically and sensitively, not dogmatically. They make the language feel alive and meaningful, yet they also recognise when a brief switch to L1 clarifies, reassures, or saves valuable time.

Research fully supports this nuanced stance. Macaro (2001, 2009) demonstrated that judicious use of the first language reduces cognitive overload and increases clarity, while Turnbull & Dailey-O’Cain (2009) warned that absolute avoidance of L1 can, ironically, impede learning.

So the goal is not linguistic purism — it’s purposeful communication.

They don’t “use French” mechanically; they breathe French with intention and rhythm — but always calibrated to the class’s proficiency and confidence.

For some groups, that might mean 80–90% TL use. For others, a gentler, scaffolded 60%. The aim is never 100% — it’s maximum comprehension, maximum authenticity.

Students feed on that authenticity:

• Natural fillers and reformulations.
• Gestures synchronised with prosody.
• Genuine emotion expressed through L2 intonation.

This creates what I like to call identity contagion — learners begin to feel they belong inside that linguistic universe.

In my opinion, the true art lies in modulation: knowing when immersion empowers and when it overwhelms. The most charismatic teachers I have observed over the years, sense this instinctively and adjust with grace rather than guilt.

6. Boundary-setting with warmth (‘benevolent authority’)

Charisma isn’t synonymous with being “nice.” It’s the artful marriage of kindness and firmness. Students crave structure more than they’ll ever admit, especially children from less fortunate backgrounds. Baumrind’s (1967) authoritative parenting model — high warmth, high control — translates beautifully into classroom dynamics. Marzano & Marzano (2003) confirmed that warm, consistent discipline correlates strongly with academic achievement and lower behavioural disruptions.

The charismatic teacher therefore:

• Establishes tight, predictable routines
• Corrects behaviour swiftly but calmly, without drama or ego.
• Uses proximity, quiet authority, and eye contact instead of shouting
• Praises effort with surgical precision (“That reformulation you just made? That’s exactly what a fluent speaker would do.”).

Such consistency builds safety. Safety breeds trust. And trust, in turn, cultivates charisma.

In my experience, students tolerate strictness — even appreciate it — but they rebel against chaos. “Benevolent authority” is your golden balance point: firm boundaries wrapped in genuine care.

7. A Signature Style

Every charismatic teachr has — and should unapologetically cultivate — a signature style. It’s their calling card, their behavioural fingerprint, the thing students associate uniquely with them.

Examples include:

• The catchphrase that echoes across corridors
• The exaggerated gesture that signals comprehension.
• The infamous timer
• The beloved coloured pens.
• The ritual (“3-2-1, eyes on me.”).
• The infamous Conti eyebrow when someone tries to bluff through a listening task.

Cognitive psychology explains this phenomenon beautifully. The distinctiveness effect (Hunt & Worthen, 2006) suggests that unique cues aid both memory and emotional bonding. Students don’t just remember what you teach; they remember how you made them feel while teaching it.

Over time, these quirks become affectionately mimicked, referenced, even immortalised in farewell cards. That’s not ego — that’s emotional imprinting.

8. Authentic Passion (not generic, but specific)

“Passionate about languages” is a cliché. Real charisma comes from specific passion — that electric, personal fascination that makes your subject vibrate with meaning!

Charismatic teachers don’t say, “I love French.” They say:

• “I love how Italian uses rhythm to express emotion — it’s like music.”
• “I adore the way Spanish handles the past — it’s so elegantly layered.”
• “French syntax is an engineering masterpiece — logical yet lyrical.”
• “German syntax feels like craftsmanship — sturdy, intricate, and surprisingly elegant.”

Research supports this wholeheartedly, e.g. Keller et al. (2016) and Frenzel et al. (2009) found that subject-specific enthusiasm strongly predicts students’ motivation, engagement, and enjoyment.

Specificity equals sincerity.
Sincerity equals charisma.

In my view, this sort of linguistic passion transforms you from a curriculum deliverer into a cultural ambassador. Students don’t just learn a language — they borrow your obsession, and that obsession propels them forward long after the test.

9. Students Feel Seen

Charisma is not fundamentally about projection; it’s about perception. It’s not how dazzling you appear but how validated and capable people feel in your presence.

Carl Rogers (1969) would have called this unconditional positive regard. His research demonstrated that empathy and acceptance build trust, resilience, and self-worth — precisely the emotional foundation of deep learning.

Charismatic MFL teachers therefore make students feel:

• Clever even when they err.
• Capable even when they doubt.
• Safe even when speaking haltingly.
• Noticed in ways that feel personal, not performative.
• Valued not as grades, but as growing linguists.
• Connected to something larger than themselves — a linguistic tribe.

This is why charismatic teachers hear that immortal line:

“She made me believe I could actually speak the language.”

And let’s be honest — there is no higher professional compliment. Not a glowing inspection report, not a pay raise, not even a sold-out CPD tour compares to that moment of human confirmation.

