My Retrieval Journey: What I think I have learned about retrieval practice in the Modern Languages Classroom and at a whole-school level

So I have just finished Sam Strickland's brilliant book 'Education Exposed 2'. It's very rare I read a book as a school leader and say that every single sentence chimes with me, but in this case it did. It's an outstanding read, focusing on curriculum, behaviour and leadership, with a clear focus on the bread and butter of excellent classroom practice. Like myself, Sam is a big proponent of retrieval practice. He indicates in his book that many teachers probably engage in suitable (retrieval) activities already, perhaps without realising it.

And this is very true. I would argue that, as teachers, we often instinctively know what works and what doesn’t, and we have an in-built radar for ‘common sense’. I would also argue that, sub-consciously at least, many teachers know that low-stakes, formative quizzing and testing in lessons is impactful. When I reflect on my own journey as a teacher, like many others I think I always was aware sub-consciously of the importance of retrieval. 

However, it was only upon reading Kate Jones’ excellent book on retrieval practice when it was published in 2019 that I started to think explicitly about retrieval strategies. On the back of some excellent literature, not least Kate Jones (Retrieval Practice), Daniel Willingham (Why Don't Students Like School?), Robert Bjork, David Didau (What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Psychology), Peps McCrea (Memorable Teaching) and others, I think the four bullets below now sum up to a large extent my own rationale for why retrieval practice is so important in our lessons.

1. Low-stakes, formative quizzing and testing in our classrooms helps to ensure that powerful knowledge transfers from working memory to long-term memory. As our students journey from novice to expert in a subject discipline, robust retrieval practice will also afford our students high-level opportunities to develop their understanding of the application of that knowledge;
2. When combined with ‘desirable difficulties’ such as spacing and interleaving, effective retrieval practice ensures that our students are thinking hard, are operating outside of their comfort zones and inside the challenge zone, and are thus strengthening the schema in their long-term memory;
3. Effective retrieval practice affords us as teachers opportunities to identify misconceptions, not least through very robust question design (eg multiple choice questions with distractors), and therefore allows us scope to respond in our teaching;
4. We know that there is a difference between performance and real learning. Students may perform well on an end-of-unit test after the content has just been taught, but may underperform significantly when assessed on the same content in an exam four months later. This may well be because the content has not embedded in long-term memory. If real learning involves a change in the ‘mental map’ in our long-term memory, then effective retrieval practice is most certainly a solid, steady and secure bridge between our teaching of content and that end goal.

And like many other teachers, I too have been on a journey with retrieval practice in my own MFL lessons over the past years. It has been an exciting journey, sometimes characterised by trial and error. I have made some mistakes. An example of this was when I linked good 'performance' in retrieval quizzes with merit points, offering children who did well a merit. This had the immediate effect of making retrieval appear high-stakes, when it shouldn't have been. A few years in with my 'explicit' journey, this is what I think I have learned about MFL teaching and retrieval practice. 

1: It's not just about the 'starter'.

There's no doubt about it. Retrieval practice at the start of a lesson makes sense. Operating within the limitations of a school timetable, it is quite possible that students have not been in your classroom for a few days. The process of forgetting will have begun. Using retrieval practice as an 'entrance pass', and as a routine which our students become accustomed to at the very start of the lesson, is powerful. In my own lessons I have tried different formats including a retrieval routlette inspired by Adam Boxer, involving five questions based on the previous lesson's content and five based on content from some weeks or even months ago. Sometimes I also have a printed-out 'retrieval quiz' ready on each of their desks when students come in, with a similar approach to that of the roulette. One of my MFL teachers also seems to be doing amazing things with Quizizz. The advantage of such retrieval starters is that you can often also, with some planning, incorporate retrieval which will have the potential of enhancing the lesson you are about to undertake with the class. For example, if undertaking a higher level GCSE listening which involved students identifying phrases in the future tense, I may build in retrieval based on future time declensions at the start of the lesson. 

Since thinking much more explicitly about retrieval in my lessons, I have been increasingly struck by how much scope and opportunity there is for retrieval throughout the lesson, not just at the start and just how important this is. As Barry Smith rightly states, there needs to be...'lots of revisiting and recycling of language across topics so kids don't 'nearly' learn, they 'really' learn.". Here are a few examples I can think of from the past month of my own remote teaching with my Year 9 class (Year 8 in England):

• Me: We are learning about modern technology as part of 'les passetemps' theme and we have been introudced to the verb 'utiliser' and the associated noun 'utilisation'. We know when we pronouce this word that the -tion ending has to be very sharp. Remind me of some words we learnt last year in the topic of 'sport and leisure' which have a similar -tion ending'.
• Students: équitation, natation.
• Me: Let's take two minutes to brain dump as many advanced (not cognate) sport and lesiure phrases we can think of, as we will be returning to this topic in a few weeks as part of 'les passetemps theme.
• Students: aviron, parapente, plongée sous-marine, escalade, etc
• Me: Can you remember a potential synonym for 'escalade'?
• Students: alpinisme

