Our Teaching A-Level book is out!

Phew! After nearly six months of work, our book for A-level language teachers, both aspiring and practising, is published. Called Teaching A-Level Modern Languages, priced at £25, you can find it on Amazon here: https://amzn.eu/d/cyya0pY. Teaching languages at A-level is a both a joy and a challenge and we hope to have shared how students (and teachers) can get the most out of the process.

So what's the background here? Steve Glover and I are old friends. He is now based in Paris, while my wife and I moved to London in July. Years ago, the other Steve taught French in East Lancashire before moving on to other projects, including establishing an early website for French teachers (The Really Useful French Site), working with Digitalbrain, writing the Attitudes course for A-level and authoring the site dolanguages.com, formerly known by different names depending on the language. Steve also runs webinars on A-level literature and film, specialisng in how to produce effective essays. I'm sure he has done other projects I don't know about!

As you may know, I taught A-level French for over 30 years - which I loved - and write masses of A-level resources for my website frenchteacher.net. I have also been an associate with the AQA awarding body and run numerous training sessions for them on A-level. I was Subject Leader/Visiting Lecturer for the University of Buckingham PGCE course for a few years. I also wrote a good deal of the teacher guidance for the current A-level on the AQA website.

I pitched this book to Steve back in April. We were both ready for a project. In fact, we should have written this book some years ago, but we've both been pretty busy! We worked out a structure for the book, with Steve focusing primarily on the two hefty chapters about film and literature. These two chapters really go into the detail of how to help students tackle the challenge of writing target language essays. This had also been a part of the training I used to run for AQA. The other chapters were led by me, but we both contributed to every chapter and checked each other's work as we went along. If there is a running thread through the book, it reflects our belief in the importance of target language input and communication, supported by focus on vocabulary and grammar, and smart preparation for the exams. The emphasis is on practical pedagogy, but we also wanted to make sure we included information about specifications for those new to A-levels.

The final part of the writing process, proofing and editing, was mainly down to my eagle-eyed wife Elspeth Jones who has long experience editng scholarly literature. We also enlisted the help of about a dozen teachers to help proof the French, German and Spansh material in the text. We used Chat GPT to some extent for the German and Spanish, but edited the material as appropriate.

So, what do we have in this 220-page book?

10 chapters covering the following: 

1. What are A-levels?
2. Pedagogical principles for A-level teaching
3. Teaching wth written texts
4. Developing listening skills
5. Developing oral skills
6. Vocabulary and grammar
7. Teaching the film essay
8. Teaching the literature essay
9. The Individual Research Project
10. Preparing for assessment

Most chapters include printable resources to exemplify the ideas presented. The format is A4, so this is a print book only from which purchasers can print ready-made resources in French, German and Spanish. We do not cover any other languages, but the material serves as a good template. There is light-touch reference to research and principles since in our view these need to be clear to teachers.

We focus on the specifications of the main awarding bodies in England and Wales, along with reference to CCEA in Northern Ireland and International A-levels from Cambridge and Pearson-Edexcel. Teachers doing the Irish Leaving Certificate, Scottish Highers and IB would no doubt find a lot of useful ideas too. Not too, that the focus is on A-level arther than AS-level, which, in any case, is taken by few students in England.

To our knowledge, there is no similar contemporary book on the market. There is a 1999 book about A-levels edited by Norbert Pachler, still available on Amazon, but of course this will not relate to the latest syllabuses. There is the excellent book on teaching A-level modern language literature by Katherine Raithby and Alison Taylor, which we reference in our volume. We think our publication will be tremendously useful as a handbook for trainees or any other teacher who is new to A-level teaching. Existing practitioners would no doubt pick up new ideas and have their thinking refreshed. Steve and I are hoping that after the current curriculum review in England the syllabus does not change much in the near future. If it does, we can always update the book.

In due course, I shall post an extract or two from the book.

Thanks for reading.