10. You’re Consistently YOU

Consistency, in my view, is one of the most underrated forms of charisma. Predictability may sound dull, but in teaching, it’s emotional oxygen. Research by Marzano (2003) and Stronge (2018) found that teacher predictability, fairness, and emotional stability are among the strongest predictors of both achievement and satisfaction. Students thrive on knowing what kind of energy awaits them when they walk into your room. They are not drawn to mercurial inspiration and unpredictability – as some MFL gurus often argue. They are drawn to:

• Predictably good mood.
• Predictably clear routines.
• Predictably high expectations.
• Predictably fair judgement.

Charisma rests on emotional stability and psychological safety.You can be fiery, gentle, boisterous, introverted — it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s you, consistently and unapologetically.

As I often tell trainee teachers: “Don’t play teacher — become one.” When your classroom persona is nothing more than your authentic self turned up a notch, students sense it immediately. They exhale. They lean in. They learn!

In Conclusion

A charismatic language teacher radiates warmth, competence, emotional energy, and authenticity — making students feel safe, joyful, and capable — while wrapping everything in humour, clarity, and a distinctive sense of identity.

Or, to put it less poetically but more truthfully:

“Be the kind of teacher whose vibe makes kids forget it’s Monday first period.”

1. A myth that refuses to die

In my workshops over the years, one myth just refuses to die… the idea that teaching the EPI way means using Sentence Builders. Some individuals even call it ‘The sentence builders method’!

Let me tell you — it’s simply not true.

Sentence Builders are a tool. A very powerful one, sure — maybe even revolutionary in the hands of a reflective teacher — but still just that: a tool!

EPI (Extensive Procesing Instruction) isn’t about grids or colours or boxes. It’s about how learners process language… how they encode meaning, notice form, consolidate memory traces, and build fluency through repeated, meaningful, deliberate rehearsal of language.

You could teach the EPI way perfectly well using listening sequences, classroom interactions, cue cards, or even a few well-designed slides — if you understand and apply its underlying principles.

In this post I intend to debunk this myth and to propose viable alternatives for those EPI teachers who may want to start the modelling phase in different ways. These alternative techniques do not necessarily rule out the use of sentence builders if one is still keeon on using them, of course.

2. EPI as Process-Based Instruction

At its heart, EPI is a process-based instructional model — and that’s not a slogan, it’s a paradigm shift. It means focusing less on what learners produce and more on how they process input on the way there.

Over the past ten years of EPI advocacy, I’ve seen that the best teachers are those who work deliberately on the micro-skills of each language domain:

• Listening: discriminating sounds, chunking meaning units, predicting what comes next, reconstructing messages.
• Reading: decoding, inferring, processing chunks, integrating information across sentences.
• Speaking: retrieving and adapting chunks rapidly, automatizing pronunciation and syntax patterns, monitoring accuracy of output online.
• Writing: planning, retrieving, sequencing chunks, reformulating, expanding structures with increasing complexity, monitoring accuracy.

In my observation, great teachers don’t leave those micro-skills to chance. They design activities that deliberately recyle and rewire those mental proceses. Every listening, reading, speaking, or writing task becomes a laboratory of cognitive rehearsal. As my co-author, Dylan Vinales, once said: “The EPI classroom is, in essence, an ecosystem of automatisation — not a collection of worksheets”.

3. The MARS EARS framework — with or without Sentence Builders

The MARS EARS sequence is where EPI becomes visible. It takes learners from exposure to spontaneity through a very deliberate chain:

1. Modelling – Rich, meaning-bearing input (spoken, written, visual).
2. Awareness – Learners notice and connect form with meaning.
3. Receptive Processing – Intensive listening or reading tasks demanding discrimination and recall.
4. Structured Production – Controlled oral and written manipulation of chunks. In this phase, Sentence Builders should be used only to ‘warm up’ the students before retrieval practice tasks, to support the weaker ones or to check whether the answers are correct.
5. Expansion – Explicit grammar teaching, Recombination and Extension of what’s been learned.
6. Autonomy/Assessment – Low-stake assessment, diagnosis and consolidation.
7. Review & Spontaneity – Recontextualised recycling leading to automatizion.

Nowhere in that process does it say “use a Sentence Builder.”
You can model, prompt, and scaffold language through a dozen other means — as long as the sequence keeps its cognitive gradient from receptive to productive.

4. The power of chunks and structural priming

EPI draws heavily on usage-based linguistics — the idea that language emerges through repeated procesing of meaningful lexicogrammatical chunks.

Chunks are the brain’s way of simplifying life. They allow fluent speech and comprehension by bundling grammar and lexis together into reusable units.
When learners repeatedly encounter patterns like “I’m going to…”, “Can I have…?”, or “On the weekend I usually…”, something powerful happens: structural priming.

As Bock (1986) and Pickering & Branigan (1998) showed, exposure to a structure increases the likelihood that we’ll use it. That’s why, in my experience, students who are bombarded with the same high-frequency patterns in different contexts start producing them effortlessly. It’s not magic — it’s cognitive economy at work.

