Using the sentence banks in our GCSE French workbook

A feature of our new GCSE workbook, is the inclusion at the end of each unit of two 'sentence banks', one Foundation, one Higher. These lists of translated sentences would be familiar to teachers who like to use parallel text knowledge organisers. Below is an example from Part Two of our new workbook, coming in a few weeks. It's Foundation Tier set from the unit about education and future plans.

Items in bold are more challenging structures which go beyond simple, one clause present tense sentences. The Higher senetnce banks contain more of these.

Je vais à l’école à pied.	I go to school on foot.
Il y a 800 élèves à mon école.	There are 800 pupils in my school.
Je porte un uniforme scolaire ; c’est pratique.	I wear a school uniform; it’s practical.
J’ai cinq cours par jour.	I have five lessons per day.
Les cours commencent à neuf heures.	Lessons start at nine o’clock.
Je pense qu’il y a trop de devoirs chaque soir.	I think there is too much homework each evening.
Ma matière préférée est le français.	My favourite subject is French.
J’aime l’histoire parce que c’est intéressant.	I like history because it is interesting.
Lundi dernier j’ai fait une visite scolaire.	Last Monday I did a school visit.
Je suis allé(e) au théâtre avec ma classe.	I went to the theatre with my class.
Le week-end dernier j'ai joué au rugby pour l'école.	Last weekend I played rugby for the school.
À l’avenir je voudrais devenir avocat(e).	In the future I would like to become a lawyer.
Je ne veux pas aller à l’université.	I don’t want to go to university.
L’année prochaine je vais faire maths et sciences.	Next year I am going to do maths and science.

Rationale

Every sentence is translated so all the language is comprehensible.

The material is relevant to the sort of tasks the students will have to carry out in the speakingI assessment and written exam. It's easy to see how the senetnces could be recycled or adapted for exam purposes.

The simplest goal is to give Foundation pupils a set of sentences to rote learn for the exam. Yes, I know this suggests a dull and even misguided way to teach a language, but we are talking here about helping students, often weaker ones, to do their best in a one-off oral or written test. Experience shows that students like this depend a good deal on pre-learned material. If they improvise, things go badly wrong. Trust me! That's just the way it is for many candidates. 

A significant challenge is to get the pupils to actually learn the sentences! Some will not do so on their own, so you need to practise the material in class, stressing how the pupils will get something from the process. Yes, the exam provides extrinsic motivation. So below I'll suggest the sort of little tasks you might do.

Specific tasks to do

Choral repetition. This could be useful even with weaker Y11 students, but it depends on your relationship with the class. If they have already developed reasonable reading aloud skills it probably won't be that useful.

Complete my sentence. (After reading thorugh the sentences together, students coverup the French column. You start a sentence which the class has to finish (hands up or cold-called). For example, 'Lundi dernier j'ai fait une visite.....' (scolaire). Taylor this to the class, providing more or less of the senetnce depending on their memories.

Fill the gap. As above, but this time you leave a gap in the middle of the sentence. You can make a suitably amusing nosie where the gap is.

Spot my change. With the grid visible, read aloud one of the sentences with one change. Students either note down or tell you the chnage (hands up or cold-called). Do other examples. You could try two changes.

Change one thing. This follows on neatly from the previosu exercise. Either teacher-led, or in pairs, get students to change one item in each sentence. So, 'Le week-end dernier j'ai joué au rugby pour l'école' could become 'Le week-end dernier j'ai joué au netball pour l'école'.

Change two things. As above, but changing two items. This would make sense afe having done 'Change one thing'.

Paired quizzing. One students gives the French, the other gives the English translation. Te first student can give hints if the second gets stuck. Stronger classes ight be able to work from English into French.

Sentence stealers. This is the pretty familar Conti game which most likely is better for KS3, but coud work with your Y10-11s if the relationships and atmosphere are right. The game is described by the maestro here.

Dictation. Dictate sentences or parts of sentences for students to write down and compare with partners.

Translation. Read out a phrase in English for students to write in French. You might say 'I wear' and they write 'je porte'.

Question-answer (with the grid). Ask a question which would generate one of the answers. Students select (and maybe write down) the answer from the grid. Yes, some simple copywriting here, but useful for many students.

Question-answer (without the grid). As above, but with the grid hidden. This is clearly the toughest task, and one to be done near the end of a cycle. It's the task which most closely resembles communication.

Retrieval test. Get the students to write down as many sentences a sthey can from memory. You might provide some chunks of language on the board to help.

Now, you might have other little tasks to add from your own repertoire. I'll leave that to you.

To conclude, just to recall that the above exercises provide masses of repetition and recycling, plus some ability to adapt and add new language. Writing skill should be improved too. Along the way, you would highlight key points, such as the contrast between present and past - ensuring the phonological distinctions are clearly pronounced. It's not what I would call great language teaching (though some would be happy with it), but for exam purposes I think students would find it very useful indeed. I might have done this sort of thing in the second half of Y11 with students aiming at Grades 4-6. Certainly not Grades 8-9.