Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

I'd originally planned to write this book early next year, but when lockdown happened I decided to get on with the job and worked solidly on it through March, April and May.  Then my wife (and editor) Elspeth Jones worked on the editing and formatting of the book for independent publication on Amazon. I am also grateful to Steve Glover and Nathalie Kaddouri of dolanguages.com for checking through the French, as well as the general content. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08BDK52ZQ/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=50+Lesson+Plans+for+French+Teachers&qid=1592739265&sr=8-2 How did it come about? Well, when I wrote Becoming an Oustanding Languages Teacher (Routledge, 2017) I included a few chapters bearing the title "Dissecting a lesson". I thought teacher trainees would find it useful to see how a lesson plan can be broken down into steps, with careful analysis of questioning techniques and other procedures, such as how you might use a sentence bui...

At this fraught moment, with racism raising its ugly head yet again, educators are being challenged to tackle the issue. I thought it might be worth recalling that the A-level syllabuses in modern languages have an honourable record when it comes to dealing with issues such as diversity, immigration and integration.  I always thought that the exam boards (and in recent times Ofqual) took an enlightened approach to their choice of curriculum content. In the distant past the developing world featured. The environment has, until recently, been a staple topic. Diversity, immigration, integration and racism have also been in the specs for years. I was always happy with this and I believe my students enjoyed listening, reading and talking about these issues. In a subject like ours it seems only right that we should be educating students about such matters and fostering attitudes of understanding and tolerance (in the best sense of that word). That said, I have occasionally read or heard ...