But in EPI grammar is also taught explicitly, through deductive teaching or inductive learning, as the teacher feels fit, in the Expansion phase of the MARSEARS sequence. No sentence builders is necessary in this phase either, unless you want to make it easier for the students, that is…

5. Listening as modelling: the interpersonal gateway

One of the things I’m proudest of in my work on EPI is the idea of interpersonal listening-as-modelling.
Traditional listening exercises test comprehension — “Did you catch the right answer?” — and that’s it.
EPI flips that.

In my approach, learners don’t just listen; they use what they hear as a model for their own output.
They mirror, adapt, and reuse the same structures almost instantly.

For example, after a short teacher–student exchange about weekend routines, I might ask students to replicate it with a small twist — change the activity, the day, or the person.
This transforms listening from a passive test into a productive rehearsal — the most efficient form of input processing I’ve seen in decades of teaching.

6. The engine of learning: repeated and varied processing

Every teacher knows that repetition matters… but not all repetition is equal.
Research from Craik & Lockhart (1972) to Webb (2021) confirms that depth and variety of processing are what truly consolidate learning.

In EPI, repetition is not parroting. It’s a cycle of re-encoding: hearing, noticing, matching, reformulating, expanding.
Each re-encounter engages a different network in the brain, reinforcing long-term memory traces and reducing cognitive strain.

Unfortunately, many classrooms stop too soon. They introduce a structure once, practise it briefly, then move on.
But language doesn’t work like that.
In EPI, we recyle chunks over multiple modalities and days — always slightly recontextualised, always processed anew.

7. How You Can Present and Model the Target Chunks Without Sentence Builders

Modelling is where it all begins. And no, you don’t need a grid. You just need clarity, intention, and a bit of creativity.
Here are some of my favourite ways to model chunks without ever touching a Sentence Builder:

1. Flashcards for rapid retrieval and noticing

Create flashcards with the target chunks on one side and visuals or translations on the other.
Start with teacher-led modelling: flash a card, say the phrase aloud, and have learners repeat with rhythm and gesture.
Then move to pair quizzing: one learner shows the card, the other produces the chunk aloud, swaps roles, and times each other.
Later, combine several flashcards into quick oral chains (“On Saturday I go swimming + with my friends + in the morning”), encouraging fluency through speed and combination.
Flashcards keep retrieval active, reduce cognitive load, and strengthen form–meaning mapping through constant low-stakes practice.

All these approaches maintain what EPI values most: clarity of modelling, deliberate recycling, and deep engagement with meaning… and not a single Sentence Builder in sight.

2. Listening-based visual anchoring

Display simple visuals — icons, pictures, emojis — while reading or playing short dialogues aloud.
Ask learners to match what they hear, spot faulty descriptions, or order the visuals.
The picture set becomes your “invisible Sentence Builder.”

3. Guided micro-dictations

Deliver short, chunk-rich dictations like “On Saturdays I go to the gym.”
Learners reconstruct, translate, and underline patterns like “time phrase + verb + place.”
Simple, effective, memorable.

4. Cued oral modelling with substitution

Use cue cards with categories (time, activity, place).
Model examples while changing one cue at a time:

“On Saturday I play football.”
“On Saturday I play tennis.”
“On Sunday I go swimming.”

Learners repeat and adapt — automatisation through meaningful variation.

5. Listening-as-modelling chains

Play a short recording or give a live model. Learners shadow, then reproduce it with one altered detail.
This keeps listening and speaking intertwined — a direct substitute for the Sentence Builder grid.

6. Faulty-translation and reformulation games

Project slightly wrong English translations of accurate TL sentences.
Learners spot and fix them — deep procesing guaranteed.

7. Collaborative classification

Give learners printed chunk strips.
Ask them to group by meaning (activities, times) or syntax (verb + infinitive / verb + noun).
The tactile act of sorting helps internalise structure — cognitive learning by touch and sight.

All these approaches maintain what EPI values most: clarity of modelling, deliberate recycling, and deep engagement with meaning… and not a single Sentence Builder in sight.

8. Interactive oral modelling

Start with a natural class exchange.

“Do you go out on weekends?”
“Yes, I usually go jogging.”
“You usually go jogging? Great! Who with?”
“With my friends.”

Each question–answer pair repeats the target chunks in meaningful variation. The teacher subtly primes the syntax while keeping communication real.

Please note: none of the above excludes the use of Sentence Builders as chunk organisers, scaffolding tools, or as a means to reinforce and consolidate the initial modelling achieved through the techniques described above.

8. EPI as a mindset — and why Sentence Builders still matter

Now, let me be very clear. EPI is a mindset, not a method locked into a specific tool.
It’s about cognitive design, not graphic design.

What defines an EPI teacher, in my experience, is not the slide they show but the mental operations they induce in their learners.
Sentence Builders can do that — but so can good listening chains, reformulation tasks, and carefully scaffolded dialogues.

That said, there is a very solid theoretical reason I’ve advocated Sentence Builders for years.
They work because they align beautifully with John Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory, particularly his concept of worked examples. Sweller (1988, 1994) showed that novices learn faster and more efficiently when given clear, structured models to study — reducing extraneous cognitive load.

