What do we want our students to be able to do in class? Maybe you think, like me, that it’s about understanding and communicating meanings. This involves listening to what other people say, responding appropriately, expressing ideas and opinions, asking questions and sustaining interaction at an appropriate level. Knowing grammar and vocabulary matters, but it is not the main goal. A student may know how to conjugate verbs or complete written exercises successfully yet still struggle to understand spoken French or take part in a simple conversation. Our lessons therefore need to do much more than teach students about French: they must give them regular experience of using French to communicate. The 50 lessons in my new book are founded on this communicative principle. They place speaking (with listening of course) at the centre of classroom activity and give students a reason to talk. The lessons may be about identifying information, playing a purposeful game, solving a problem o...
This is a 5-part lesson I created with help from ChatGPT which provided the multi-choice questions, translation of the video transcript, ranking exercise and gap-fill task. I think it would work well with Higher Tier GCSE students, even though the video used as the source material is aimed at younger French children. The video is an introduction to climate and climate change. Captions are available but they are not very accurate. The transcript is available on the YouTube page, but I have copied it in below. I like the the fact that the lesson begins with listening comprehension with a short, clear video (I'd recommend two listenings, or some pauses chosen by the teacher). The MCQs could be done individually or guided one-by-one by the teacher. The gap-fill should be done individually or in pairs. The good /bad for the environment task can also be done individually or in pairs. The pair work vocab test gives a chance to recap vocab words and chunks before the final pair work quest...