Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

This is an example of an IB Diploma resource I have uploaded to frenchteacher.net. The resource also happens to be an excellent fit for A-level. The source is an article on the site infomigrants.fr which I got Chat GPT to shorten and rework. The text is in the third person.  I then added exercises: multi-choice questions (Chat GPT), lexical work  (synonyms to find — my choices), comprehension questions (Chat GPT) and an oral paired task where students must recount the story in the first person. All in all, it took around 30 minutes to make the resource. AI is saving me a lot of time. Needless to say, this type of resource is an eye-opener for students. I'd also add that perdonal stories of this type are easier to exploit and potentially more engaging than factual texts. The storytelling aspect is more personal and makes the text easier to exploit, e.g. you can change perspective, as I did, or you could do an activity such as an imaginary interview with a journalist. As is usua...

 I have been carrying out a feedback survey from subscribers to frenchteacher.net, as I do from time to time. This is to check what resources teachers are using and to get any other feedback. Because the feedback is anonymous, I cannot reply individually to respondents, but I have summarised the optional comments below and have added a response to each (in bold) les 400 coups de Truffaut and Un sac de billes (I leave film and lit resources to Steve Glover. For me it is a very large unvestment of time for just a few users of the site.) Reading aloud for GCSE, dictation exercises, more listening for GCSE (There are already LOTS of listening resources for GCSE level. I cannot do whole papers, since I do not have the tech to do it. There are dictation and reading aloud resources already. I have not added more since, it seems to me, these are super easy for any teacher to make and tailor for their own class) I would like to have end of unit tests on the Edexcel A Level topics. The ones...

Here are the slides from the talk I gave recently at the ALL London January Event at the British Film Institute, South Bank. The material is a small selection of ideas and practical classroom pedagogy drawn from Teaching A-level Modern Language s, the book I co-authored with Steve Glover. 

 French is hard to pronounce for English first language users. This is because the French phonological system is so different to that of English (whatever version of English you speak). The nasal vowels, uvular 'r', vowels in general (use of cardinal vowels and little use of diphthongs), subtle differences in consononant pronuciation (e.g. the lack of aspiration in plosives such as 't' and 'p'. Then of course there is the intonation system which, while less vital for intelligibility, is significantly different with its lack of word stress and its different pitch patterns. No wonder many pupils find it hard. I taught many higher-aptitude students who coped really well, largely just through input, reading aloud and communication, others who struggled more. I know of many adult learners who struggle a lot to produce individual sounds, especially that pesky 'r'. I know that I struggle myself with rolled/trilled 'r's, so I recognise the problem. So wh...

I'm delighted to let you know that that my new book Thinking About Language Teaching (Volume 2) is now out and available as a paperback or Kindle version from Amazon. You might recall that Volume 1 of this collection of themed reflections on language teaching came out last September. I was hoping Volume 2 would be published sooner, but we had to move house before Christmas and have been pretty busy, so the new book took longer than expected. And it is, as often, the editing and formatting which took the longest. My wife Elspeth Jones spent a long time weeding out errors, editing and formatting the text for publication. To remind you, this roughly 300-page book is a collection of reflections written between 2012 and 2025, with additional commentary and thoughts.  The original posts were lightly edited in many cases. I am very proud of the range of content I have been able to share. Teachers will not only think about their craft on reading the book, but will get masses of ideas for ...