Sentence Builders are, in essence, linguistic worked examples. They make syntax and lexis visible, freeing up working memory so learners can focus on meaningful processing rather than rule-hunting or guessing.

As I often say, they are not crutches — they are cognitive prosthetics, temporary but invaluable.
Once the learner’s brain has internalised the patterns, the scaffold can — and should — fade.

In ten years of EPI advocacy, I’ve seen this countless times: teachers who overuse Sentence Builders create dependency… those who understand their cognitive purpose create fluency.

Concluding remarks

So, no — you don’t need Sentence Builders to teach the EPI way.
What you do need is a deep understanding of:

• Process-Based Instruction: deliberately targeting micro-skills and scaffolding processing across all four skills.
• Chunk-Based Learning: building fluency through patterned input and structural priming.
• Interpersonal Listening-as-Modelling: making listening the springboard for output.
• Repeated, Varied Processing: recyling language across contexts until it becomes automatic.
• MARS EARS: a flexible yet principled roadmap for cognitive sequencing.

If these are in place, you are already teaching the EPI way — Sentence Builder or not.

Because in the end, the true magic of EPI doesn’t lie in the layout of a grid…
but in the architecture of the mind it helps construct.

Introduction

In my experience working with teachers and observing classrooms around the world, one pattern emerges again and again: students appear to “know” a great deal of vocabulary, and yet they struggle to actually use it when speaking, writing, or responding under time pressure in reading and listening tasks. They recognise words — sometimes lots of them — but cannot retrieve or manipulate them fluently.

In 20+ years of classroom observations as a middle manager, I noticed how way too often vocabulary teaching becomes a matter of exposure and rehearsal rather than mental engagement and meaning-making. Correct me if I am wrong but usually students copy lists, drill flashcards, complete gap-fills, and score highly on vocabulary quizzes, but the knowledge remains fragile — it evaporates when cognitive load increases. In other words: they have met the words, but they do not own them.

Over the last three decades, research in cognitive psychology and applied linguistics has shown very clearly that what determines whether vocabulary becomes available for fluent use is not merely how many times learners encounter it, but how deeply they process it.

In my opinion, this is the heart of the matter.

What Deep Processing Means — and Why It Matters

The concept, which I first came across during my MA TEFL and forever changed my teaching, originates from Craik & Lockhart’s (1972) Levels of Processing Framework, which demonstrated that memory durability depends not on repetition or exposure, but on the depth of mental engagement.

• Shallow processing (copying, matching, reading aloud, memorising lists) → weak traces → rapid forgetting.
• Deep processing (comparing, associating, evaluating, personalising, explaining, transforming) → strong traces → durable recall and flexible use.

This aligns with Laufer & Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis, which states that vocabulary retention depends on how much a task induces:

1. Need (motivation or communicative purpose),
2. Search (effort to locate or retrieve meaning),
3. Evaluation (choosing, comparing, justifying meaning).

Tasks high in involvement load → deeper encoding → longer retention.

Likewise, Webb (2007) shows that words processed through generative use (i.e., used in new contexts) are remembered better than those practiced in familiar or repetitive contexts.
Recognition → weak memory
Use in familiar frame → moderate memory
Use in new meaningful context → strong memory

In short:
Vocabulary becomes usable when learners have to make an effort learning it, i.e. must think with it, decide with it, and adapt it.

Students don’t remember what they repeat.
They remember what they process meaningfully.

How to Teach for Deep Processing (with Beginner / GCSE / Advanced Variations)

1) Categorisation & Classification

Why it works: Grouping requires the learner to consider meaning and function, strengthening connections between chunks.

Beginner	Intermediate (GCSE)	Advanced
Sort into like/don’t like or positive/negative	Sort by tense, connective function, or purpose	Classify by register, pragmatic function, nuance strength

More activities:

Visual cluster map: Project a word/phrase bank and ask students to draw branching clusters on mini whiteboards grouping by meaning, tense, tone or function; then ask them to explain their grouping choices.

Taboo-category race: Give pairs a category (e.g., “expressing obligation”) and a set of phrases; they must race to place each phrase into their category, and then swap boards and justify the placements.

Reverse classification: Present categories only (e.g., cause / contrast / opinion) and challenge students to create or hunt additional examples from previous texts or their own output to fill those categories.

2) Odd One Out (with justification)

Why it works: The learning is in the justification — distinguishing meaning requires deep comparison.

Beginner	Intermediate (GCSE)	Advanced
Clear contrasts	Subtle tense/aspect differences	Emotional / pragmatic nuance (e.g., triste / déprimé / blasé)

More activities:

Teacher-made set of 5 phrases, where 4 follow a pattern and 1 doesn’t; students mark the odd one and must verbally justify their choice (e.g., tense mismatch, wrong connective effect).

Peer-swap odd set: Each student writes their own 5-phrase set, swaps with a partner who must pick the odd one out and explain why (via mini-presentation).

