Introduction

There is a myth whereby acquiring a new language for younger chidren is easier. Nothing could be further from the truth, in instructed second language acquisition settings, at least, especially with one hour or less a week. In fact, encoding in long-term memory (LTM) is slower for younger children due to biological, cognitive, and experiential factors that influence memory formation and retrieval. Tran Thi Tuyet, in her 2020 article “The Myth of ‘The Earlier the Better’ in Foreign Language Learning or the Optimal Age to Learn a Foreign Language,” contends that the assumption “the earlier, the better” in foreign language learning is often misleading. She suggests that investing too early in children’s foreign language education may lead to suboptimal outcomes if not appropriately aligned with effective teaching methodologies and the child’s developmental readiness.

Additionally, a publication by the Centre for Educational Neuroscience titled “Avoiding the Hype Over Early Foreign Language Teaching” emphasizes the lack of substantial evidence supporting the notion that early foreign language instruction guarantees superior language proficiency later in life. The paper advises education professionals to critically assess the evidence before implementing early language programs, suggesting that premature introduction without proper pedagogical support might not yield the desired benefits

Research indicates that students who begin foreign language study in secondary school can often catch up to, or even surpass, peers who started in primary school. This suggests that the advantages of early language learning might not be as significant as commonly believed.

A study by Muñoz (2006) examined the long-term proficiency of early, middle, and late starters in foreign language learning. The findings revealed that older learners often progress more rapidly than younger learners, leading to comparable or even superior proficiency levels over time. This challenges the assumption that an earlier start guarantees greater language proficiency

Why do younger learners struggle more than older learners when it comes to L2-word learning?

Here’s a detailed breakdown:

1. Brain Maturation & Neural Development

• Hippocampal Immaturity:
  • The hippocampus, which plays a central role in memory formation, is still developing in younger children (Gómez & Edgin, 2016).
  • Studies using fMRI have shown that hippocampal connections strengthen with age, leading to more efficient encoding and retrieval of information in older children (Ghetti & Bunge, 2012).
• Synaptic Pruning & Myelination:
  • Younger children have a higher number of neural connections, but they are not as efficient as in older learners.
  • Synaptic pruning (elimination of weaker neural connections) and myelination (fatty sheath around neurons improving transmission speed) increase memory efficiency with age (Paus et al., 2001).

2. Working Memory Limitations

• Younger children have a lower working memory capacity, which affects how much information they can hold before transferring it to long-term storage (Gathercole & Alloway, 2008).
• Miller’s Law (1956) suggests an average working memory span of 7±2 items in adults, while younger children may only retain half that – with great variation amongst children in the same class.
• Reduced chunking ability: Older children and adults use chunking (grouping information into meaningful units), which improves memory retention, whereas younger children struggle with this strategy (Schneider et al., 2011).

3. Underdeveloped Memory Strategies

• Lack of Rehearsal Techniques:
  • Older children use active rehearsal (repeating words mentally) to strengthen memory storage, while younger children often fail to engage in spontaneous rehearsal (Flavell, 1970).
• Limited Use of Mnemonics & Organization Strategies:
  • Older children categorize words by meaning (e.g., grouping “apple, banana, orange” as “fruits”), making retrieval easier.
  • Younger children lack this organizational ability, leading to weaker memory recall (Bjorklund & Jacobs, 1985).

4. Episodic Memory & Schema Development

• Less Developed Episodic Memory:
  • Episodic memory (memories of specific events) is less developed in younger children, making it harder for them to link new words to prior experiences (Nelson, 1993).
• Lack of Established Schemas:
  • Older children have more structured knowledge frameworks (schemas), allowing them to fit new vocabulary into existing memory networks.
  • Younger children lack these schemas, making encoding slower and retrieval less efficient (Chi, 1978).

5. Slower Consolidation of Memories

• Sleep & Memory Consolidation Differences:
  • Deep sleep (slow-wave sleep) aids in memory consolidation, but research suggests memory-related sleep processes are less efficient in young children (Wilhelm et al., 2012).
  • Older children and adults show better overnight retention of new information than younger children.

6. Less Exposure & Repetition Opportunities

• Older children encounter more words in different contexts (reading, conversations, writing), reinforcing long-term retention.
• Younger children need more repetitions to store words permanently in LTM (Webb, 2007).

Summary Table: Why retaining new vocabulary is slower in younger children

Key Takeaways & pedagogical implications

• Younger children CAN encode words into long-term memory, but it takes more repetitions and contextual learning.
• Older children process and store words more efficiently due to better neural pathways, stronger working memory, and more effective learning strategies.
• Memory strategies like rehearsal, categorization, and spaced repetition can help younger learners retain words more effectively.
• Younger children are led by the principle of pleasure more than older children are, hence, their motivation to learn is more dependant on fun
• Multimodal learning is key with language learners based on what we know about their working memory limitations. The more ways a word gets encoded in their younger brain, the more neural associations are created, which leads to longer term retention
• Training in memorization techniques – as long as you make it fun – pays enormous dividends

1. The author: Chloe Briand, Teaching and Learning Languages Lead at Melbourne Archdiocese of Catholic Schools

The author of this post, Chloe Briand is a secondary French/Spanish teacher with over 20 years teaching experience. She is currently the Teaching and Learning Languages Lead at Melbourne Archdiocese of Catholic Schools, supporting over 300 primary and secondary schools’ language programs and their language teachers. Chloe was previously the Head of Languages at Methodist Ladies College (Melbourne), where she supported the implementation of EPI in all programs from Year 7 to Year 12 across four different languages with great success.

