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Book review: 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Outstanding MFL Lessons

This pocket-sized book of 123 pages is written by British teacher Dannielle Warren. Having had a sneak pre-publication version of the manuscript, I’ve now had the chance to read the final product. It’s a pretty quick and easy read, consisting of 100 easy to implement lesson ideas divide into nine sections entitled Speaking, Listening, Reading, Writing, Grammar, Translation, Vocabulary, Marking/Feedback/Improvements and Revision.

The ideas are often familiar, tried-and-tested and frequently requiring little preparation. Many teachers will recognise classics such as Battleships, structure strips, vocab bingo, dictation drawing ( “ read and draw”) and Trapdoor. Some of the ideas are nor one-off activities or games, for example the one called Exploiting Texts which gives a few ways to use written texts. None of this is a criticism, since, as I know, when you write about language teaching ideas you can’t assume how much knowledge each reader possesses. In that respect, the book hits the mark particularly well for less experienced language teachers.

Although there is occasional reference to the particularities of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish education systems (e.g. reference to GCSE), the book would be useful to MFL and ESL teachers around the world. The written style is personal and engaging, the descriptions clear. Each activity comes with suggestions to extend or alter it.

All in all, this is a useful little compendium of classroom tasks which teachers could dip into and use to extend their repertoire. I recommend it for language teachers and departments. It’s surprising how few books there are of this type. Dannielle has a good sense of what works and how real classrooms operate.

Just to add that the book has an accompanying website

https://www.bloomsbury.com/cw/100-ideas-for-secondary-teachers-outstanding-mfl-lessons/online-resources/

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