Innovation in Language Learning

The Law of Education promoted in 2011 launched a revision of the national curriculum with the aim of better adapting the school learning offer to the students’ profiles and aspirations as well as to the needs of the contemporary society. As a step in this effort, the new curriculum for grades 3 and 4 was developed and submitted for consultation in 2014. Our paper discusses the results of this process by answering two questions: what are the teachers’ opinions with respect to the provision of the new curriculum for languages? and what are the teachers’ needs for an effective implementation?

The consultation took place online by means of an online questionnaire that focused the following: a general perspective on the curriculum (contribution to the graduate profile, the approach to learning, the integration of conclusions from the national and international assessments, age relevance), the specific competences (clarity, coherence, progression, relevance for students and academic subject), examples of learning tasks (usefulness, adaptability, student-centeredness), concepts (usefulness, balance, relevance, accessibility, updating), methodological suggestions (variety, if supportive for planning and assessment, adaptability to students’ profiles). The questions requested a degree of satisfaction to be ticked out and they also included an open-ended field for comments.

Nearly 9000 users logged on and offered replies. More than one third expressed their opinions for the mother tongue curriculum. We will discuss the degree of satisfaction with the curricular provision and also the comments the participants offered. Even if these comments are not very numerous they are nevertheless mostly valuable since they reveal the main issues that could delay a renewal of the classroom practices, irrespective of the curricular innovation.