“Why could this not fit?” variant: Give students 5 phrases and ask them to justify why each one could not be the odd one, forcing them to evaluate all options, not just the obvious odd item.

3) Similar but Different

Why it works: Builds semantic precision and prevents typical GCSE mistranslation errors.

Beginner	Intermediate (GCSE)	Advanced
Je veux vs J’aime; Il y a vs C’est	Je pense que vs À mon avis; J’ai vu vs J’ai regardé	bien que vs même si; depuis / pendant / pour

More activities:

Contrast carousel: Students rotate in pairs through stations: each station has two very similar phrases (e.g., je vais vs j’ai l’intention de), and students must note differences in use, tone, register, typical contexts. Then whole‐class share.

1-minute micro-explanation: Individually, students pick one pair of “similar” phrases and record themselves (or orally in class) giving a one-minute explanation: when I’d use A vs B, and why.

Error challenge: Present slightly erroneous versions of both phrases (e.g., wrong person, wrong tense) and students must spot the error and explain which phrase it mimics and how it mis-loads meaning.

4) Personalisation

Why it works: Meaning is remembered best when it relates to self.

Beginner	Intermediate (GCSE)	Advanced
Complete simple frames	5 true + 1 false statements	Use chunks to position identity / argue stance

My chunk snapshot: Students pick 3 new target chunks and write short diary entries: “This weekend I … using this chunk because …” Then swap with a partner who asks three “Why did you choose that chunk?” questions.

Identity swap*: Students interview each other: they ask their partner “What would you do if … (use chunk X)?” and then report back to the class about their partner’s response, emphasising use of the chunk and how it ties into that person’s life.

Challenge-Plus version: Learners reproduce the target chunk in a personal statement that also contradicts the chunk (e.g., “Bien que je veuille voyager, je ne peux pas”) forcing them to adapt the chunk and link it to personal reality.

5) Retrieval + Variation

Why it works: Retrieval strengthens memory; controlled variation deepens structural representation.

Beginner	Intermediate (GCSE)	Advanced
Pronoun substitution	Recombine & modify tense	Paraphrase or change register

More activities

Flash-variation sprint: In pairs, one student says a chunk in L1, the other retrieves in the TL; then they must change one variable (tense/person/place) and re-produce it in a new sentence.

Time-pressure swap: Use an online timer (30 seconds). Student must retrieve as many uses of the same target chunk as they can (e.g., “on peut” + 4 contexts); then partner must swap one chunk to a new person/tense.

Paraphrase relay: They begin with a target chunk, then each student in a group must paraphrase in TL (change voice, person, tone) until it returns to the origin but transformed. Then reflect: which retrieval was hardest and why?

6) Evaluation & Decision-Making

Why it works: Choosing between alternatives strengthens long-term retention through meaning-based judgement.

Beginner	Intermediate (GCSE)	Advanced
Rate phrases for usefulness	Evaluate appropriacy by context	Compare pragmatic impact across options

More activities:

Ranking discussion: Provide 6 target phrases and ask learners to rate them for usefulness in an upcoming topic (e.g., holidays, future career), then justify their ranking.

Context-match debate: Give contradictory short contexts and pairs must choose which chunk fits better, then debate the decision: “Why or why not?”

Adaptation task: Provide one chunk and ask students to adapt it so it is more formal/informal/persuasive. Then they peer-review: Was the adaptation still acceptable? Why/why not?

7) Controlled Creative Production

Why it works: Creativity within scaffolding enables safe spontaneity.

Beginner	Intermediate (GCSE)	Advanced
Scaffold expansion	3-part sentences; chunk-based picture descriptions	Structured monologues; rewrite in different tense or voice

More activities:

Chunk storyboard: In groups, build a 4-frame storyboard using 3 target chunks. Each frame uses one chunk; students then orally narrate the story using all chunks, adapting tense/person/setting.

Twist rewrite: Provide a scaffolded text (80 words) using target chunks. Students rewrite it from the perspective of a different character or setting (e.g., holiday → career interview) — forcing deep adaptation of vocabulary.

Micro-debate: Give a statement and ask students (in pairs) to prepare a 2-minute argument using at least 4 target chunks. After one round, swap sides and ask them to reverse the argument (challenging them to adapt chunks to opposite stance).

A Daily Fluency Routine (8 Minutes)

Time	Task	Purpose
1–2 min	Choral recycling	Automaticity
3–4 min	Categorisation or Odd One Out	Semantic depth
5–6 min	Recombination / transformation	Productive fluency
7–8 min	Personalised micro-output	Ownership

Deep Processing Through Oracy: Listening and Speaking

It is often assumed that vocabulary is acquired mainly through reading and memorisation, and that listening and speaking simply test what has already been learned. In reality, oracy is one of the most powerful drivers of vocabulary acquisition, because it forces learners to retrieve, select, adjust, and justify language choices in real time.

