The latest from frenchteacher HQ

I’ve been a bit quiet in the blog for a while, but have been busy in various ways. My main project in recent weeks has been working on a second edition of my book with Routledge called Becoming an Outstanding Languages Teacher. The book was published in 2017, has sold well, but needed some updates. In particular, the sections on ‘tech tips’ have already dated in just four years and I want to make sure they don’t spoil the book.

So for this second edition, I have been looking into what teachers have been using in terms of tech tools. I am very grateful to Joe Dale for his webinars which I have been watching with interest. In addition, I have been reading blogs and asking the odd question on Twitter and Facebook to see what is ‘en vogue’ at the moment.

I have also been rewriting sections of the text to take account of the growing interest in lexicogrammar and Gianfranco’s EPI method. I have also tried to focus more tightly on teachers in training. I have kept an emphasis on practical ideas and step-by-step lesson planning and avoided research references. The book is both a bit shorter and more informal than the books I have co-authored with Gianfranco.

One point: when you reread previous writing, it’s both interesting and a bit dismaying to see how much can be improved! A bit of distance helps you look more objectively.

I have found room to add a new chapter on intercultural understanding, an important area which was largely missing from the first edition. I have also rewritten the final chapter which had included ‘case studies’ from teachers. Time has moved on, so in the new chapter I have decided to keep in sections on Michaela and TPRS, but added the theme ‘building your repertoire’ (partly with workload and well-being in mind).

So my writing is almost done on the book, then it’ll be down to Routledge to how quickly the proofing and printing is done. I hope the new edition will be out in Spring 2022. We’ll see!

Apart from that, I have been adding resources to frenchteacher.net. I am aware that if teachers are to sign up year on year, I need to add fresh material. With that in mind, a while ago I created audio files for listening resources on the KS4 and A-Level pages. In recent weeks I have added a range of new worksheets, ranging from crosswords, to video listening, grammar and texts with exercises.

In other work-related news, I have done the occasional webinar for schools and organisations, mainly focused on memory, following the publication  of our book Memory: What Every Language Teacher Should Know in early 2021.I am please that the memory book has sold very well and had glowing reviews from a number if teachers. I have had the pleasure of presenting to teachers in England, Ireland and Australia, and very soon to the Scottish Association of Language Teachers (SALT).

Future projects will include a second edition of The Language Teacher Toolkit (2016) and a new book with Gianfranco called something like Acquiring the Skills: From Comprehension to Fluency. We want this book to be quite tightly focused on Gianfranco’s EPI approach, so he will be the lead writer. I was the lead writer on The Language Teacher Toolkit and Memory: What Every Language Teacher Should Know. Gianfranco was the lead on Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Language Learners How to Listen.

On the to-do list is a second edition of The Language Teacher Toolkit, already five years old. I hope to make a start on that soon.

I have added a few links to my site informedlanguageteacher.com and been reading some research articles and books on second language learning. My top recommendation would be Frank Boers' book:

Evaluating Second Language Vocabulary and Grammar Instruction: A Synthesis of the Research on Teaching Words, Phrases, and Patterns (2021).

Finally, just today Gianfranco popped in to see us. We shared a pleasant lunch and had a chat about various things, many of them language learning related, as you might imagine!