1.1. The journey

Four years after my first post on Dr Conti’s blog, I return to writing with great excitement, this time no longer as a language teacher and head of department, but as Lead for Teaching and Learning Languages at MACS (Melbourne Archdiocese of Catholic Schools) in Victoria, Australia. With just under two and half years in the role, the transition to no longer being in the classroom has been enormous, and I am truly grateful to have learnt so much about supporting many teachers and students with their language learning.

In this post, I would like to share with you the journey that has taken place in our primary sector, through the initiative called “Teachers as Co-Learners” (TCL). This program was born in 2017, with 2 schools participating in the launch of this exciting venture. The starting point was the idea that a once-a-week lesson for primary students was not the most effective way for them to learn a language efficiently. To move past this realisation, it became clear that short daily language lessons would be far more beneficial, as they would counteract Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve and provide students with the chance to truly retain language over time. Another key idea was that this program would be delivered by the classroom teacher, who would not be a trained language specialist, and who be supported by a language teacher/expert who spoke the language fluently during the week. Students and classroom teachers would share the journey and learn together. Add to the mix a focus on communicative language for use throughout the day, and this was how TCL was born.

Fast forward a few more years, COVID added to severe language teacher shortages. When I started the role, we saw more and more primary schools dealing with major issues with staffing their language programs (note for non-Victorian schools, languages are one of the key learning areas mandated by the Victorian Curriculum, and they form part of the compliance requirements from the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA), our statutory authority). Therefore, the need for systemic support in the shape of fully built programs and resources was significant. Writing full scopes and sequences for Foundation to Year 6 students of Italian, French, and Indonesian, including all teaching material, weekly planners, daily lessons, resources and materials, assessments and marking rubrics was the key to many schools adopting this program and delivering language through this model. The other key component was that it had to be accessible to teachers who did not speak the language and engage all participants alike.

This is where E.P.I. came into play. When we first started to write the program, we imagined that MARS’ EARS would be our guide to planning sequences of activities which would be easily understandable by teachers and enjoyable by students. It was, but also so much more.

Coming from the secondary sector and transitioning into curriculum design for the primary setting was an incredible challenge. As we wrote and re-wrote our curriculum, teachers and students continued to give us feedback every term, and it became pretty clear pretty quickly that Dr Conti’s language approach is the only one I have come across which is sustainable from the very first year of language learning in Foundation all the way to Senior secondary. Of course, activities are much more scaffolded to match the cognitive developmental stages of students in this context, but the same principles apply all the way.

What we have also embedded in our programs are explicit links to literacy, and types of literacy activities which classroom teachers are familiar with (what is called pop-up grammar/phonics in EPI), so that they can start to connect the dots between all languages. I can happily report that our TCL teachers are frequently commenting to us now that “all language is Literacy”. Students are highly engaged, and their language skills are absolutely staggering (we are now starting to hear rumblings from secondary schools in TCL catchment areas about needing to create entry pathways into Year 7 for those students, as they are far too advanced to start at Year 7 beginner level). The most unexpected part in this is the realisation from classroom teachers, almost in disbelief, that not only can they ‘do this’, but also, that they are ‘good at languages’. Coming from adults who consider themselves to be monolinguists, this truly is the icing on the cake.

Conclusions and way forward

We are now in a huge growth phase of the TCL network, with 50 schools currently in Melbourne, and we anticipate more in the years to come. This model is proving to be the most effective way to teach languages in primary schools, because of the high frequency of lessons and the delivery by the classroom teacher with whom students have an established rapport. However, this all hinges on the success of language acquisition due to a robust pedagogical approach, EPI, which actively promotes all students experiencing success. Of course, we are also working on getting our trained language teachers involved in the program, as this success is also reliant on language experts who support classroom teachers’ and students’ learning. This will be the next piece of the puzzle to fall into place, and I can anticipate that TCL clusters sharing a language teacher to deliver the program will bring schools and communities even closer together as they all partake in common success.  

Introduction

Here’s a very interesting guest post by a very talented and committed Coventry-based Head of Department working in a very large comprehensive school, who recently attended one of my workshops. When he told me about how he has implemented and adapted EPI to his setting, I was so impressed with the passion, determination and creativity which he injected into the process, that I felt compelled to ask him to write a blog post about it. Here’s the post. It has inspired me and I am sure it will inspire you too. Please note that I haven’t changed the original draft that Ryan sent to me a few days ago in a bid to preserve its authenticity,

Start with a why

My name is Ryan Cockrell and I am Head of Languages at a large comprehensive secondary school in Coventry. I have written this blog for those who are thinking of integrating EPI and MARSEARS but are unsure as to how they will introduce these ideas to their team.

As it stands, my department is at the end of its first academic year of implementing EPI and the MARSEARS sequence. As a department, we believe in our curriculum intent and we believe in EPI as the best implementation method to deliver that curriculum intent. Logistically, we have settled on a combination of centralised student booklets and teacher PowerPoint documents to support staff in delivering our curriculum. Despite my initial plan to focus specifically on redeveloping the Year 9 curriculum only, we now finish the year with the entirety of KS3 Spanish completely overhauled (French is on its way), a feat that would have been impossible without the dedication and work ethic of our hardworking staff who have bought into these ideas and are reaping the rewards as a result. However, we still have a lot of work to do, particularly around the implementation of these ideas at KS4.  

A metaphorical introduction

Imagine you are exploring an area that is long-believed to have been abandoned, abandoned so long ago that no one seems to remember what was there. As you delve deeper into the forest (or other interesting setting), you come across a wall, a wall that is blocking your exploration. What should you do? Time is of the essence; this land must be explored. Some people would tear down the wall and continue with their exploration; the purpose of the wall is meaningless and only stands in the way of the truth, the new truth. Others, perhaps more wisely, would build over the wall, continuing their exploration of ‘new’ ground but also assuming that the wall must have some purpose. What would you do?

