Frenchteacher survey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NQRZPTN

It's just over a year since frenchteacher.net became a subscription site and I'd like to know a bit more about which sections people are using most and what people might like to see added to the site. I can't promise to respond to all requests, but if there is a pattern to responses, I'll certainly be receptive to new ideas.

One or two people have asked if I could include more model answers, so I have asked about that in the survey.

I have been thinking of putting on some listening resources for a while and have a French friend who might help me with that if there is demand. I am aware that course books do lots of good quality listening, so haven't thus far gone for it. We'll see...

The survey is really short and should take no more than two or three minutes.Select the link above.

By the way, recent additions include an article about today's story that CO2 emissions have exceeded the 400ppm level for the first time in about 4 million years. You'll see that I have a lot of resources on the environment, especially global warming, which is an issue that I obsess about just a bit.

For intermediate level sports fans I have done texts on Gareth Bale and Lionel Messi.

A bientôt.

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).

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Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

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