Marking in MFL: Less Workload, More Learning

Marking written work in Modern Foreign Languages has long been a source of tension between teacher workload and student progress. Teachers want to give meaningful feedback, but the hours spent correcting every error often outweigh the benefits. Recent developments in marking policy — including the Department for Education’s workload review and reflective practice within MFL departments — point towards a more sustainable and effective approach.

Why a Specific MFL Policy on Marking and Assessment Matters

Whole‑school marking and assessment policies provide the general framework, and you may not have been directed by SLT to create a departmental one. Yet it is powerful for consistency and clarity within the team to establish a subject‑specific policy for MFL.

Aligned with the school’s expectations, a departmental policy sets out exactly what you do and how you do it. It establishes clear expectations for teachers, ensures the quality of marking is consistent across the team, and makes your approach transparent. Anyone looking at it — whether colleagues, SLT, or Ofsted — can immediately see what your department is about and how feedback is designed to support both progress and workload. In short, it becomes a concise representation of your practice, your values, and your standards.

What Heads of MFL Should Include in Their Policy

If your department doesn’t yet have a marking policy, it would be wise to create one to ensure consistency. By consistency, I don’t mean uniformity of form or ticking boxes with identical acronyms to satisfy senior leadership. That approach is reductive and misses the point.

True consistency lies in the quality of marking: ensuring that every pupil receives feedback that is purposeful, empowering, and aligned with the department’s shared vision.

Increasingly, SLT interpret consistency as surface‑level compliance — writing the same codes or acronyms in books simply to prove a policy exists. To me, that’s misguided. It reflects a limited understanding of what consistency should mean in practice and leaves individual teams with assessment and marking systems that are far less effective than they could be for their subject. True consistency lies in what you do, not in what you show. (That’s my little moan — now it’s done!)

When I drafted my own policy, here’s the framework I included:

• Frequency of Marking

• What Should Be Marked

• Formative Assessment

• Summative Assessment

• Peer and Self‑Assessment

• Homework Assignments

• Recording Progress and Achievement (by students and teachers)

• Appendices (all relevant documents used for marking and assessment)

I deliberately left the content of my policy as bullet points, not prescriptive detail. I could share my policy, but what truly matters is how, as a Head of MFL, you consider and evidence these areas within your own school context. A policy imposed in isolation — drafted without consultation and presented as “this is what we do, full stop” — rarely works. It risks becoming just another document that sits on a shelf, ignored or contested. For a policy to be effective, it must grow out of reflection, dialogue, and agreement within the team. This collaborative process empowers colleagues, builds ownership, and ensures the policy is a living document — actively used as reference and guidance, rather than a token exercise.

The Principles of Effective Marking

The latest guidance is clear: marking should be meaningful, manageable, and motivating. For MFL, this means:

Meaningful

For marking to be meaningful, feedback must directly contribute to pupils’ linguistic development rather than simply signalling error. In MFL, this means guiding learners towards greater accuracy and fluency by prompting them to notice, reflect on, and internalise language structures. Meaningful feedback is not about correction for its own sake, but about creating opportunities for learners to engage cognitively with the language, identify gaps in their understanding, and take active steps to improve.

At its core, meaningful marking is formative: it provides information that shapes the learner’s next attempt, encourages metalinguistic awareness, and builds autonomy. It shifts the emphasis from teacher‑led correction to learner‑led redrafting, ensuring that feedback becomes part of the learning process rather than an end point.

Manageable

For marking to be manageable, it must avoid unnecessary workload and resist the temptation to correct every minor detail. In MFL, the sheer volume of small errors can easily overwhelm teachers if marking is approached as exhaustive correction. A manageable policy therefore prioritises patterns of error and focuses on feedback that has the greatest impact on learning.

Use whole‑class feedback sheets: after a writing task, note common strengths and errors, then share them with the class. Pupils apply corrections to their own work. This approach shifts the emphasis from individualised correction to collective reflection, ensuring that teachers’ time is used efficiently while pupils still receive targeted guidance.

