frenchteacher.net updates

There have been some recent additions to the site: a couple of simple Y7 sheets on -er verbs, a help sheet for students preparing for the AQA A2 stimulus card, plus new oral/writing drills on the tenses in the Y8 and Y9 sections.

I have also been checking for dead links and have discovered a few. I try to keep up to date, but with with such a large number of links I don't keep up with everything. What surprises me slightly is how few new, free resources become available online. The well-established sites like Languagesonline, MFL Sunderland, TES and others continue to be the main sources of reliable material. There are, of course, a growing number of subscription sites with a good reputation, such as Linguascope and Atantôt, but I have to say that I am not "blown away" by much of what I come across, and certainly not the resources coming out from the big publishers. I fond the Kerboodle resources from Nelson underwhelming. Maybe I need to look harder!

Meanwhile, the new-look frenchteacher.net site is taking shape and I intend to put it online in its complete form by the start of May. There will be a £20 annual subscription for the main resources pages which I am currently going through to check for copyright issues, but powerpoints, links and teacher help pages will remain free. When I retire in July my intention is for frenchteacher.net to be a sort of paid hobby to which I can devote a good deal of time. I have no idea how many teachers and departments will choose to subscribe, but I hope there will be enough to make it worth my while making new resources.

For a sneak preview of the evolving new site:

http://mercurywebservices.co.uk/frenchteacher/

Oh, and someone tweeted this fabulous site:

http://www.geoportail.fr

If you enjoy France and maps, you'll enjoy.

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

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