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"Reflections of a language teacher.
Always learning."


From Supported to Self-Sufficient: Building independence in the MFL classroom
This post is a follow-up to the Linguascope Adaptive Teaching Webinar, which Jennifer Wozniak-Rush and I run on Tuesday 2nd June. A lot of the conversation in our recent webinar centred on how we support students better: how we scaffold, adapt, and respond to where learners are in the moment. And that conversation matters enormously. But several of you came back afterwards with the same question, and it is a good one: 'If we are always scaffolding, always supporting, always a
Silvia Bastow
Jun 79 min read


Writing Tasks That Actually Prepare Students for GCSEs (Focus on Higher) - Not Just Fill Time
Let me be honest about something. I spent years setting writing tasks that were, in hindsight, busywork dressed up as learning. Fill in the gaps. Copy the model answer. Write five sentences about your family using the sentence starters on the board. Students were writing. Pens were moving. The room was quiet. It looked like learning. It wasn't. The problem only became clear when I started reading the new GCSE German specification carefully - not just skimming it, but actually
Silvia Bastow
May 139 min read


Adaptive Teaching – Responding to the Needs of All Students
“Adaptive teaching isn’t about giving different worksheets. It’s about responding to learners in the moment, helping every student progress and thrive.” As I reflect on Chapter 4 of our recently published book Succeeding as an MFL Teacher , I am reminded how essential adaptive teaching is in creating effective, inclusive, and engaging world languages classrooms. Early in my career, I thought good teaching meant planning detailed lessons and delivering content exactly as writt
Silvia Bastow
Apr 126 min read


What Makes a Great MFL Lesson? A Reflection
This post was prompted by a post by Ian Astbury on LinkedIn . I often find myself reflecting on what truly transforms a language lesson from “just another class” into an experience that sticks. Over nearly twenty years in the classroom - teaching, observing and mentoring - I’ve noticed that the lessons students remember aren’t necessarily the ones that look perfect on paper. They’re the lessons where students are actively using the language, taking risks and seeing it as a
Silvia Bastow
Mar 16 min read


Case Study: Why Secure KS3 Foundations Matter: Building Sentence Control for (I)GCSE Success
This blog post was written by Céline Courenq. About the author of the post: Céline Courenq is Head of World Languages (MFL and Home Languages) at a British international school in Bangkok, leading language pathways across KS3–IB She previously taught in comprehensive secondary schools in the UK, which continues to shape her commitment to inclusive practice and strong foundations. She has led the implementation of the EPI model across KS3 and KS4, is EPI accredited, and is al
Silvia Bastow
Feb 16 min read


Why students underperform in GCSE writing – and how over-scaffolding and misunderstandings about “complex language” make it worse
From a GCSE examiner’s point of view, I believe most students do not underperform in writing because they lack ideas, motivation or effort. Much more often, they underperform because they have been taught a version of GCSE writing that does not reflect how writing is actually assessed. Year after year, the same issues surface in exam papers. Students rely heavily on scaffolds , they misunderstand what “complex language” really means and accuracy at sentence level is sacr
Silvia Bastow
Jan 47 min read
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