ABSTRACT

Whenever you read or hear about the teaching and learning of MFL, you learn that there is no definitive answer to how people learn a foreign language. There is, of course, a large body of accumulated knowledge on various factors involved in the process. This apparent lack of clarity could mean we can adapt our methodology to suit the circumstances, ourselves and the learners. However, it also means there is no ready-made recipe to follow with guaranteed results. The vast amount of advice and research available on the teaching and learning of MFL creates a multi-layered collage of bullet point lists and example activities, as well as supposed rules and recommendations, and also the various legislative requirements, official guidelines and recommended frameworks surrounding everyday teaching. Although there may be some generally agreed principles, there appear to be no cast-iron certainties; a perfectly suitable method or activity for one group of learners can fail miserably with another. Some learners feel unsure if they do not have an English equivalent immediately, others revel in trying to work out everything in the TL. A grammar ‘rule’ may be grasped with enthusiasm by one learner and regarded with horror by another.