# Transcript

Maria Luisa
Welcome to the Open Educational Resource Unit Teaching Secondary Modern Foreign Languages – Issues in Practise
I'm Maria Luisa Perez Cavana and when designing this unit I drew on my many years in MFL education as a German and Spanish teacher as well as my experience of initial teacher education.
Modern foreign languages is one of the most rewarding but also a difficult subject area to teach in a secondary school. MFL were designated not compulsory in 2004 and since then language learning has been declining in British schools. They aren't popular even though learning a foreign language lets students develop crucial cognitive and life long learning skills not only communication skills and associated strategies but also employability skills and cultural awareness. It also develops their literacy in their own mother tongue, to motivate students to learn languages that’s the challenge. For that MFL teachers need to be enthusiastic about learning, passionate about teaching languages and aware of the main issues in relation to language learning pedagogy, the wider context of MFL education and how this affects teaching a language in the secondary schools curriculum. This means we have to challenge young people’s conceptions about learning a language and do this whilst challenging our own assumptions and conceptions about language learning.
We've developed this unit for secondary MFL teachers at the beginning of their careers to help with all of these points of view. It looks at some key ideas and concepts to be used in an MFL classroom. It explores some ways in which target language can be used in an MFL classroom. It also identifies strategies to promote motivation in second language learning and creative approaches, which can enhance pupils’ experience of learning a language.
It concludes by proposing some ways to promote pupils’ use of metacognitive skills and to develop pupils to independent language learners.