Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

Below is a listening resource from the A-level page of frenchteacher.net, one of many based on online video clips. I use various questioning formats, some of which I listed in my last blog post. This is a simple QA format. One advantage of questions in the target language is  that you can focus on specific structures. For example, in Question 2 below students must understand and use 'depuis' with the present tense. Question 12 draws attention to the conditional perfect tense, which not be regularly seen or used by students. The clip is below 2 minutes long, which is good for this level and the video source is accessible enough. I would use this with a confident Y12 or a Y13 class. In terms of A-level themes it matches with cyber-society an education, each of which is part of popular exam board specs. Follow the link to view the video. Harcèlement scolaire – une victime témoigne   1m 54 https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/education/harcelement-a-l-ecole/harcelement-scolaire-u...

 As Steve Glover and I research and begin to draft our book on teaching A-level modern languages, here is a sneek peek at an early draft section on teaching aural texts. A general point we shall want to make is that listening is at the heart of A-level teaching, as it is at any level. If comprehensible input and communication are the foundation of language learning, then working with listening texts, as well as all the interpersonal listening that goes on between teachers and students (and between students), need to be a major priority for A-level success. A second fundamental point to stress is the need to work intensively on aural texts. By that, I mean to design activities which recycle vocabulary and grammar over and over again through all the four skills. The alternative risks being a superficial coverage of listening texts - typically: hearing a text two or three times while answering some questions in English or a true/false exercise. This makes it less likely that language ...