We have been using Word Aware as a structured whole-school approach to promote the vocabulary development of all our children. It is primarily focussed on whole-class learning and we have found it is of particular value for those who start at a disadvantage – including children with Developmental Language Disorder, Special Educational Needs and those who speak English as an additional language. It has had such a major impact on word recognition and understanding within English, we decided to extend it to French and Spanish as an approach for learning new, contextualised vocabulary.

Here’s the thing about teachers. I think we all secretly want to be Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie Dangerous Minds (or maybe not even in the movie!). Our job is the hardest, most grueling job out there. And yes, it is rewarding – but often our influence is noted, absorbed and internalized within a student but we don’t ever get the satisfaction of being told by a student what actually made a difference (although I’m pretty sure my jokes have).

Leading language company uTalk will be marking its 25th anniversary at this year’s Bett Show, by showcasing an exciting range of multi-platform products for schools and colleges. The MFL gurus will be meeting educators at Stand E280A during the event, which will be running at the London ExCeL from 25th-28th January. Bett 2017 will also see the launch of the this year’s Junior Language Challenge.

I know what you are thinking, yet another “expert” is taking to the internet to talk about the latest method of language learning. In all honesty, for me, the only way to truly become fluent in the language you are learning is to immerse yourself in it, go to the country, speak to and befriend native speakers, learn about what they watch and read. This will do you more good than 10 years of classes at home. My personal experience with this was heading off to Argentina for a year, where I lived with native speakers and worked in Spanish, I returned home fluent and I have been looking for a reason to go back out there ever since!

Teaching a foreign language in Primary school is often a bit of a misnomer. French and Spanish are the standard options and you as the teacher are typically in one of three situations:

1. A foreign language expert is brought in one day a week to blitz-teach every class in the school.
2. There is a resident foreign language teacher in the school who teaches each class.
3. You teach your class a half hour lesson every week, where possible.

You’ve just been gifted 120 iPads by a very kind benefactor. Which department would you give them to? For me, the answer is a real no brainer: the Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) department. Some would say I’m biased, and maybe that’s true, but I have put my impartial hat on to answer that question and although Humanities came a very close second I still maintain that MFL naturally lends itself to technology use.

As you would imagine, all English language lessons focus on the English language as the syllabus. Meanwhile, almost all English language lessons focus exclusively on the English language, without taking into account the learner’s first language, which we call ‘L1’. There is a pedagogical reason for this: the long-standing and ubiquitous idea that it is better to focus exclusively on L1 when learning a language.

It’s amazing that people are learning French on St Helena, especially with the islands Napoleonic links and the regular influx of French tourists wanting to see where Napoleon was exiled in 1815 and later died on the island in 1821. The language was consistently introduced to the English-speaking St Helena from September 2014, when Years 7-10 in the secondary school, Prince Andrew School started lessons within the set timetable following the British National curriculum. Since that time, French has also been introduced to the three Primary schools on the island, with years 3, 4, 5 and 6 accessing French lessons each week.

International edu-advisors David Andrews and Chris Williams will soon be undertaking an official Guinness World Record attempt. The Hull-based consultants will be attempting the teach the world’s largest language lesson on 13th November 2015, the day of Children in Need’s Appeal Show. At least 10,000 participants are required, and the lesson will harness the power of audio-visual technology to help accelerate progress in spoken language, for all pupils in all subjects. Every pupil joining in receives a certificate and raises £1 for Children in Need.

The past few years in the UK have seen a steady decline in the number of young people studying foreign languages at GCSE, A-Level and university. In other words, as soon as learning a language becomes optional, the majority of students give it up. But why, when languages offer a variety of proven benefits (see below), are they still seen as an unnecessary subject by so many? And what can teachers do to inspire their students – not only to persevere with languages, but actually to enjoy them?