The single most effective technique which I used in my (so far) 29 years of MFL teaching has been Group Talk, which I first came across in 2009. I’ve mentioned it to many people recently, as I think it suits the requirements of the new 2026 GCSE really well, and also, more importantly, it engages and motivates pupils to speak in the target language, one of the holy grails of MFL teachers. I’m delighted that Greg Horton, who pioneered it at the Wildern School joined me for a webinar to explain how to implement it in your department. You can see it here.
“We thought we were hallucinating when we witnessed groups of teenage boys chatting animatedly in French about sport, cars and school uniform. The conversations were organic and the pupils were clearly not speaking from a script.”
CILT European Award for Languages judges, February 2008
Its impact on learning has been significant and in 2008 it gained a European Award for Languages. I used it with learners from Y7-11 from 2011-16 and saw a significantly positive impact on learners’ enjoyment in speaking Spanish and on their GCSE speaking exam results. Teacher’s TV has a short episode on it which you can see here. It’s great to see it in practice with real pupils.
The Group Talk project was born out of dissatisfaction with traditional formulaic speaking activities, and the need to engage learners through a more dynamic and spontaneous use of language. Conventional classroom speaking activities will often take the form of transactional pair-work, role play or a survey. Here the emphasis can be misplaced on task completion achieved through the use of prescribed and practised language structures. There is little scope for learners to move outside set parameters, thereby limiting the possibility of spontaneous interaction.
One blog post is not enough to do it justice, so do join us on 5 October for the webinar or sign up to get access to the recording afterwards!
Wendy Adeniji, October 2023