Upon taking the role of Head of Languages last summer, I faced a similar (although much less dramatic) situation. I had my vision, my ideas and my beliefs, but there was a ‘wall’. Years of work from professional, intelligent colleagues had formed a wall that I felt I needed to work around. Some of the bricks were strong but some parts of the wall were falling apart. It is not that what existed was ‘bad’, but it wasn’t mine and I certainly wasn’t able (or willing) to justify ideas that weren’t my own. Mainly, however, it was my view that this wall was not supporting all of our students.

I won’t disparage the work of my colleagues; I will share some of my concerns.  

• The curriculum was structured around grammar and vocabulary but lacked relevance and communicative function.
• There was an over reliance on online textbooks (ActiveLearn?). PowerPoint resources were screenshots of the digital textbook. I don’t have a phobia of text books; my issue is that textbooks are generic and are not designed with our learners in mind.  
• There was little consistency. A lack of centralised resources forced teachers to plan their own lessons without a common aim. The most surreal moment was when one Year 10 group was sitting Speaking mocks but no other groups were whilst two teachers had organised a listening mock in the hall for their groups but not the others.  

So you can see that we had a problem, mainly consistency (this was also evident in the school’s faculty improvement plan and the previous Ofsted feedback). I knew we had to take action but I could not start the year off by pointing out all the problems without providing solutions. I wanted to relay some bricks, not tear the wall down.

First steps

First, I organised EPI training for all MFL teachers. This was a profound moment; in our next meeting, we shared our ideas and it was clear that we all understood where we were heading. In this meeting, I also shared the 14 principles that we would be focusing on in our first year of EPI (we will adapt these as we learn more about who we are as a department and what our students needs, but it was a helpful starting point).

Secondly, I made the decision to keep the Long Term Plan (LTP) in place, securing the foundations of the wall. It made clear to the team that we were not throwing everything out the window; we were developing our implementation, not the intent.

To develop the implementation specifically, I shared a Lesson Format with staff. The Lesson Format made direct, explicit reference to the MARSEARS sequence, a clear indication of our commitment to this teaching method. Much of this format was borrowed from www.katemayclassroom.com.

Our own twist was ‘the situation’, the story of the lesson, the contextual relevance and  communicative function of the lesson. We wanted language learning to be relevant and we tried to create different, real-world solutions where the content of the lesson would be applicable.

Then, we decided to provide students with whiteboard packs to aid AFL and the EPI delivery method. All packs included two mini-whiteboards, two WB pens, a WB rubber, two red pens, two rulers and a glue sticks (these were removed later on).

Now, this did not solve all of our problems; the wall looked prettier but it was still unstable. These ideas were more readily implemented by certain members of staff and ownership and accountability was difficult to instil in resources that lacked a truly school-based identity. This is where we changed the most.

Curriculum characters

By Christmas, our best lessons were completely transformed by EPI and MARSEARS. Students were retaining language and growing in confidence every lesson. Students who had previously not enjoyed languages were proactively taking part and behaviour had improved across the board. I recognise this is anecdotal, but this blog is written as testimony to the transformative impact of these methods.

Over Christmas, I read an article about the use of longer texts and stories as the basis for relevance and authenticity in the curriculum. Immediately, I knew this was something we could replicate and create a true identity for our curriculum. I wrote a letter from the perspective of Joaquín to his friend Alberto. In the letter, Joaquín spoke about his recent holiday, his recent plans and reminisced about their childhood together – the idea was to deliver our teaching of the past tense through the story of Joaquín. The text was also translated into English and Dodgy English. I won’t overstate the impact, but it was pretty clear that students bought into the characters and embraced the uniqueness of the story. It felt real – some students asked whether Joaquín was a real person. I developed a scheme of learning with lessons based around different paragraphs from the letter. Again, however, I had to present this idea to staff and hope that it would not feel like too much change. In my mind, this was a direct development of ‘the situation’ that, in theory, should actually reduce the need to constantly come up with new situations. Instead, we would invest in high quality, semi-authentic and personal texts in the target language.

Upon reflection, I don’t know what I was worried about. The staff received this so positively that we immediately started brainstorming different characters. We had teachers creating backstories for a Chilean girl named Julieta, a Venezuelan man named Luciano and a French boy named Xavier. We had teachers planning the likes/dislikes of each character and we had teachers producing engaging resources with stock images for each character (Microsoft Office provides so many for free). By the following week, we had invested in a subscription to AI that generates authentic voices in all language/accents based on your input. Luciano didn’t just have a wife and children, they all had Venezuelan accents! The characters were now alive. It also dawned on us later that we could use this software to create custom exam-style listening tasks.

Booklets

At the same time, we also began to trial the use of booklets as the main resource for lesson delivery. Inspired by Sophie Newnham (she was kind enough to share her work with me), we set out on creating booklets that followed our school’s lesson framework (big picture, small picture; I do, We do, You do; AFL; etc…). The aim was was to establish consistency in our implementation through effective, explicit instruction and, as a result, raise the floor level of all language lessons. Some people worry that centralised resources limit teacher autonomy; I disagree and, unfortunately, we won’t be having that argument here. As HoD, you are accountable for what is being taught and how it is being taught so you need to believe in it.  

