Ten commandments and one more of language teaching

I am grateful to John Canning of the University of Brighton (UK) who posted the following on his blog. The source is the Modern Language Journal from 75 years ago. Harry Kurtz of the University of Nebraska came up with these. He was clearly a wise man.

1. Thou shalt make every student recite every day.
2. Thou shalt make thy questions shorter and distribute them more frequently to the unworthy of thy flock.
3. Thou shalt demand written homework for every lesson as an evidence of individual effort.
4. Thou mayest spare thy strength in the marking of these by having them corrected in class, but thou shalt collect them and check them off on the rolls.
5. Thou shalt refrain from personal eloquence in the classroom.
6. Remember that the strained silence of pupils thinking is worth more than volubility, thine or theirs.
7. Thou shalt plan thy hour and mark thy pages beforehand, so that never, no never, shalt thou ask thy sheep on what page they stopped grazing the last time.
8. Thou shalt have thy watch before thee to guide thee in the passing of time and to guard thee from over-stressing one thing at the cost of another. So shalt thou finish the assignment and never have the ignominy of covering less than what was imposed upon the fold.
9. Thou shalt watch thy pupils’ thoughts as reflected in their faces and hurl the thunder of a question where it may be necessary to recall the straying.
10. And last, so shalt thou prosper and discover the best devices in language teaching in the measure that thou wilt insist upon work and get it.

Not sure what the extra one was.

http://www.johncanning.net

Comments

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).

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

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,

Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

Search This Blog