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Tête-a-Tête.ai

 Nick Atkins shared this with me by email. Nick is a solo developer from Hertfordshire who designed this after trying to help his daughter prepare for her GCSE Speaking assessment and finding no simulator to help her. I haven’t road-tested it myself. “Tê te-à-Tête AI ( tete-a-tete.ai ) is a GCSE and IGCSE speaking-exam simulator for French and Spanish. Students sit timed practice or full mock exams following their board's format and get six scores — pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, interaction and confidence — plus an indicative predicted grade. The AI examiner responds to what the student actually says rather than working through a script, which is the part that took longest to get working properly with real learner French. Boards: AQA and Edexcel, covering role-play, reading aloud, photo card or picture task and general conversation, at Foundation and Higher. Cambridge IGCSE 0520 French and 0530 Spanish, which is role-play plus two topic conversations, as that exam re...
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How useful are mnemonics?

 A mnemonic is a memory aid — a hook, a technique, phrase, pattern, image, or acronym that helps you remember information more easily. Language teachers usually think of them as acronyms. Ones I learned at school were DOGWUF in German (to remember prepositions which take the accusative case) and MRS DAVENTRAMP (for remembering French verbs which use être as their auxiliary in the perfect gense). Here are some others you may know or like. Many of these were shared by teachers on Facebook when I was drafting our book about memory ( Memory: What Every Language Teacher Should Know ( Smith and Conti, 2021)). French French mnemonics What they refer to EN for engine Using en in repositional phrases for motorised means of transport, e.g. en voiture versus à pied A TV AND MRS PERM MR DRAPERS MT VAN MR VAM RRED PANTS DR PV MASTERMAN DR VEMS MANTRAP MR DREAMPANTS The verbs which take the auxiliary être in ...
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Rod Ellis' eight principles for task-based language teaching

 You may or may not use many task-based lessons, but task-based language teaching (TBLT) in general gets good support from researchers. Major names in the field associated with TBLT are usually from the field of English as a Second/Foreign Language. They include Jane Willis, Rod Ellis, Mike Long, Peter Skehan and David Nunan. The basic premise is that that acquisition is more likely to be promoted when students are focused on a meaningful task - using the target language for a purpose. Task-based lessons are also more likely to be enjoyable and develop what Deci and Ryan, the self-determination theory scholars, call autonomy, competence and relatedness. TBLT stands in contrast to traditional grammar-based approaches which are more teacher-led and where the main focus is on practising language forms. In my own practice, I used TBLT in various forms whenever I felt it supported students' progress and provided enjoyable, target language-based input and interaction. We all have our go-...
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Summary of a 2024 paper by Paul Nation on vocabulary learning

 I asked ChatGPT to summarise a recent paper by a leading, veteran researcher into vocabulary learning. I then edited the summary and inserted some further comments from my perspective. The link to the original paper is below. https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/9/5/160?fbclid=IwY2xjawIlhNpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHeKzoD89IDaOZB2O4sfoZ6ah_gYS7vbDjY9uGn2Mj-XT4wV3eI5Pi_UrXw_aem_UOW3G1VEv0roD61i56NKcw The ChatGPT summary starts here. This is an interesting paper because it represents Paul Nation trying to simplify decades of vocabulary acquisition research into a small set of general learning principles. It is less about new empirical findings than about providing a practical framework that teachers, researchers and curriculum designers can use. Paper Paul Nation (2024). Re-Thinking the Principles of (Vocabulary) Learning and Their Applications . Languages , 9(5), 160.   The central argument Nation argues that successful vocabulary learning — and, indeed, much other language learning — depen...
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