Skip to main content

Our little TES shop

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/spsmith45

As you may know, Gianfranco and I have been writing some new A-level French resources with a focus on translation, especially translation into French. We are working through the various A-level sub-themes, especially those from AQA and Pearson Edexcel.

So far we have uploaded 10 units of work for AS-level (first year of A-level): on family (AQA, Pearson, Eduqas), cyber-society (AQA) , world of work (Pearson, Eduqas), music (AQA, Eduqas), literature (Eduqas), heritage (AQA, Pearson, Eduqas), education (Pearson and Eduqas) , voluntary work (AQA), personal identity (Eduqas) and cinema (AQA and Eduqas).

Each unit consists of seven to nine dense pages of exercises, including pre-reading tasks, a chunky text, comprehension, oral and grammar manipulation activities, translation into English, pre-translation tasks and, finally, three graded translations into French.

The content is a bit like "skill-building meets comprehensible input"! Fans of Gianfranco's worksheets will recognise the format, while users of frenchteacher.net will pick out the focus on textual work and comprehension.

Answer keys are provided for all exercises, so the units could be handed out for independent study as well as used in class.

In addition we have begun posting similar units for GCSE (intermediate). There will soon be 10 of these in the form of a bundle for £20. Topics include: holidays, volunteering, environment, future plans, the internet and healthy living.

We have designed these with the principles of our toolkit book in mind. There is a lot of recycling of language, so that, if the final translations seem quite difficult, by the time students get to them, they should have recycled so much language that they will not seem too tough.

Each unit is priced at £3 and will last you several years. In late August shall later bundle 10 units for £20.

10 units will represent a photocopiable and editable text book of at least 110 pages of densely packed material. We would consider this to be excellent value, especially since it could be used for several years.

We would anticipate using these units as an add-on to any course book or other materials you choose to use. Private tutors would also be able to make good use of the resources.

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,