Students would no longer use exercise books and teachers would not need to prepare individual PowerPoint lessons. Most importantly, teachers would not need to spend time (or money) on printing resources for each class. Teachers would display their copy of the booklet on the board with a visualiser and guide students through a series of I do and We do tasks before handing over to students to complete You do tasks independently. Each booklet would feature one Sentence Builder and would represent one Unit. Each Unit would be separated into MAR and SEA. After completing four Units of MAR/SEA, students would complete an RS booklet based on the previous four Units (this would serve as their assessment).  

We started with Year 9 and, after a successful trial, we tried it with Year 8. As mentioned before, booklets are now used across KS3 French and Spanish. To really emphasise the success

Below, I have shared some screenshots from our Year 9 booklets. I have also made some resources available via my Twitter account (@RyanCockrell14). Soon, complete resources will be posted to TES but I will announce this on my Twitter account. If you want to see what a whole booklet looks like, here is the link to the whole year 9 booklet:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gVicuoQ4_0_sjMK7RGznJGW4vCkoSlrG

Ofsted

I won’t be going into too much detail in this section (as I’m sure you will understand) but I wanted to tell a brief story. In January, we were subject to a deep dive (my first ever). In regards to our intent, feedback was extremely positive. The best lessons that were observed made extensive use of EPI and booklets for explicit instruction and the engagement of students with EPI methods matched the intent perfectly. We knew what our feedback would be and it gave us even more encouragement that we were onto something special. My proudest moment was when the lesson I taught was praised in terms of its planning as well as its delivery. However, I had barely adapted the plan from the centralised EPI booklet resource produced by an ECT MFL teacher. To me, this is a clear indication that we are on the right track.

What next?

I wish we were in a position where our curriculum was complete. However, at the end of our first academic year I am incredibly proud of the effort of staff and students alike to get on board with our vision for language learning at our school. We have a lot of work ahead of us but we absolutely trust the process.

Our school is a true comprehensive; we have every kind of learner. This year, we have moved to establish Languages as an optional GCSE course; before this year, Languages had been compulsory at GCSE for five years. I was nervous about how many GCSE students we would recruit. However, at the first time of asking, we maintained 3/5 Spanish groups, 2/5 French groups and we very nearly ran a German group without teaching German at KS3! We have also recruited students for French and Spanish A Level after a couple of years of not doing so.

A special thank you to Dr. Gianfranco Conti who has inspired us so much along the way.

If anyone is interested in more of the nitty-gritty Head of Department side of things (faculty review documents, Ofsted deep-dive, ECM deep-dive, difficult conversations, lesson observations and learning walks, challenging difficult staff, behaviour management, etc…), I would be happy to provide more information and discuss my experience. I am currently planning a webinar that covers this specific angle so stay tuned if you are interested. Get in contact in the following ways:-        Twitter: @RyanCockrell14-        Email: ryan.cockrell@hotmail.co.uk

Links to external sources that were mentioned:

Sophie Newnham – Twitter: @MissNewnham-       

Article about texts (https://gianfrancoconti.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/88961-12-huhlanguages.pdf)-       

Barry Smith Podcast – Parallel texts (https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/barry-smith95/episodes/French-using-parallel-texts-e1a8nv1)

Many CPD providers around the world are currently delivering courses on the implementation of EPI. Whilst I welcome the fact that the ‘Word’ is being spread, often it is spread incorrectly, sending mixed message and often misrepresenting the approach. This is because many of these providers have not received extensive training in the approach, haven’t fully understood it and/or haven’t implemented it in the classroom for long enough or in a sufficiently wide range of learning contexts to fully master it.

Consequently, I have been asked by many classrooms practitioners and CPD providers, mainly from the UK, Australia, North America, the Middle East and South-East Asia, to stage an accreditation programme which would assure that whoever delivers courses on EPI has received thorough training in the approach across the main areas of language teaching and learning.

The programme, which is organized and delivered in partnership with the University of Bath Spa (UK) consists of two levels: Level 1, for those who want to obtain the “EPI teacher accreditation” and Level 2, for those who want to become accredited EPI teacher trainers. The completion of the L1 course is of course a prerequisite for accessing Level 2.

Please note that no professional development provider has completed Level 1 yet, although quite a few people are already three quarters of the way. This means that no CPD provider yet is an EPI-accredited teacher or trainer and whilst people can deliver by all means FREE EPI CPD, they shouldn’t charge fees for it. This is unfortunately happening in England and constitutes a breach of copyright.

The Level 1 programme comprises the following modules:-

(1) Becoming an EPI teacher

(2) Curriculum Design & Lesson Planning in MFL

(3) Phonics and Grammar

(4a) Implementing EPI at Key Stage 4 or
(4b) Implementing EPI at Key Stage 2

(5) Final Assessment: delegates will need to create a detailed design of a MARS EARS sequence for KS2/3 or 4 inclusive of overview, activities and pedagogic rationale for the selection and sequencing of tasks . This includes:-

• Online tutorial with Dr Conti to introduce this module (1 hour)
• Input and feedback from Dr Conti on Scheme of Work

Course fee for all of the above is £700 per delegate. Fee includes the 5 modules above and programme certification. If you prefer, you can book and pay for each course individually as you go along.

If you have completed some of the modules already, you do not need to repeat them. Please let us know dates when informing us of each course which you have previously attended.

Information on Becoming an Accredited EPI Trainer to follow. Please register your interest with Denise – d.martin@bathspa.ac.uk. Delegates on this trainer course will have completed the above Becoming an Accredited EPI Teacher modules first. Please book yourself onto the correct module.

Here are the Becoming an EPI Teacher Dates for those of you living in the Western hemisphere. Please note that Australia/Eastern-hemisphere friendly dates in April and May will be published very soon on the Network for Learning website (www.networkforlearning.org.uk) and on this blog.

