The Linguist

@CIOL_Linguists WINTER 2022 The Linguist 15 FEATURES another script and work out what English words mean and how they are spelt from their origins – from tyrannosaurus to parallelogram, or Instagram. WoLLoW can be taught as an adjunct to learning a single language, an extracurricular club or a school's language curriculum. From our experience of teaching it in these various ways to different age groups and to pupils of differing abilities, we believe it can answer the difficult problems with which this article began. You may say we are dreamers, but we are not the only ones. To prove it, I will end with the unprompted response to teaching WoLLoW from a very experienced language teacher from Manchester: "We have a wide diversity in our school and we have a large proportion of pupils who have suppressed their culture. And now – it sounds ridiculous – but it is like a spring flower opening. They love sharing their knowledge, their cultural background. "Some of them we still have to tease it out of them, but it is an absolute joy for them to share their knowledge and their traditions and their diversity. It is brilliant. And I can firmly say that every single child we now teach in Year 6 is inspired. Every single child now lights up in our Year 6, and the ones that potentially never used to be involved in languages at all, they now raise their heads and they are really interested. The pupils feel, for the first time ever, involved in their learning and that is what inspires me." As a languages teacher with experience spanning the spectrum of educational sectors, I have finally found the language-awareness resources I have been searching for. Many British people seem to expect the whole world to speak English, and those who don't often need to be persuaded that other languages aren't just a translation of English. Surprisingly few view the act of decoding new words as an exciting, stimulating puzzle. They clearly haven't used WoLLoW resources! Last year, Barnard Castle School introduced the cross-curricular topic 'Origins' to Year 7. As Head of Languages, I was keen to bring this into their French lessons. Anxious that learning the basics of Old French might not be the most motivating start to our languages journey, I decided to structure the first three weeks of lessons around WoLLoW. This provided an ideal opportunity to audit how much pupils already knew about languages. We began by exploring the origins of modern languages. Pupils learnt to write words in Greek using letters from the word hippopotamus, made short shrift of Maori loan words, identified 'posh' English words from their Latin and Greek roots, and investigated the origins of days of the week in a variety of languages. The excitement in the classroom was palpable, with constant exclamations of ENTHUSIASM FOR LEARNING Pupils at Norwich School enjoy WoLLoW sessions as part of the language curriculum "Oh, is that where that word comes from?" followed by enthusiastic suggestions about the meanings of other English words. Having got students fired up for finding out more about how languages work, we returned to learning French, dipping occasionally into the WoLLoW units on How Language Works, with their clear explanations of meta- language such as 'infinitive' and 'conjugation'. We wondered how parents would react to their children having French on the timetable but not learning any for the first three weeks of term. At parents' evening the reactions astounded us. There was no need to explain what we were doing in WoLLoW lessons because the children had come home talking about it. Many parents said it was the only lesson they heard anything about! Building on this, we have decided to restructure language lessons from this academic year. Year 7 pupils will have both French and WoLLoW as separate lessons on the timetable. Although the WoLLoW lessons will be taught by language teachers, the benefits will be felt across the curriculum. Making comparisons between languages and identifying word roots is a great way to stimulate curiosity about language while enhancing literacy, and this is where I feel these materials fill a void. The talk of Year 7 How the WoLLoW scheme fired up pupils' interest in languages to a surprising degree. By Helen Kent

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