When learners listen deeply, they:

• Test meaning hypotheses against input
• Detect mismatches between expected and actual meaning
• Notice functional roles of chunks (opinion / time / reason / contrast)
• Form predictions and revise interpretations

When learners speak deeply, they:

• Choose between alternative formulations
• Justify lexical decisions
• Adapt phrasing to tone, audience, stance
• Reformulate ideas rather than recall rehearsed scripts

This is the cognitive work that drives vocabulary from recognition → retrieval → spontaneous use.

Oracy Deep-Processing Task Table

Level	Listening (Deep Processing Tasks)	Speaking (Deep Processing Tasks)
Beginner	Faulty Descriptions: Spot and correct mismatches. Faulty Translation: Identify and correct translation errors. Categorisation Listening: Sort heard sentences into meaning categories.	Repetition with Variation (change who/when/where). Chunk Substitution. Mini Roleplays with prompts. Picture Description with chunk bank.
Intermediate (GCSE)	Narrow Listening cycles. Reorder transcript lines. Marker spotting (time / opinion / justification).	3-part sentence production. Opinion exchange with justification. Speaking ladders. Chunk-grid improvisation.
Advanced	Discourse move tracking. Nuance listening across synonyms. Meaning summary rather than wording recall.	Extended monologues with constraints. Paraphrase & reformulate. Perspective-shift retelling. Collaborative oral story-building.

Conclusion: From Knowing to Owning

According to much research, most learners do not struggle because they lack vocabulary.They struggle because they have not processed vocabulary deeply enough to retrieve and use it fluently.

Deep processing:

• Builds retention
• Speeds retrieval
• Enables flexible, fluent use
• Turns chunks into language behaviour

Less copying.
More comparing.
More evaluating.
More adapting.
More thinking.

This is how we move students from exposure to ownership. On http://www.language-gym.com, we apply every single one of the above transformational principles and techniques.

Introduction

When we speak about reading fluency in the MFL classroom, we are often—understandably—thinking about vocabulary and comprehension. However, research over the last decade has made something abundantly clear: it is not simply what students know that determines their success in reading exams, but how automatically, smoothly, and confidently they can process what they know. Reading is a dynamic orchestration of decoding, chunking, grammatical pattern recognition, and meaning-making—under time pressure. And if one part of that orchestration falters, the whole performance wobbles.

Understanding the Reading Process

L2 reading is best understood as multiple processes working at the same time, not one after the other. Skilled reading is fast, layered, and automatic.

The Reading System: Step-by-Step

1. Visual Word Recognition
   The eye sees the word and recognises its written form.
   (Reference: Grabe, 2009)
2. Lexical Access
   The brain retrieves its meaning from memory.
   (Reference: Nation, 2013)
3. Syntactic Parsing
   The brain groups words into meaningful units (phrases, clauses).
   (Reference: Ellis, 2006)
4. Semantic Proposition Building
   The reader forms a “core message” of what is being said.
   (Reference: Kintsch, 1998)
5. Background Knowledge Integration
   Prior knowledge fills gaps and supports understanding.
   (Reference: Bernhardt, 2011)
6. Monitoring and Repair
   The reader notices confusion and adjusts.
   (Reference: Vandergrift & Goh, 2012)

If any of the first three stages are slow — reading collapses.

This is exactly what GCSE weaker readers experience.

10 Key Facts and Classroom Implications for GCSE Preparation

1) Fluency is more than speed

(Rasinski, 2012)

Fluent reading means:

• Correct words (accuracy)
• Smooth rhythm (flow)
• Words grouped together meaningfully (phrasing)

If students read fast but in the wrong places, they do not understand anything.

Example:

Poor: Je suis / alléauci / néma / hier soir

Better: Je suis allé / au cinéma / hier soir.

GCSE implication:

Teach students to read in “sense groups”—where the phrase makes meaning, not just noise.

Mini routine: Underline phrases, not words.

2) Slow decoding drains mental energy

(Samuels, 1979)

When students must stop to decode lots of words:

• Their working memory gets overloaded
• They lose the sentence meaning
• Confidence drops → anxiety increases → performance worsens

Example:

They decode malheureusement correctly, but by the time they finish, they’ve forgotten the sentence.

GCSE implication:

Focus fluency building on:

• high-frequency verbs
• connectives
• pronoun + verb chunks (e.g., je voudrais / j’ai pensé / il y avait)

Students cannot understand what they cannot process quickly.

3) High-frequency words drive reading

(Nation, 2013)

GCSE texts rely heavily on:

• Common verbs (être, avoir, faire, aller)
• Time and opinion structures (je pense que, c’était, il y a)
• Modals (on peut, il faut)

Teaching 200 hyper-frequent chunks >>> teaching 1,000 topic nouns.

GCSE implication:

Recycle the same useful expressions every week.

Do not chase word list inflation.

4) Guessing from context only works when load is low

(Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001)

Students can only infer unknown words when they:

• Already understand most of the sentence
• Have spare cognitive bandwidth

If the text is too dense → no inference happens → panic.

GCSE implication:

Provide just enough vocabulary first.

Then practise flow.

Then practise inference.

Never the other way around.

5) Phrasing is understanding

(Kuhn & Stahl, 2003)

Meaning is stored in chunks, not single words.