15 & 29 March 4pm to 6.30pm on both dates Online

24 March 9.30am to 4pm Watford, Herts (face to face)

28 April 9am to 4pm Online

29 June 9.30am to 4pm Oxford (face to face)

30 June 9.30am to 4pm London (face to face)

Curriculum Design & Lesson Planning in MFL Dates:

28 Feb & 14 Mar 4pm to 6.30pm on both dates Online

30 March 9.30am to 4pm Birmingham (face to face)

9 May 9am to 4pm Online

Please note that the face-to-face events above are those staged by Network For learning. There are (and will be) also other events hosted by schools in the UK in Australia. You can find the upcoming ones this month, listed here.

Details about the Level 2 programme will be published in Autumn 2023.

Introduction

Learned attention (Nick Ellis, 2012) is a phenomenon whereby the way we parse input in the L1 constrains the way we process the L2 . In other words, our first language has conditioned us over the years to parse language through cues in the input which may be different in the target language.

For instance, English speakers learning Spanish may not notice Spanish nouns/adjectives’ masculine or feminine endings in the input we provide them with, because the notion of gender does not exist in their first language. By the same token, English learners of French may not notice that a French verb is in the simple future because in English the simple future is cued by ‘will’ whereas in French it is indicated by a bound morpheme (i.e. inflectional changes to the verb ending). For English learners of German, the issue is of course even more complex as word order requires parsing mechanisms which are completely different in their L1 and cases do not exists at all in English.

This is particularly important when teachers stage traditional listening and reading comprehension tasks whereby the texts are flooded with an L2 language feature which is processed differently in the L1. Since the brain can’t process meaning and form (e.g. grammar) simultaneously, when carrying out such tasks, many learners are not likely to notice the target L2 feature, especially in listening, when the time window for parsing any given sentence is about 1 to 2 seconds. Flooding aural/written texts is only effective when listening and reading tasks include alongside focus-on-meaning tasks a substantive focus-on-form component which directs the learners’ attention to form, i.e. prosody (e.g. intonational patterns), grammar (e.g. verb endings), syntax (word order), etc.

It should be noted that grammar structures are not merely acquired through productive use, as many believe, but also through many repeated encounters in the aural and written input they process. However, if our students are blind and deaf to the target linguistic features because they are ‘blocked’ by our L1-induced learned attention, this is not likely to happen. This is very important considering that in many UK classrooms a big chunk of the daily classroom work occurs through reading – even when the students engage in writing, it is often with the support of reading materials or written scaffolds (e.g. knowledge organizers), which is basically… reading!

But isn’t it enough to simply raise their awareness, do a nice PPP (presentation – practice – production) lesson and lots of gap-fills, translations and other structured drills? The answer: for starters, these are productive (usually written) tasks which won’t necessarily transfer to listening and reading (according to the Transfer Appropriate Processing principle). Secondly, learned attention has been automatised (learnt subconsciously) through thousands and thousands of hours of first language use. Hence, any training aiming at successfully ‘rewiring’ the brain must be regular and sustained over time– if you believe it’s a priority, of course.

Figure 1 – Learned attention defined

Obviously, the blocking effect of L1-induced learned attention is stronger, the more demanding the parsing of a text is from a cognitive-load point of view. So, for instance, sentences which are longer, more syntactically complex and/or contain unfamiliar vocabulary are more likely to exacerbate the phenomenon. The same happens when a grammar feature is redundant in terms of meaning building; for example, in the sentence ‘Demain on va aller au stade’ (Tomorrow we are going to go to the stadium), the time marker already cues the students to the fact that the action is future and the subject pronoun ‘on’ that it is ‘us’ going. This means that there is no need for the learner to pay attention to the verb ‘aller’ (‘va’) and to the syntactic pattern underlying the construction ‘present of aller + infinitive’.

Based on Tomlin and Villa’s (1997) model of attention (see figure 2 below) we may posit that the detection of a target linguistic feature is more likely to occur when language learners are alert to it. In other words, a learner who has been alerted to a specific feature in the input may orientate their attention to it and eventually notice it. Hence the importance of helping learners notice less salient L2 items by making them more distinctive; of raising their awareness of cross-linguistic differences in processing those items; of staging activities which focus them regularly and deliberately on those items by making them task essential (i.e. necessary for the successful completion of a task).

Figure 2 – Tomlin and Villa’s model of attention

Implications for the classroom

Whilst language teachers are usually aware of other ways in which our first language may work against L2 acquisition (aka L1 negative transfer), learned attention is in my experience a phenomenon many are less aware of and don’t deliberately plan for. Yet, this phenomenon has important implications for teaching, especially when we ask our students to process aural/written texts. Here are some of them:

(1) since the brain cannot process simultaneously meaning and form (e.g. grammar & syntax), traditional reading and listening comprehension or ‘Find the French equivalent in the text’ sort of tasks will not help learners consolidate the target grammar structures, as many teachers think, it doesn’t matter how much they flood the texts with instances of the target grammar features. Texts need also be exploited, as we do in EPI, in ways which target all levels of processing, i.e.: spelling, sound to spelling correspondence, grammar, syntax, etc (figure 3).

