Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

  It seems a bit odd to me that in 2026 the case still has to be made for Communicative Language Teaching, but here I am making that case! I first became aware of the Communicative Approach in about 1980. I was trained in the British Oral Approach which was a good deal more communicative than Grammar-Translation, but which was still essentially about getting students to internalise vocabulary and grammar through question-answer and controlled teacher-led activities. You might call it a sort of orally-focused PPP. At that time Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was gaining ground in the EFL world, as it was known then. Academic influencers of the time were Dell Hymes (who coined the term "communicative competence"), Henry Widdowson, Christopher Brumfitt and Sandra Savignon. Meanwhile, around that time, Stephen Krashen was making waves in the USA with his various hypotheses focused on comprehensible input — another reaction against the traditional grammatical syllabus. Behin...

As well as the many reading, grammar, sentence builders, dialogues, lesson plans, vocab and listening resources on the Y10-11 page of frenchteacher.net, I have a large number of materials specifically written for GCSE exam prep, along with resources written for the legacy exam, which could also be useful. The full list is below. The most recently added are marked by dates. Foundation 10 reading aloud passages  AQA-style Reading paper AQA-style Reading paper (2) NEW 15.2.26 Reading aloud/phonics help sheets NEW 23.2.26 8 AQA-style role-plays to read and adapt AQA photo-card conversation booklet Knowledge Organiser based on AQA topics 8 Edexcel-style role-plays to read and adapt 8 more Edexcel-style role-plays to read and adapt NEW 5.2.26 10 Edexcel-style photo card/conversation tasks 10 AQA-style photo card/conversation tasks 6 photo cards for display, modelling and practice (Foundation). AQA Writing model – 90 words Edexcel Writing model – 80-90 words Reading paper (any board) How ...

My last post was about my new communicative lessons book called Let's Get Them Talking: 50 Communicative French Lessons . It's available here . This post offers you an example of a simply structured pair work task (not in the book, by the way) you could carry out with a class working at Level A2. (I'm thinking a good Y9 class or an average GCSE class - it's too easy for a high-flying GCSE class.) I'll copy in the worksheet below. I like the simplicity of it - classes will get it straight away and how it is simply scaffolded from a matching task to a second part which requires some memory and retrieval work. You could extend the task for fast classes by asking them to develop a more flowing conversation based on the questions. I've suggested other ways to exploit it in my teacher notes below. There's nothing fancy here. It's not really a strongly communicative task in that that there is no great information gap involved and there's plenty of reading a...

Well this is jolly exciting! My new book called Let's Get Them Talking: 50 Communicative French Lessons is now available . The last three weeks have been all about tweaking and copy-editing (thanks to my wife and editor Elspeth Jones). I always find this is the fiddliest part of self-publishing. But the huge advantage is that I get to make the book immediately available and that, to be candid, royalties are much fairer than going with a publisher. This is how I have always published, except for my Outstanding Languages Teacher book with Routledge. So what can I say about the book? It costs under five flat whites in the UK, it's on Amazon and it's almost 190 pages long. It's A4, with photocopiable pages, and comes with slides and Word docs freely available on my frenchteacher site. Just choose the tab Let's Get Them Talking! Here's summary based on the introductory material from the book ...............................................................................

Gemini Story books are simple picture books you can create online. You prompt Gemini to create a story based on your prompt. In the prompt, specify the level you would like and the basic scenario. To start a storybook go here . Once your book is made in just a moment or two, you can view and listen to it, revise your prompt if you wish, then keep the link for class or student use. Easy! Here are some scenarios ChatGPT came up with for stories: The missed train – a teenager misses a train and has to work out how to get home. A surprise birthday – friends organise a party without the birthday person finding out. The new student – a new pupil arrives from another country and experiences their first day. A weekend in the mountains – walking, weather, food and an unexpected event. The lost phone – someone retraces their day trying to find their phone. My first day at work – a teenager has a Saturday job in a café or shop. The school trip – a class visits another city and somet...

I’ve posted previously about grammar teaching, for example here  (what does knowing grammar mean?), here  (what's wrong with the words + grammar approach) and here  (how do we curb our addiction to grammar teaching?). I also posted a general summary of research on grammar here .  Drawing on what I’ve read in the research and my own experience, I’d sum up my views as follows: Teachers often overestimate how useful it is to know and practise grammar structures. There is confusion between declarative knowledge (“knowing that”) and procedural knowledge (“knowing how”). Teachers often don’t know that research suggests that it's hard to turn the first type of knowledge into the second. Given how little time we get for languages in school, we shouldn’t spend that much of it on grammar practice because it’s not grammar practice that drives acquisition. Grammar is more useful and interesting for some pupils than others. Most think it’s a turn-off and would rather use the...