Getting progression in language learning right

Learn how to better sequence your lessons for more confident and fluent language learners, with Celine Courenq.

For many years, I believed that improving language outcomes was all about high quality teaching: clear explanations, strong modelling, effective feedback and good differentiation. These remain essential but I’ve realised from my experience in curriculum leadership that long-term success depends just as much on how deliberately we structure our language curriculum.

Language learning is cumulative. Each stage depends on secure control of what came before. When foundations are fragile, later learning becomes unstable, regardless of a student’s effort or motivation because they haven’t got those secure foundations to build on.

Building foundations

”More” vs “secure” grammar

Progression is too often interpreted as increasing grammatical complexity. As students moved up year groups, more tenses and structures were introduced to demonstrate challenge. In practice, this often meant students encountered multiple verb paradigms before mastering even one.

There is also a structural temptation: if exams require manipulation across tenses, introducing multiple tenses early may seem logical. However, early exposure without secure foundations often leads to superficial coverage rather than secure knowledge.

A realistic shift requires accepting something important: not all students will retain full paradigms securely at the same pace.

My own experience as a language learner reinforced this. I learned English and Italian through formal grammar and verb tables, which built explicit knowledge but not fluent spoken use. That gap later shaped how I now sequence grammar for my own students.

Instead of expecting immediate mastery of all six persons, we prioritised high-frequency forms first, particularly I and we forms, which underpin most communicative tasks at KS3. Full paradigms are still taught, but early assessment focuses on secure control of core forms. This reduces cognitive overload and improves accuracy.

Phonics first

Students cannot automate what they cannot pronounce accurately. We therefore positioned sound–symbol correspondence as foundational. Working memory processes sound first. By securing the phonics first, learners approach sentence building with known sounds, making grammar more stable and retrieval more reliable.

A sequencing example

Forming the perfect tense in French depends on secure control of the present tense of être and avoir.

Previously, the perfect tense was introduced early because it is required for examinations. However, many students struggled to manipulate it accurately year after year.

We reversed the sequence:

• Year 7: Intensive focus on être and avoir in the present tense.
• Year 8: Systematic retrieval and application in varied contexts.
• Year 9: Introduction of the perfect tense once auxiliaries were automatised.

This sequencing draws on principles from Extensive Processing Instruction, a research-informed framework emphasising structured input, controlled production, retrieval and gradual automatisation before independent use. ¹

Importantly, we didn’t begin with a full grammatical explanation. Students first encountered the tense through structured sentence builders and high-frequency chunks such as, ‘Last weekend I played…’ and ‘ ‘Yesterday we went…’

These were practised repeatedly in controlled speaking and writing tasks until production became more fluent. Only after sustained practice did we break down how the tense is formed.

When grammar is taught through isolated conjugation exercises, students can often perform accurately in that specific task. However, in extended speaking or writing, they frequently revert to direct translation patterns (e.g. “je allé”, “nous joué”). The rule has been learned, but it hasn’t been automatised.

Rather than teaching it once and moving on, we deliberately revisited the same grammatical framework in different contexts: weekend activities, holidays, recent experiences, allowing students to reuse familiar structures while extending meaning to help stop students from repeatedly reverting to the same patterns.

Moving away from textbook sequencing didn’t happen overnight. It involved trying,  adjusting and sometimes rolling back choices that looked effective on paper but didn’t hold up in classroom practice.

Aligning curriculum and assessment

A key part of getting progression right is aligning curriculum with assessment. If the curriculum isn’t sequenced well, the assessment will instead measure short-term performance rather than long-term outcomes of students.

For example, students should need to apply and combine different grammatical structures to demonstrate a more secure knowledge, rather than just reproduce isolated grammar/vocabulary.

To support with this, we began reassessing the same core grammar multiple times on different days, in different units, in different contexts and with increasing complexity.

For example, auxiliary verbs might appear in:

• A short retrieval quiz
• A translation task
• A guided speaking prompt
• A gap-fill exercise
• A paragraph writing task

The grammar remained constant; the context changed. This allowed us to measure durability rather than short-term recall.

Systematic retrieval and spacing, principles strongly supported by cognitive science research on durable learning, strengthened long-term retention and reduced performance illusions. ²

If we value flexible language manipulation, assessments must measure application, not isolated rule recall. Reliability also matters: would results remain consistent across different tasks, times, classes and contexts?

Securing consistency

Clarity about what must be secured at each stage strengthens teacher agency. In our department, non-negotiables are explicit: which verb forms must be secure, which sentence patterns must be manipulated confidently, which phonics elements must be revisited.

However, how these are taught, revised and reinforced remains at the professional discretion of the teacher.

Early signs of impact

The first signs of improvement were improvements in classroom fluency. Students who previously hesitated over verb forms began producing short, accurate sentences automatically. Sentences such as “Last weekend, I played football” or “Yesterday, I went to the cinema” were no longer assembled laboriously. They were produced with increasing ease, not perfectly, but securely enough to build upon.

More recent cohorts and IGCSE results show improved grammatical control, particularly among less confident learners. This remains work in progress.

Improving outcomes in languages is about securing the foundations that allow students to manipulate language independently over time.

References

1. Conti, G. and Smith, S. (2019) ‘Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Language Learners How to Listen’. Independently Published.
2. Bjork, R.A. and Bjork, E.L. (2011) ‘Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning’, in Gernsbacher, M.A., Pew, R.W., Hough, L.M. and Pomerantz, J.R. (eds.) Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society. New York: Worth Publishers, pp. 56–64.