Figure 3 – In EPI, texts are exploited by staging activities which ‘hit’ every single level of processing

(2) input-enhancement techniques (Sharwood-Smith, 1994) aimed at making the features ‘blocked’ by our learned attention SALIENT maybe used (e.g. acoustic cues such as raising your voice whilst reading aloud/speaking or visual cues such as highlighting word endings (figure 4)

Figure 4: Input enhancement used in the modelling phase to help learners of L2 Italian notice masculine and feminine endings in the past participle of verbs requiring Essere in the perfect tense

3) noticing activities such as (i) deep processing techniques contrasting (inductively or through guided discovery) the way a target grammar structure is deployed in the L1 and the L2 may be used to make it more salient and memorable such as ‘Dodgy translation’, ‘Faulty echo’, ‘Track the structure’ or ‘Write it as you hear it’ and (ii) receptive tasks (e.g. Partial dictations, Track the structure,) which make the target grammar structure task essential (see figures 5 to 7 ); (iii) editing activities in which the students are given texts flooded with errors with a specific grammar structure;

(4) daily efforts to ‘rewire’ the brain by training it to direct attention to inflectional endings may also be desirable in the early stages of instructed second language acquisition;

(5) in planning grammar instruction, it is key to identify the L1 ‘blocking’ mechanisms which may impede our learners’ noticing of the target structures, then try to counter them by raising learner awareness and by providing tons of practice, as already suggested above;

(6) it is key to model and practise the problematic items vulnerable to learned attention in highly familiar contexts so as to reduce cognitive load;

(7) if these structures are very important, like word order in German, for instance, make them your universals, as we call them in EPI – i.e. the core non-negotiables that you will focus on almost obsessively for a whole year.

Figure 5, 6 and 7: Activities which help enhance the saliency of blocked linguistic features

Concluding remarks

In conclusion, teaching grammar is not just about teaching rules through examples on a powerpoint or YouTube videos and ask the students to practise them through oral and written tasks. To enable language learners to see and hear the L2 linguistic features ‘blocked’ by learned attention, grammar instruction is also, and possibly more importantly at the early stages of ISLA, about redirecting the learners’ attention when they read and listen to L2 input, by training them day in day out to focus their eyes and ears on parts of the target language words and sentences they wouldn’t normally see or hear because of their first language processing habits. Grammar and Syntax are not only acquired by doing a few gap-fills and drills here and there, but also by processing masses of aural and written input many times over.

Processing input for meaning only isn’t sufficient, especially aural input, which is particularly fragile due to its fleeting nature (it decays from sensory memory after 2 seconds only and every new incoming sentence erases every physical trace of the previous one…). Hence, teachers need to find the way to rewire the way their learners process L2 input and create an alertness to the features which are processed differently in their first language. This means that curriculum design should consider, especially when dealing with beginner learners, the ways in which L1 learned attention majorly hinders the effective parsing – and, subsequently the learning – of the language features they purport to teach. Once identified the potential areas to target, teachers should provide a regular diet of brain-rewiring receptive activities, deliberately targeting those areas. This can be done through minimal prep/high impact receptive tasks such as: Faulty echo, Partial dictations, Listen and correct, Spot the silent endings, Track the structure, Dodgy translation, Editing tasks, Choose the correct endings; Complete the endings with the options provided, etc. In other words, the bread and butter of EPI.

Here is a list of evidence-based grammar-teaching tips based on my recent review of the specialised literature, which I routinely share in my Grammar workshops. I discuss many more in my workshops, of course, but I have been told that my posts are too long…

1. Don’t make the learning of grammar-rules the main focus of language instruction (Ellis and Shintani 2013). Make the grammar learning content lighter with students with low LAA (language-analytic ability , i.e the ability to treat language as an object of analysis and arrive at linguistic generalizations,which is at the core of the constructs of language learning aptitude and metalinguistic awareness, which are implicated in our ability to learn explicitly). These children are less good at analysing, spotting, memorizing and abstracting from patterns (faculties which correlate highly with IQ and rote-learning ability). As deKeyser, one of the strongest proponents of explicit grammar teaching has often pointed out, grammar instruction is more suitable for high-aptitude learners (de Keyser, 2015);

2. Make it enjoyable (Graham, 2022). Much grammar learning results in learner boredom (Murphy, 2022). Gamify it as much as possible through board games (e.g. No snakes no ladders), Interactive oral games (Oral ping-pong) and competitions (e.g. My Piranha grammar, Fast and Furious, Full circle).

3. Make it relevant to the children’s world and personal and academic goals, as relevance is key in fostering motivation to learn languages (Dornyey and Muir, 2019). In a series of French lessons on what one did last weekend, do we need every single verb requiring ETRE in the perfect tense, as textbooks usually do? How many times are the students ever going to be born , die, fall, go upstairs, downstairs, etc. in the context of such a unit?

4. Use a synergy of Explicit and Implicit learning (Ellis and Shintani, 2013). To maximize implicit learning capitalize on the power of syntactic priming/persistence, i.e. a phenomenon whereby repeated processing of the same syntactic pattern leads to subconscious learning of grammar. This can be done using highly-patterned input, input-flooding and input enhancement, i.e. emphasizing specific grammar items, e.g. inflectional endings, through acoustic or visual devices (e.g. enunciating a verb ending louder; highlighting a preposition; colour coding case-endings in German). Another way to maximize subconscious learning is to exploit input at all level of grain (Nick Ellis, 2015), by staging intensive reading and listening (i.e. a series of activities which exploit the same texts at the level of phonological,lexical, grammatical, syntactic, semantic, discourse, etc. processing).

Figure 0: structural (syntactic) priming

5. Don’t spend too much time talking about grammar; grammar should be used more than it should be talked about. 

6. For grammar to be used effectively and efficiently in fluent aural and oral processing it needs to be applied in a split second (Levelt, 1989). Hence, (1) be more tolerant of errors in spoken than in written production (Nation, 2013) and (2) ensure that you practise grammar through listening and speaking too; most language teachers don’t. (3) don’t overuse acronyms to learn grammar rules (e.g. MRS VANDERTRAMP) – if your learners become overreliant on them, they will never become fluent speakers

7. Introduce new structures in 100% familiar linguistic contexts (e.g. with known vocabulary) in order to decrease cognitive load (Conti and Smith, 2020). By the same token, avoid presenting and initially practising a new structure in high-element interactivity contexts as much as possible (Sweller, 2006).New grammar structures should be processed in sentences which are simple, short and where vocabulary and pronunciation will pose a negligible cognitive load.

