Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

When I look back at my teaching career, something I am genuinely proud of is the long-running exchange Ripon Grammar School had with the Institution Saint Louis, in Pont l'Abbé d'Arnoult. I left the classroom in 2012, and the exchange is still running every other year, 36 years after I set it up in 1988. In the 24 years I ran the exchange, roughly 600 students must have taken part, nearly all either in Y10 or Y12 - that's the way we ran it, to avoid disrupting the exams in Y11 and Y13. We would time the exchange to take up some lesson time, but strongly overlap with half terms or Easter holidays. I never saw that as a sacrifice since I enjoyed the exchange and it felt much like a holiday. Exchanges are fantastic. I can think of no better way of giving students the opportunity to expand their cultural and linguistic horizons. It's quite a personal challenge too. But to make exchanges happen requires enthusiasm, endurance and organisational skill. And in these post-Brexit...

I like to have a project, and I recently suggested to my friend and fellow former languages teacher Steve Glover that we could do something useful to help teachers develop their skill at teaching A-level languages. The provisional title of our book is Teaching A-Level Modern Languages .  My own expertise in this field is as a teacher who taught A-level French for 32 years and who writes a lot of resources for A-level teachers and students. I am well read about second language acquisition and, as you may know, have written a good deal about language teaching already, including with Gianfranco Conti.  Steve Glover runs the website dolanguages.com (formerly alevelfrench.com) and has a great deal of expertise in the production of resources for A-Level. He also taught A-level when he was a full-time teacher and he now writes and runs courses for teachers. Steve was a pioneer in using internet technology for language teaching - I first came across his work when he made The Really Us...

 I've long been a fan of the 'Portrait d'enfant' short videos from Arte. I like them for a few reasons: The language is quite comprehensible for average to higher-attaining pupils at GCSE (and even Y9). (Roughly CEFR A2.) Although the videos vary in difficulty, the worksheet design can include exercise types or scaffolding to make them accessible and enjoyable. They are short - just over two minutes. This means that you can play over material several times to encourage thorough processing of the language. It's the 'less is more' principle: better to repeat a limited range of language many times, than to expose students to occasional use of vocabulary and structures which they are less likely to retain. I design my exercises to encourage through processing (intensive listening, if you like). This is more productive than just asking a few comprehension questions or true-false questions Best of all, the videos are inherently interesting and eye-opening to our p...

Late in 2023, I started a series of four blog posts written for the benefit of teachers starting out in their teaching of A-level French. they may also be of use to more experienced teachers. I have put them all together in this post, as they were originally written - simply copied and pasted. I hope you find them useful.  1.   General principles This is the first of first of four posts on the subject of teaching A-Level languages. Because the focus is the A-Level syllabus in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the posts are aimed primarily at teachers in those countries or working in international schools. A good deal will be relevenat to teachers working with other syllabuses, notably IB. The posts are also mainly for teachers who are new or inexperienced with teaching A-level, although more experienced teachers may find useful reflections or new ideas to enhance practice. In writing these posts, I am drawing on over 30 years of experience teaching French A-level in three d...

Here is a simple gap-fill + oral recap resource I just uploaded to frenchteacher.net. It might suit your Year 12 class, or any relatively advanced class interested in the D-day landings. It's based onone of those excellent 1jour1question videos. Le  débarquement   1 m 42 https://www.1jour1actu.com/monde/cest-quoi-le-debarquement   Écoutez et complétez les phrases : 1.      C’est la plus grande ____________ militaire de l’histoire de la France. 2.      Il a transformé le _____ de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. 3.      Il y a 80 ans toute l’Europe était en ______.  (The audio says 70 years, as the video was made 10 years earlier.) 4.      L’Allemagne a _________ le conflit et dominait tout le continent. 5.      L’armée allemande occupe plusieurs pays ____ la France. 6.      La Grande Bretagne et la Russie _________. 7.      ...