If students can identify:

• Relative clause boundaries
• Connective-based transitions
• Verb phrase groupings

Their comprehension skyrockets.

GCSE implication:

Teach students to mark chunk boundaries before reading questions.

This directly improves translation accuracy.

6) Repeated reading builds fluency

(Taguchi, 2016)

Reading the same short text multiple times:

• Reduces cognitive load
• Improves speed + comfort
• Increases comprehension without teaching new vocabulary

GCSE implication:

Use micro-texts (60–100 words) and re-read daily.

Variety of topics is less important than repeated exposure.

7) Oral reading supports silent reading

(Webb & Nation, 2017)

Speaking text aloud:

• Reinforces word recognition
• Stabilises chunk recall
• Builds rhythm and intonation → faster inner reading voice

GCSE implication:

Do choral reading, echo reading, paired reading — even in KS4.

It is not childish. It is neurologically efficient.

8) Fluency needs automatic grammar chunks

(Ellis, 2006)

Grammar must operate as pattern recognition, not rule consultation.

Example:

Students should recognise:

• negation blocks (ne … pas / n’a pas pu / ne voulait pas)
• tense frames (j’allais / je suis allé / j’irai)
• subordination triggers (parce que / quand / comme / si)

GCSE implication:

We teach grammar by repetition in meaningful contexts, not by abstract explanation.

9) Reading fluency strengthens listening

(Vandergrift & Goh, 2012)

When students already know a chunk visually, the brain recognises it faster in speech.

GCSE implication:

Use the same text:

1. Read it
2. Listen to it
3. Summarise it

This improves Paper 1 + Paper 2 in one move.

10) Confidence is a fluency factor

(Zimmerman, 2000)

Students who feel they can read:

• Take more risks
• Try longer texts
• Persist under exam stress

Students who believe they “can’t read” → shut down instantly.

GCSE implication:

Use visible progress routines:

• Timed re-readings
• Confidence self-ratings
• “Look how much faster I am now” charts

Conclusion

Conclusion

Reading fluency is not a luxury skill—it is the foundation upon which comprehension, confidence, and exam success are built. When students’ decoding is slow, when chunk recognition is weak, or when grammatical patterns haven’t been automatised, everything else in the reading process strains to compensate. Working memory overloads, anxiety climbs, and performance drops. This isn’t a question of ability. It is a question of cognitive conditions.

The solution is not to give students harder texts sooner, nor to plough through long word lists, nor to train them to guess desperately from context. It is to build fluency deliberately and systematically: to recycle high-frequency chunks, to rehearse phrasing, to revisit micro-texts, to read aloud, to stabilise the grammar that actually drives meaning-making in real time. When we do this, we are not simply preparing students for a GCSE paper. We are giving them the tools to read with ease, to process language with confidence, and to experience the feeling—rare but transformative—of language becoming effortless.

Introduction

If you’ve been following the EPI way of sequencing instruction, you’ll know that grammar traditionally appears after a rich diet of structured input and structured and semistructured output work. Learners first experience language through chunks, notice recurring patterns, and only later consolidate those intuitions through explicit rule work. But what if, in some cases, flipping that order actually helps rather than hinders learning?

In this post, I’ll explore why it can sometimes make perfect sense to teach grammar before structured production—that is, to insert explicit form-focused work between the Awareness and Structured Production phases of the MARSEARS cycle. Drawing on cognitive load theory, skill acquisition research, and decades of classroom observation, I’ll show how this alternative version—MARESARS—can be a powerful choice in contexts where accuracy, noticing, and cognitive efficiency matter most.

We’ll look at the eight research-backed reasons for front-loading grammar, the classroom scenarios that call for it, and how this adjustment preserves the EPI spirit while fine-tuning its rhythm. Think of it not as breaking the cycle, but as learning when and how to bend it intelligently.

1. Enhances “noticing” once meaning is secure

When explicit grammar instruction follows a rich modelling and awareness phase, learners already possess enough semantic scaffolding to make form salient. They can link abstract grammatical explanations to concrete, familiar examples, leading to what Schmidt (1990) called noticing: the conscious registration of form–meaning connections. This effect is strongest when explicit focus follows intense exposure to input that has been understood but not yet fully analysed. Placing grammar before structured production ensures that students’ attention shifts naturally from “what does this mean?” to “how is this meaning encoded?” (Ellis, 2002). In other words, explicit grammar becomes an interpretive tool, not a barrier to communication.

2. Improves form–meaning mapping accuracy

When rules are clarified before learners start speaking, they can process input with more precision, aligning forms with communicative functions. VanPatten (2004) and Doughty & Williams (1998) emphasise that learners often misinterpret forms if they must infer both meaning and structure at once. For instance, without prior explanation, French learners might see je mangeais simply as a variant of je mange, not recognising its aspectual nuance. Early explicit input ensures a richer encoding of meaning, fostering more accurate form–function mapping and preventing early semantic flattening. Grammar here acts as a “lens” through which input gains grammatical depth.