8. Gradually phase out scaffolds. Move gradually from receptive processing to highly structured, then semi-structured and finally unplanned production. Don’t make the mistake as I did for many years, of explaining a grammar rule, then giving a list of examples and finally asking the students, without any substantive receptive processing, to produce sentences to show you they have understood. You will automatically exclude a significant chunk of the students and induce quite a few mistakes. Stage a few receptive tasks, first. Research suggests that successful acquisition of a grammar structure correlates highly with success (i.e. at least 60% accuracy) in the initial retrieval episodes (Boers, 2021). So ensure that you go to production when you are likely to secure a highly successful retrieval rate.

9. With non-transparent (deep orthography) languages where the sound-to-spelling correspondance is fairly low, such as French, do ensure that the students can accurately read aloud the morpheme(s) associated with the target structure. E.g., if teaching ‘ils regardent’, do ensure that they have routinised the correct pronunciation of ‘ent’ (i.e. that it is silent). Remember that even when we read silently, we still subvocalize what we read. A good strategy is to model and practise the grammar aurally first alongside their written form, as we do in EPI (e.g. through sentence builders).

10. Be aware of the factors which facilitate or impede grammar acquisition such as L1 positive/negative transfer, saliency or lack thereof, function-form mapping reliability, contextual factors, etc. (Nick Ellis, 2015). I have summarised these factors in figure 1 below.

Figure 1: factors facilitating the acquisition of an L2 grammar item

11. (Especially with students with low L1 literacy) Show (e.g., through a think-aloud protocol) how you would form and use the L1 equivalent of the target L2 structure first and draw or elicit a comparison from the students. Tribushinina et al, 2022 evidences that this contrastive approach is particularly effective with younger and weaker learners.

12. Be cognizant of the fact that when the brain focuses on meaning (e.g., in a reading comprehension) it doesn’t pay attention to form. Hence combine activities with a focus on form with others which have a focus on meaning (Ellis and Shintani, 2013) when exploiting texts. Note: the brain processes function words (e.g. determiners, auxiliaries, discourse an time markers, pronouns) as grammar, not as vocabulary. Hence, when we process a text for meaning quickly (as we do when we skim and scan a text to find the answer to reading comprehension tasks) we don’t usually process these key words which often our students don’t acquire until late in the acquisition process. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that these words do not carry meaning crucial for comprehension (are not semantically salient) and we generally focus on content words when we read for meaning (the so-called Redundancy effect). Figure 2 provides a list of the key function words in a language.

Figure 2: list of function words

13.Mind processability theory, whereby one cannot learn a structure which requires for its execution the mastery of a number of cognitive operations, unless those operations have been proceduralised (Pienemann, 1998).  For instance, according to this theory (which has been proven to be reliable by countless studies), no point teaching the perfect tense of French verbs requiring the auxiliary ETRE, unless the students have acquired 60% mastery of the sub-steps its deployment requires, e.g. selecting the correct present form of the verb ETRE, retrieving the correct past participle, making it agree in gender and number, etc. Sadly, most textbooks in England do exactly that, thereby setting up a lot of students, even those of high ability, for failure. Figure 3, below shows the procedures which determine the natural order of acquisition of a second language according to processability theory. Note that processability is a function of cognitive load, i.e.: if I have to form a sentence requiring five cognitive operations, my brain won’t simply be able to cope because of the overwhelming cognitive load. The beauty of teaching lexicogrammar is, of course, that chunk-learning bypasses the natural order and sequences of acquisition.

Figure 3: the six procedures determining the natural order of acquisition of grammar structures. It may take years to get to procedure 6 in real life acquisition, however, the students are often asked to produce subordinate sentences relatively early in the instructed acquisition process, thereby making lots of mistakes.

14. Be mindful of TAP (aka transfer appropriate processing): if a structure is learnt and practised in a specific linguistic context or through a given task, it won’t be easily transferred to another, especially once it has been routinised. A typical example: in many UK classrooms, reflexive verbs are usually practised exclusively within the context of daily routine, hence students find it notoriously difficult to transfer them to other contexts. Another implication of TAP: recycle your core (non-negotiable) items across as many contexts and tasks as possible (Conti and Smith, 2021)

15. Following on point 13 and 14, make your grammar teaching multi-modal, or grammar learning will be confined to only reading and writing – as it often unfortunately is the case in most classrooms. Grammar learnt only or mostly through reading and writing will be pretty much useless in the real world.

14. Still following on point 14 (about the TAP phenomenon), grammar testing should closely match practice (Purpura, 2005): if you practise a grammar structure through tasks X, Y and Z, it is not fair to test them using task W, unless you are testing for the learners’ ability to transfer knowledge. Yet, often students are tested on a given structure through essay writing when they may have practised it mostly through quizzes and multiple choice gap-fills.

15. Always assess grammar uptake (1) through a mixture of structured assessment (e.g. gap-fills) and free-production tasks e.g., talk to me about last weekend (Ellis and Shintani, 2013). The former will tell you if they can do it when there are prompts or a clear pattern as to what they are required to retrieve and usually pose a lower cognitive load; the latter is a test of spontaneous deployment of the target structure (hence it will tell you if the target structures have really been acquired).

