Close
A forum where teachers can engage and share a practitioner-led vision for London's multilingual learners.
Vision statement
The Modern Languages community continues to experience unprecedented centralised direction and prescription both in terms of curriculum and pedagogy.
Interventions from Ofsted in articulating what constitutes an excellent Languages education and the DfE in restricting the content, skills and outcomes at GCSE mean that we are radically questioning the purpose and direction of our discipline. At this moment of divergence, we risk even further polarity between the experiences and outcomes of learners.
The London Network for Principled Communicative Language Practice offers a discursive forum in which teachers as enquirers may engage critically with national developments in order to articulate, promote and share a practitioner-led and research-informed Languages vision for London learners in our multilingual context.
We are a diverse network of schools from across the independent and state sectors united in the belief that Languages are more than the pillars of vocabulary, phonics and grammar. Matching linguistic and communicative progression with developing intercultural understanding and intellectual creativity are at the heart of our practice and the key to nurturing motivation and engagement.
Working closely with our research partners at IOE, we are committed to developing a community of practice which best serves learners in our multilingual schools.
by Dr Catherine Ames (cames@gch.org.uk), The Grey Coat Hospital
The 'hub' conversations and the vision statement were informed by a range of papers and blogs, including:
- In the balance: the artful mix that goes into becoming a Modern Foreign Language teacher
- Language teaching and learning beyond vocabulary and grammar: our success stories
These were also informed by discussions in the Languages teaching and learning subject community in response to the Ofsted Curriculum Research Review.