Manageability also involves structuring marking so that it remains purposeful rather than repetitive. By embedding clear routines — such as rotating the focus of feedback or integrating peer and self‑assessment — teachers can sustain high‑quality practice without overburdening themselves. In this way, marking becomes a sustainable process: consistent, impactful, and aligned with the broader aim of supporting progress rather than generating workload.

Motivating

Marking should lift pupils up, not knock them down. For me, motivating feedback is about helping them feel that mistakes are part of learning, not something to fear. It’s about striking the right balance: showing them what’s going well while nudging them towards the next step.

That might mean pointing out a sentence that really works and then giving a clear target for improvement. Or it could be building redrafting into the routine so pupils see feedback as a normal part of progress, not a punishment. When feedback feels constructive and achievable, pupils take more ownership, grow in confidence, and start to see themselves as capable language learners.

🚫 Don’t Correct Mistakes for Pupils

Some may disagree, but this strategy has consistently led to the greatest progress in writing. One of the most important shifts is moving away from teachers correcting every error — even when that feels counter‑intuitive. Instead:

• Point out mistakes rather than correcting them.

• Use marking codes (e.g., SP for spelling, VB for verb, WO for word order).

• Provide pupils with a key to these codes (find links below).

• Allow dedicated time for redrafting, so pupils actively engage with feedback; this can be embedded into your MFL policy.

This approach not only reduces teacher workload but also builds learner autonomy and metacognitive skills. Once pupils are familiar with the codes, they get instant and precise feedback on what they need to improve and how. They can also use the codes for peer‑marking, which brings another level of expertise.

👉Download marking codes

The Benefits of Self‑ and Peer‑Assessment

You might worry that pupils won’t assess as thoroughly as you would. And yes, this may be true at first. But even if a pupil is unsure about the marking codes, the very act of spotting and questioning errors is learning in progress. Identifying mistakes — even imperfectly — forces them to engage with the language, reflect on accuracy, and begin to internalise the rules.

With time, practice, and your guidance, pupils become more confident and precise. As their language skills improve, so does the quality of their peer and self‑assessment. Crucially, your role shifts from doing the work for them to monitoring, training, and scaffolding their progress.

The benefits are significant:

• Deeper learning: Pupils actively process feedback rather than passively receiving corrections.

• Metacognitive growth: They learn to evaluate their own work, building independence and resilience.

• Collaboration: Peer assessment fosters shared responsibility and a supportive classroom culture.

• Workload reduction: Teachers spend less time correcting every detail, while pupils take ownership of improvement.

• Consistency of progress: Over time, pupils develop sharper awareness of accuracy, which translates into better writing and exam performance.

In short, self‑ and peer‑assessment are not shortcuts; they are powerful tools for learning. When embedded into your marking policy, they empower pupils, lighten teacher workload, and create a classroom culture where feedback is lived, not just delivered.

Example of one of my pupils' Peer Assessment in French

Workload and Impact

The Marking Policy Review Group stressed that marking should never create unnecessary workload. This principle is especially important in MFL, where the sheer volume of small errors can tempt teachers into endless correction. By embedding marking codes and redrafting opportunities into departmental policy, Heads of MFL can ensure that feedback is both effective and sustainable.

This approach shifts the balance:

• Teachers spend less time correcting every detail.

• Pupils spend more time actively engaging with feedback, redrafting, and improving their accuracy.

• Departments achieve consistency in the quality of marking, not just its appearance.

• Workload is reduced without compromising standards, creating a healthier, more sustainable culture.

Ultimately, a well‑designed MFL marking policy empowers teachers to focus on teaching, not ticking boxes, and empowers pupils to take ownership of their progress. It is a win‑win: less time correcting, more time learning, and a clearer sense of purpose for everyone involved.

✨ Final Thought

Rethinking marking in MFL is not just about reducing workload; it’s about empowering pupils, clarifying expectations, and building a culture where feedback truly drives progress.

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📖 Further Reading & References

• Department for Education – Marking Policy Review Group Report (2016) “Marking should be meaningful, manageable and motivating.” 🔗 Reducing teacher workload: marking policy review group report

• Department for Education – Reducing Teacher Workload Guidance Broader guidance on marking, planning, and data management to support sustainable practice. 🔗 Reducing School workload