16. Don’t simply assess the learning of a grammar structure based on a test carried out when the retrieval strength is high (i.e. right at the end of series of lessons on it, when it is expected and the students have had it in their focal awareness for weeks). Carry out impromptu assessment several weeks later too, to see how much has been truly retained (due to the law of memory decay, we usually forget around 80% of what we learn after 4 weeks in the absence of regular consolidation). Don’t make the impromptu assessment summative or formal, so that it won’t demoralize the students if they do badly. Some formative feedback will do.

17. Never assess using grammaticality (correctness) judgement tasks whereby a student needs to tell you if a sentence is grammatically accurate or not, as they have 50% chances of getting the answers right by merely guessing. Not a valid way to assess. NCELP does this and I still don’t get why.

18. Do not overload your curriculum – grammar coverage in UK textbooks is overambitious and inevitably results in shallow and short-lived learning. Decide on a limited amount of core structures which will be your non-negotiables, i.e. structures that, no matter how, every single learner can and must learn by the end of the course. By not overloading you enhance the chances of recycling. Which brings me to the next point.

19. Recycle, recycle, recycle. Grammar structures require more recycling than vocabulary because they require the learning and application of abstract knowledge in a short time window. Make sure that you find opportunities for recycling through retrieval practice activities, texts, my staircase design (Smith and Conti, 2021) but also, and more importantly, by sequencing your achievement units smartly so that each subsequent unit lends itself naturally to the recycling of the core structures practised in the previous one(s). Example of recycling/interleaving of ETRE and AVOIR in figure 4 below: . As mentioned in point 18, the fewer the core grammar items one teaches, the easier it is to recycle them. Having a narrow sets of core grammar items to focus on, doesn’t mean not having other peripheral items to teach explicitly and/or implicitly and/or incidentally.

Figure 4: Year 7 Unit 2 (partial) curriculum overview. The present indicative of AVOIR and ETRE and adjectival agreement are constantly recycled throughout a term of work on describing people.

20. Following on point 18: error correction only works when it addresses only a limited number of mistakes (Ellis et al, 2015). Hence, for the vast majority of your learners, only correct three or four error types max in your students’ input; these could refer to your non-negotiables, so that you have a powerful convergence of course objectives and corrective feedback. A powerful synergy. 

I hope the above is useful to you and look forward to your comments. You will find this and more in our new edition of ‘The Language Teacher Toolkit” which will be published in a couple of months.

Gianfranco

In ten days I will be leaving for Australia for a short speaking tour, a round of 6 workshops in Brisbane, Melbourne and NSW (Coffs Harbour). Right after that, hoping that I will still have some voice left, I will be touring the UK talking about EPI, how to implement it at KS3 and 4; how to design the EPI curriculum and how to teach phonics and grammar. Below are the current dates. I hope to meet you at one of the events to

6th March Curriculum Design – Tavistock College, Tavistock (Devon) Contact Alison Savage: a.savage@tavistockcollege.org

7th March – ‘EPI for Primary teachers’ – EAS  Consortium (Cardiff) – Not open to externals

8th March – ‘EPI for secondary teachers’ – EAS Consortium (Cardiff) – Not open to externals

9th March (6 AM – UK time) – ONLINE: Dulwich College Shangai Pudong (Becoming an EPI teacher, PART 2) – Not open to externals

9th March (4 PM – UK time) ONLINE: Becoming an EPI teacher (PART 3) Different time from the same day course with Dulwich

10th March – Ashtead (Surrey) Becoming an EPI teacher. Contact Alicia Palomo-Lopez: Alicia.palomo-lopez@freemens.org

13 March –Edinburgh: ‘Curriculum Design’ – Fettes College Edinburgh. Please enroll at: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/fettes/837735# or contact Sonia Gausinet-Serrano: S.GausinetSerrano@fettes.com

14 March – ONLINE: Curriculum Design PART 2 (continued from 28th February course) https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2023-02-28/curriculum-design-28-feb-7-march-2023

15 March – ONLINE: Becoming an EPI teacher (PART 1) https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2023-03-15/epi-teacher-16-march-2023

16th & 17th March – ONLINE: Presenting for the Welsh government on EPI for the Welsh-in-a-year programme. Not open to externals

20 March – Oxted, Surrey Becoming an EPI teacher. Contact Angela Gonzalez: A.GonzalezRincon@oxted.thpt.org.uk

21 March – Bootle Hillside School. Contact Lindsey Collins: L.Collins@hillsidehigh.co.uk

22 –Willingdon (East Sussex) – Teaching phonics & grammar. Contact: CPhilibert-Lockyer@willingdonschool.org.uk

23 March – Poole, Dorset – Becoming an EPI teacher. Enroll here: https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2023-03-23/epi-teacher-23-march-2023

24 March – Bushey, Hertfordshire – Becoming an EPI teacher. Enroll here: https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2023-03-24/epi-teacher-24-march-2023

27 March – Sandymoor Ormiston Academy Runcorn, Cheshire: Becoming an EPI teacher. , Runcorn, Cheshire. Please contact Julie Sutcliffe: sutcliffej@sandymooroa.co.uk

28 March – ONLINE: Fluency https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2023-03-28/fluency-across-four-skills-14-mar-2022

29 March – ONLINE: Becoming an EPI teacher (PART 2): https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2023-03-15/epi-teacher-16-march-2023

30 March – Birmingham: https://www.networkforlearning.org.uk/courses/2023-03-30/curriculum-design-30-march-2023

31 March – HLC Secondary Telford – “EPI & how to applying to KS4” – not sure if it is open to externals, but you may want to try your luck if you are in the area?