Skip to main content

GCSE and AS-level French revision units on TES





This is just in case it's escaped your attention... Gianfranco Conti and I have produced two large bundles of resources for GCSE (8 units of 7/8 pages) and AS-level (7-9 pages). They are here:

The GCSE pack has eight units of work with answers provided. The emphasis is on comprehension, vocabulary building and translation. We had the new GCSE in mind for these, but pupils would still find these resources very useful and approachable for Higher Tier. Topics covered are: TV, environment, school, ambitions, marriage, holidays, health and volunteering. each unit has pre-reading vocab builders, a set of short texts based on the narrow reading principle (recycling similar vocabulary and structures each time), pre-translation tasks and three graded translations into French.

The AS/A-level pack has ten units. Topics covered are: family, cyber-society, contemporary French music, cinema, literature, personal identity, cultural heritage, the world of work, education and the world of work. Each unit features pre-reading vocab builders, a chunky text, comprehension tasks, pre-translation exercises and three translations into French, graded in difficulty.

Here is a review someone left on TES of one of the units AS-level units:

"Fantastic resource - brilliantly thought out, and closely related to AQA spec. Skills progress throughout document and increase in difficulty as students gain confidence. I used this as homework tasks to support work in lessons, and resulted in the students completing the final translations closed-book in timed conditions in class. Both students and I were v. impressed with the progress made! Will definitely purchase the other packs - excellent value for money.  Thanks very much :)"

Individual GCSE and A-level units can be purchased separately at £3. The GCSE bundle costs £15 and the AS bundle £20. They can of course be photocopied and used over several years so we think they are very good value.

Comments

Post a Comment

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 langua...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zaz - Si jamais j'oublie

My wife and I often listen to Radio Paradise, a listener-supported, ad-free radio station from California. They've been playing this song by Zaz recently. I like it and maybe your students would too. I shouldn't really  reproduce the lyrics here for copyright reasons, but I am going to translate them (with the help of another video). You could copy and paste this translation and set it for classwork (not homework, I suggest, since students could just go and find the lyrics online). The song was released in 2015 and gotr to number 11 in the French charts - only number 11! Here we go: Remind me of the day and the year Remind me of the weather And if I've forgotten, you can shake me And if I want to take myself away Lock me up and throw away the key With pricks of memory Tell me what my name is If I ever forget the nights I spent, the guitars, the cries Remind me who I am, why I am alive If I ever forget, if I ever take to my heels If one day I run away Remind me who I am, wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Longman's Audio-Visual French

I'm sitting here with my copies of Cours Illustré de Français Book 1 and Longman's Audio-Visual French Stage A1 . I have previously mentioned the former, published in 1966, with its use of pictures to exemplify grammar and vocabulary. In his preface Mark Gilbert says: "The pictures are not... a mere decoration but provide further foundation for the language work at this early stage." He talks of "fluency" and "flexibility": "In oral work it is advisable to persist with the practice of a particular pattern until the pupils can use it fluently and flexibly. Flexibility means, for example, the ability to switch from one person of the verb to another..." Ah! Now, the Longman offering, written by S. Moore and A.L. Antrobus, published in 1973, just seven years later, has a great deal in common with Gilbert's course. We now have three colours (green, black and white) rather than mere black and white. The layout is arguably more attrac...
26 comments
Read more