• Me: 'Les réseaux sociaux' is of course plural. Remind me of some words we learnt last year in Year 8  which also add an -x in the plural.
• Students: chevaux, oiseaux, ciseaux, tableaux
• Me: Two potential themes have been mentioned there - animals and school objects. One side of the room take two minutes to retrieve as many animals as you can in French, the other side of the room as many school objects as you can.
• Me: What patterns do we remember to help us decide whether a word in French may take -x in the plural?
• Students: if it ends in -eau or -al

• Me: The justification of this opinion includes the connective parce que - because. J'utilise souvent mon portable parce que j'adore télécharger de la musique. Give me a potential cognate for parce que.
• Students: car
• Me: What other connectives have we seen previously in French? 
• Students: tandis que, mais, et, bien que
• Me: What does bien que trigger? 
• Students: the subjunctive.
• Me: Remind me of a phrase we have learned before which also includes the subjunctive.
• Students: Il faut que je fasse de mon mieux. 

I have heard some people say that the use of retrieval in this way is too time-consuming, and slows down coverage of the curriculum. On the contrary, I would argue that the constant revisiting and recycling of language so that it embeds in long-term memory will allow potentially for the same amount of coverage if not more, but at a much deeper level. The fact that the students know advanced sport and leisure words in French, and that they have retrieved them regularly and frequently, as in the first example above, will mean that I will be able to start at a much deeper point in terms of comprehensible input when we revisit the theme under the guise of 'les passetemps' in a few weeks time. 

2: Retrieval practice is not reductive. 

Some people seem to claim that retrieval practice is solely based on remembering standalone 'facts' or discrete pieces of knowledge. Of course this may be partly true in MFL from the point of view of vocabulary, but retrieval is also much more than that. I am of the opinion that well-crafted retrieval questions can really enhance opportunities for deep learning. Below is an example of a Google Forms retrieval my same Year 9 class completed back in November, involving multiple choice questions with distractors. 

There is a lot going on there, I think. Students must know:

• that tandis que does not take the subjunctive
• the agreement of feminine adjectives
• that bien que triggers the subjunctive
• the difference between 'aussi' and 'assez', which students often struggle with

It also introduces students to the notion of 'je puisse' in the subjunctive mood. 

My Year 9 students are aware of the subjunctive because we use the PROFS (Past - Reasons - Opinions - Future - Subjunctive) approach in our Knowledge Organisers. Last year, as a result, they will have internalised sentences simlar to those below for one of their themes.

Even though I have not taught the subjunctive explicitly yet to my Year 9 class, the fact that they are internalising structures such as 'bien que ce soit', 'il faut que je fasse', 'je puisse' etc and embedding them in long-term memory through regular retrieval, I know that when I do teach it explicitly, there will be so many patterns and connections in their mental schema that it will allow for very deep coverage. 

Later on this year when we return to food and drink, I will do a higher level activity with this class based on some excellent resources from @katelanguages where they will see the sentence: Après le repas, avec mon café, il y avait des petits fours, et bien que je fusse rassasiée, j’en ai mangé trois. This will not only give them a further structure to internalise, but will allow me to retrieve with them again on the subjunctive mood. Regularly and frequently is the key with retrieval.

3: Retrieval is not standalone

Finally, I would say that retrieval practice is not a standalone affair. It is not something which sits 'discrete and separate' to other aspects of school life. In fact, I would argue that it is somewhat integral to curriculum design and approach. The acquisition of Modern Language knowledge is a cumulative affair. Students build on their prior knowledge. They make patterns and connections in their learning based on that prior knowledge, and so the mental map is constructed. When designing MFL curricula, I think we need to consider what that cumulative progression looks like, and how - by revisiting prior learning - it will help to advance and deepen our students' linguistic knowledge and skills. The place of retrieval in that 'revisiting and recyclung' is crucial. Additionally, if we are in a school which opts for a 'knowledge-rich' approach to curricular design, what implications does this have for MFL? If you are using knowledge organisers, how do we ensure that they do not fall into the trap of becoming glorified vocabulary lists, as so many sadly seem to be in MFL, but rather can be used as a tool to foster deep retrieval strategies, and ultimately expedite our students' learning?

I don't have all the answers, I perhaps don't have many answers at all. But what I do know is this - I am thoroughly enjoying the retrieval journey, and it reminds me of what a great privilege and pleasure it is to be an MFL teacher.

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