Skip to main content

Review of The Language Teacher Toolkit

We were pleased to read the following review of our book written by Joanna Asse-Drouet, Head of Primary MFL at Alice Smith International School of Kuala Lumpur (you can find the review on www.amazon.fr.):

"The most useful book I have read in a while and a definite "must-have" for all aspiring language teachers, but also for more established and experienced educators!

Steve Smith and Gianfranco Conti have brilliantly covered all parts of language teaching, as well as all questions you could ever ask yourself as a Modern Foreign Language teacher. Detailed research and thorough analysis of a variety of approaches will guide you through captivating chapters dedicated to the different skills we teach every day. Teaching Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing is meticulously covered, but you will also find tips on how to successfully teach culture, grammar, tenses or how to make translation a useful learning tool.

Steve and Gianfranco give concrete examples of excellent, fun activities that you will be able to use in a variety of contexts: from teacher-led tasks to peer-coaching, from 'Gianfranco's 'micro-listening' tasks for bottom-up processing' to 'Steve's zero preparation reading activities'... the impressive list of brilliant tips does not seem to end!

Motivation and behaviour management, formative and summative assessment, marking and feedback are also covered, as well as the effective use of technology in our modern classrooms. Steve and Gianfranco even give us some great examples of outstanding lesson plans at the end of their book.

As I said, I would highly recommend The Language Teacher Toolkit to all language teachers. I have found every single chapter inspiring and uplifting and I have thoroughly enjoyed its reflective approach, which makes it unique!"

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Comments

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).

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,