Skip to main content

Updates "Réalités Françaises"

Philip Allan Updates Conferences have been doing French days for at least 17 years. Today I took 15 of our AS students to Harrogate Grammar's swish new Sixth Form centre's lecture theatre to listen to Richard Peltier do his series of talks and activities on AS level topics: advertising, "vivre en solo", television, legalising cannabis, holidays and music. Over the years these talks have evolved slowly to include more video, more interaction, structured listening work and sketches. This time, Alain Lebourdon (I hope I've spelled that right) from Harrogate Grammar helped Richard out with the sketches.

Worthwhile overall, since it exposes A-level students to some pretty solid French over 4 hours plus. Richard's talks usually offer up a few interesting facts and figures. Did you know that every time you click on a Google ad you are giving Google $5. (I assume this claim is correct.) As a Google ad "publisher" myself, I can tell you that Google does a LOT better than the web master. Richard said that his usual co-presenter Régis may be giving up - it'll be the end of an era.

Thanks to Kirsty at HGS for getting it organised.

http://www.philipallanupdates.co.uk/Revision-Conferences.aspx

Comments

  1. Anonymous23 March 2011 at 20:43

    I don't think the info re google is correct. I thought it was a lot less than that:
    From the google site:

    Maximum Cost-per-Click (Maximum CPC)

    Your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) is the highest amount that you are willing to pay for a click on your ad. You can set a maximum CPC at the keyword- or ad group-level. The AdWords Discounter automatically reduces this amount so that the actual CPC you are charged is just one cent more than the minimum necessary to keep your position on the page.

    Anyway, good to know the Philip Allan courses are worthwhile. Thanks for posting.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).
Post a Comment
Read more

The 2026 GCSE subject content is published!

Two DfE documents were published today. The first was the response to the consultation about the proposed new GCSE (originally due in October 2021) and the second is the subject content document which, ultimately, is of most interest to MFL teachers in England. Here is the link  to the document.  We are talking about an exam to be done from 2026 (current Y7s). There is always a tendency for sceptical teachers to think that consultations are a bit of a sham and that the DfE will just go ahead and do what they want when it comes to exam reform. In this case, the responses to the original proposals were mixed, and most certainly hostile as far as exam boards and professional associations representing the MFL community, universities, head teachers and awarding bodies are concerned. What has emerged does reveal some significant changes which take account of a number of criticisms levelled at the proposals. As I read it, the most important changes relate to vocabulary and the issue of topics
5 comments
Read more

La retraite à 60 ans

Suite à mon post récent sur les acquis sociaux..... L'âge légal de la retraite est une chose. Je voudrais bien savoir à quel âge les gens prennent leur retraite en pratique - l'âge réel de la retraite, si vous voulez. J'ai entendu prétendre qu'il y a peu de différence à cet égard entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Manifestation à Marseille en 2008 pour le maintien de la retraite à 60 ans © AFP/Michel Gangne Six Français sur dix sont d’accord avec le PS qui défend la retraite à 60 ans (BVA) Cécile Quéguiner Plus de la moitié des Français jugent que le gouvernement a " tort de vouloir aller vite dans la réforme " et estiment que le PS a " raison de défendre l’âge légal de départ en retraite à 60 ans ". Résultat d’un sondage BVA/Absoluce pour Les Échos et France Info , paru ce matin. Une majorité de Français (58%) estiment que la position du Parti socialiste , qui défend le maintien de l’âge légal de départ à la retraite à 60 ans,
1 comment
Read more