Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

I listened to Dr Liam Printer's new Motivated Classroom podcast this morning. It's a nice listen, as usual, and reminds us language teachers that thinking about language teaching can evolve over time. It would be weird if it didn't, don't you think? He asks the question "Is input enough" and essentially puts forward the idea that it may be in theory, but that communication/output is needed, as much as anything else, for motivation and engagement. I hope I got that right. So here are my own feelings about this question, with some references to standard research which you might find useful if you are learning about additional language acquisition. Nearly all language teachers would reply to the question "Is input enough? with "Of course not." We assume that to get better at speaking, you need to speak, and to get better at writing, you need to write. This is not an unreasonable response. After all, in general, we get better at what we practise. ...

 Even when Google Translate was the main challenge, teachers have been concerned with designing homework tasks which make it harder for students to cheat. And I say ‘cheat’ unapologetically, since we know what we are talking about here: passing off work as your own when it isn’t. Because of Google, and now GenAI, teachers have resorted to setting vocab learning, or other tasks which don't require writing. You probably know what I think about vocab learning. If you don’t, look here. In a nutshell, not uselss but... ahem...sub-optimal. Traditionally, many teachers liked to prioritise listening and speaking in class, reserving most writing for homework tasks. Is it time to reverse this? Maybe, to some extent. I still think that in some schools, where teachers are able to hold the line, it is possible to be pretty sure students have done their own work. They just need to know that cheating is unacceptable and will result in unpleasant consequences: a telling-off, detention or rewrite. ...

You should know the game Simon Says already. In case you don't, it's usually used to teach parts of the body. It's the one where students stand up, the teachers gives instructions to student to touch parts of their body. If the teacher precedes the instruction with "Simon Says" (or rather its target language equivalent - in French it is Jacques a dit ) students must perform the gesture, if the teacher does not say "Simon Says", they must not perform the gesture. In general, students who make a mistake drop out. It's an execllent game - and not just for near beginners. It provides lots of simple input and repetition, demands careful listening, and is just fun. I never knew it fail. One slight downside, where students drop out, is that those students are no longer involved. (I found they were still engage to some degree, however.) The dropping out part does add urgency and an extra fun element, but if you wanted to avoid that, you could keep a tally of...

 You'll see what I mean by a mosaic translation by looking at the example below. Students pick words or chunks from the grid to translate senetnces into the target language. The idea is one by Gianfranco Conti and is a highly scaffolded way of allowing students to translate. It works best, in my view, with average to lower-attaining students. So in this post I'll show you an example, then suggest some ways to extend the activity if you feel that just getting students to do the task in writing does not stretch some students enough. For many students it will be enough. Below is an example I produced for frenchteacher.net. Students would see a landscape page, with the sentences on the left and the grid on the right. You'll then see my suggestions for exploiting the resource further.       Le week-end dernier (Last weekend) 1.      Last weekend I went cycling with my friends. 2.      On Sunday I went to the Italian restaurant....

Here’s a handy little language game you could use as a starter, filler or part of a lesson on negation. Hand out or display a list of present tense statements in the target language. They could be related to your current topic or just be random sentences using known vocabulary. The statements should be clearly wrong for best effect, I think. You could come up with absurd, amusing statements. Here are some examples: Madrid is the capital of France. Harry Kane plays tennis. Dogs speak French. Cats eat spaghetti. The sun rises in the west. Ariana Grande sings in Chinese. Mr Smith eats snails every morning. The moon is bigger than the sun. That sort of thing. Adapt the vocab to your class’s prior knowledge. Pupils work in pairs. Partner A makes the statement, then Partner B replies “That’s not true!” Then gives a corrected version, including a negative. For example, “Ariana Grande doesn’t sing in Chinese. She sings in English!” Partners take turns to make the initial statement. Fast classe...

 This is an old favourite. In case you don’t know of it, it’s called the Yes/No game. Students play in pairs. Each partner asks questions which normally require a yes or no answer. The responder has to answer without saying yes or no. This usually means answering by repeating the wording of the question, using negatives, changing pronouns, verbs or possessive adjectives as needed. The temptation to say yes or no is strong, so it takes care and concentration. Advanced students can play it off the cuff, but for level A2 (GCSE), for example, I’d advise giving each partner a set of questions to ask. You could give them in gapped form to add challenge. You can also have a theme for each set of questions if the aim is to practise conversation on a syllabus topic. You can make it more competitive by having students keep score of the number of times a partner says yes or no. Below I’ve listed a set of questions in French, then the same ones in Spanish. The topic is healthy lifestyle. Think...