Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

UPDATE: by 5th April there will be 17 CPD screencasts on the YouTube channel. Latest subjects include working with picture sequences, individual pictures for creative storytelling, memory, reading and exploiting written texts. More to come. ********************************************************************************* Being confined to base has given me an opportunity to work on a new project which should be of help to language teachers new and old. I’m in the process of creating presentations on various aspects of language teaching. So far, as I write, seven talks of around 15-25 minutes each have been uploaded to my YouTube channel. Topics covered so far include the process approach to listening, phonics and phonology, interpersonal listening, task-based listening, grammar and lexicogrammar. I’m partly drawing on existing slides I’ve used at conferences and in schools, partly creating new material. In each talk I try to include a mix of research background and practical c...

A major challenge for language teachers just now is selecting and sharing work with students to do at home. Here a few suggestions on the issue to add to your own. The sites I mention are the tip of the iceberg and focus mainly on French. I have stuck to free resources, not subscription sites. By the way, I'm not getting into the use of tech here, as I have no great expertise on that. In any case, I imagine for younger learners especially it may be a question of setting other types of work. ADVANCED For advanced learners the job is not so tough. There is a plethora of listening, reading and grammar material they can use, whether it be from their textbooks, other resources shared electronically or online resources. You may have your favourites, but for a selection for French you can check out my links here and here . You may want to stick with topics on the syllabus, or free up students to read and listen more generally to what interests them. One idea I used was to ask st...

The sentence in the title of this blog comes from psychologist Daniel Willingham, a scholar frequently referred to by teachers and consultants when talking about learning and memory. You can find it in his influential book Why Don't Students Like School? (2010) or free in this article . The idea that memory is the residue of thought is simple, appealing and in many cases correct no doubt. But for language teachers there is something just a little bit whiffy about it. Now Daniel Willingham and the many writers and bloggers who quote him recognise that he is talking about a certain type of learning: the learning which goes on in formal settings like schools. He may also point out that language learning/acquisition (particularly first language learning/acquisition) is atypical in that it is "biologically primary", i.e. natural or developmental, requiring little or no formal instruction. Classroom language learning, on the other hand, could be viewed as a peculiar outli...

UPDATE 17.3.20 There are now home study booklets for Y7, Y8, Y9 and A-level. Just go to frenchteacher.net, choose Free Stuff, the Samples. Answers given for all except the Y7 material. .............................................................................................................................................................. UPDATE 15.3.20: I have uploaded two free GCSE home study packs of between 45-50 pages. One for Foundation, one for Higher Tier. Each pack contains listening, reading, speaking and writing practice. Answers are given, where appropriate. You can edit them since they are Word docs. Just print and hand out, or share electronically. ****************************************************************************** If there are any school closures in the near future teachers will be no doubt looking to provide home study resources for pupils. I just wanted to mention to frenchteacher.net subscribers that one possible option is to put together a bo...

You may have heard of Sir Dave Brailsford. He is the boss of Team Ineos, formerly Team Sky, the cycling team who have dominated road cycling for a good few years. He is partly known for implementing the notion of “marginal gains” to make his team the best in the world. In cycling this could mean outdoing opponents by having a slightly lighter bike, slightly lower drag clothing and helmets, tyres with marginally less friction, better controlled food intake for competitors, etc. The idea is that these marginal improvements in various areas add up to a significant advantage overall. After observing some lessons recently, it struck me that this concept of making minor improvements to practice in various areas might apply to language lessons. These tweaks could add up to something significant over time. What do I mean? Let’s look at some possibilities.. When working with a text, if you are using comprehension questions in English, could you do this through target language means instead....

Every few months I carry out a subscriber survey using Survey Monkey. This is to help me know which resources are being used, receive feedback and suggestions on how to improve the site. This time 77 subscribers responded over the four weeks the survey was live. That's roughly 5% of members. There were ten quick questions. This is what I learned this time: Have you used any of the Y10-11 instant listening tasks (not video listening)? 40% said yes. Have you used Y7-9 PowerPoints? 43% said yes. Have you used any sentence builder tasks? 70% said yes. This reflects the current enthusiasm for sentence builder tables (aka substitution tables). Some teachers are putting the Y10-11 examples together as a GCSE revision booklet. Have you used any Y7 parallel reading resources? 57% said yes. I am aware that some teachers put these texts together and make a booklet of them for pupils. Have you used Y10-11 video listening, e.g. Peppa Pig? 53% said yes. Have you used th...