3. Reduces cognitive load during first output

Cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1998) predicts that learners can process only a few new items simultaneously. If they must generate output and decode new grammar in real time, they overload working memory and performance collapses. Explicit grammar instruction before structured production acts as a load-reducing scaffold: it externalises some of the decision-making by giving learners a mental framework in advance. When production begins, their attention can focus on meaning and fluency rather than rule retrieval. This sequencing is particularly vital for low-intermediate learners, who are juggling both lexical retrieval and morphosyntactic accuracy.

4. Pre-empts entrenched mislearning

In EPI’s cyclic model, delaying grammar too long risks fossilising faulty automatisms. Once erroneous patterns are proceduralised, they resist correction (Lightbown & Spada, 2013). A short, well-timed explicit grammar focus before structured output helps learners verify or adjust their internal hypotheses before they “hardwire” them. This is crucial in morphologically rich or low-salience domains such as French adjective agreement, German case endings, or Spanish clitics. Here, a little explicit metalinguistic clarity at the right time can prevent months of corrective effort later.

5. Boosts short- and long-term gains

Meta-analyses consistently show that explicit grammar teaching leads to stronger gains in both accuracy and durability than implicit exposure alone (Norris & Ortega, 2000; Spada & Tomita, 2010; Goo et al., 2015). However, these effects depend on timing. When placed after the modelling and awareness phases but before structured production, grammar input consolidates the learner’s representations at the “sweet spot” where receptive familiarity meets analytical readiness. The rule thus consolidates patterns the learner has already subconsciously absorbed, creating durable connections across declarative and procedural memory systems.

6. Increases feedback uptake quality

Lyster’s (2004) and Lyster & Saito’s (2010) work on corrective feedback shows that learners benefit more from recasts and prompts when they already possess explicit rule awareness. Grammar instruction before structured production primes learners to interpret feedback diagnostically. When they receive a reformulation, they can identify which grammatical subsystem was activated, rather than just hearing “error/no error”. As a result, feedback becomes learning rather than policing. In the EPI cycle, this makes the “Review” phase exponentially more efficient, since learners have a shared grammatical metalanguage for processing corrections.

7. Supports proceduralisation

Anderson’s (1983) ACT* model and DeKeyser’s (1998, 2015) research show that skill acquisition follows a three-stage sequence: declarative → procedural → automatic. Providing grammar rules before output gives learners a declarative foundation on which structured practice can operate. The structured production tasks that follow then serve as the proceduralisation phase — converting knowledge about the rule into automatic control. Without prior explicit awareness, proceduralisation risks being noisy and inconsistent, as learners trial-and-error their way to partial automatisation.

8. Facilitates selective attention in tasks

Finally, early grammar explanation enhances learners’ ability to focus on target features during both receptive and productive work. Hulstijn (2001, 2002) and Ellis (2006) argue that attention is a limited resource, and effective instruction must direct it. Knowing what grammatical features to look or listen for makes subsequent input more productive — what you might call “guided input noticing.” When learners enter structured production after an awareness-raising grammar phase, their attention is already “calibrated” to track and retrieve those forms in context, leading to richer noticing loops throughout the cycle.

When to switch from MARSEARS to MARESARS

(Moving Expansion before Structured Production)

You would adopt MARESARS (Modelling–Awareness–Receptive processing–Expansion–Structured production–Assessment–Review–Spontaneity) when the goal is to extend input and awareness before learners are ready to produce. This shift is especially beneficial when:

1. The target structure is low-salience or morphologically subtle — e.g., French agreement, Italian clitics, German articles. Learners need longer input flooding before meaningful output is possible.
2. L1–L2 mapping is opaque or misleading, leading to high transfer risk — e.g., English learners of French gender or aspectual systems.
3. High-stakes accuracy is required, such as exam-oriented or writing-led units where premature fluency leads to ingrained inaccuracies.
4. Diagnostic listening or reading shows weak pattern recognition or persistent misparsing, suggesting insufficient input depth.
5. The rule bundle is complex, combining multiple dependencies (e.g., case + word order, tense + pronoun placement). Expansion tasks can then provide layered, multi-modal exemplars before output.
6. Time-on-input outweighs time-on-output, as in beginner contexts or intensive reading/listening units.
7. Analytically minded or adult learners benefit from extended contrastive noticing and explicit reformulation tasks before they speak.
8. The unit is text-driven or interpretive, e.g., based on narratives, songs, or multimodal resources where comprehension naturally precedes production.

Here are my professional development events organised by the University of Bath Spa’s Network for Learning.

Strategies for Effective Grammar Instruction- 5 November Find out more

Implementing EPI at KS4 for the new MFL GCSEs – 10 November Find out more

Impactful Evidence-based Vocab Instruction: What every language teacher should know for the new MFL GCSE – 11 November Find out more

Phonics in MFL – 17 November AM Find out more

Curriculum Design & Lesson Planning in MFL – 17 & 18 November Find out more

Strategies for Effective Grammar Instruction – 18 November AM Find out more

Phonics in MFL – 25 November Find out more