6 Steps to Progress from Oracy Literacy:
- Identify the phonemes (the smallest unit of meaningful sound) – when we are starting to read the language, we have to understand the phonemes that exist in the language, that do not exist in English. We need to introduce these phonemes one by one – do this once a week. Get the children to think about words that already contain that phoneme and introduce them to the spelling of the word.
- Ask the children how many words they already know in the foreign language that may contain that phoneme.
- Give the children a set of picture cards and a set of word cards where they can play a matching game – they can match the pictures with the word. Do this half way through the year.
- To have cards or have it on screen, the classroom instruction vocabulary in the written form. Ask them to do what the card/screen displays, to match what they already know with the written form of that word. This helps provide feedback of who is understanding and who isn’t.
- Predict how to spell new words – can they apply the phoneme to grapheme correspondence to help spell new words.
- Move from word level to sentence level, and then to text level. Ultimately, this will then support them with their written language.
Grammar…
Grammar will help embed and consolidate how our own language works.
Familiarity with terminology:
- Benefits for Language One (L1);
- Confidence in reading and spelling;
- Confidence in reading and spelling;
- Expand vocabulary;
- Develop cognitive development – thinking skills.
Punctuation…
French – No possessive apostrophe, for example, in English we can say ‘The teacher’s pen’; which means the pen belongs to the teacher. However, French does have a contraction apostrophe, for example, ‘c’est…’ which means ‘it is…’.
German – Nouns have capital letters no matter where they appear in a sentence.
Spanish – Upside down ‘?’ and ‘!’ before sentences.
Accents…
French:
- é – sound changes to ‘ay’;
- è – sound changes to ‘eh’;
- ê – used to have an ‘s’ after the ‘e’;
- ô – used to have an ‘s’ after the ‘o’;
- ç – sound changes to ‘s’ – indicates there used to be an ‘s’ there.
German:
- ä – Umlaut – turns ‘a’ into eh;
- ö – Umlaut;
- ü – Umlaut.
Umlaut is a sound changer.
Spanish:
- á;
- é;
- í;
- ó;
- ú;
- ñ – tild – this makes the sound ‘ny’.
Gender and Plurals…
It is a pointless activity trying to teach little ones gender in foreign languages.
Introduce new nouns with the gender identifier:
French:
- Le – means the – masculine;
- La – means the – feminine;
- Les – means the – plural;
- Mon – means my – masculine;
- Ma – means my – feminine;
- Mes – means my – plural.
German:
- Der – means the – masculine;
- Die – means the – feminine;
- Das – means the – neuter;
- Die – means the – plural;
- Mein – means my – masculine;
- Meine – means my – feminine;
- Mein – means my – neuter;
- Meine – menas my – plural.
Spanish:
- El – means the – masculine;
- La – means the – feminine;
- Los/Las – means the – plural;
- Mi – means my – masculine and feminine – no gender;
- Mis – means my – plural.
Adjectives…
Attributive – before the noun.
This s usual in English and other Germanic languages.
Romance languages (e.g. French) – tend to place the adjective after the noun.
Verbs and Tenses:
- Present;
- Future;
- Past.
In languages, you can use the following to support verbs and tenses:
- Writing frames;
- Models;
- Word mats;
- Lists;
- Gap-fills;
- Picture gap-fills.
This helps them to practice their reading and writing to develop their literacy skills in the language.
French: Je suis allée hier à deux heures en ville pour visiter mes amis.
Spanish: Fui a la cuidad ayer a las dos en punto para vistar mis amigos.
German: Ich bin gestern um zwei Uhr in die Stadt gegangen, um meine Freunde zu besuchen.
All of the above sentences mean: I went to the town yesterday at two o’clock to visit my friends.
At the beginning of the school year, it would be good to give each child a vocabulary list – these can be used in those moments where there are a spare two to five minutes in the day, to then use these vocabulary lists to create a sentence. This would only be done in Year’s 5 and 6.
Dictionary Skills:
The mechanical process must be taught, e.g.:
- There are two halves;
- What the words are at the top of each page;
- Abbreviations.
