Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

In this post I'm returning to a subject which is so important for language teachers, and one I have written about before in a historical context here . Implicit language learning refers to how we acquire a language naturally and unconsciously, without explicitly studying grammar rules, doing exercises or memorising vocabulary. Historically, different language has been used to distinguish between implicit and explicit learning. Researchers and educators have contrasted, for example: Informal vs formal learning Naturalistic vs classroom learning Acquisition vs learning (Krashen) Spontaneous vs studial (H.E. Palmer) Knowing how vs knowing that (declarative vs procedural knowledge) These terms broadly reflect a long-standing attempt to distinguish between language development that occurs through meaningful exposure and communication, and language knowledge that develops through structured instruction and conscious study. I'm going to throw a pebble in the water at this point by s...

One subscriber to my site requested more reading aloud resources for the new GCSE. Now, you can have a debate about whether it's right to have a read aloud section in the Speaking test — overall I'm not in favour — but it's here for now and Foundation students will find it a challenge, much more so in French than Spanish or German, for the obvious reasons. (Is this fair??) High-flying GCSE French candidates will find the read aloud a breeze, as long as they don't overthink it. By Y11, the strongest students have already mastered a good level of pronunciation and can read off the page with confidence. So teachers need not spend much time on this element in the run-up to Speaking tests. Foundation candidates may, however, benefit from targeted, last-minute help. And when you look at the challenges of reading aloud in French, it's no wonder many struggle. So whereas many students read aloud well, having picked up the skills largely implicitly, with some explicit focus ...

The Year10-11 page on my frenchteacher website has a mass of resources for students working at A2 to B1 level (Foundation to Higher GCSE). As well as the numerous texts, vocab resources, listening exercises, video listening materials and full lesson plans, there are resources specifically aimed at preparing students for GCSE-style exam tasks. I shall list them below. In addition to these, I have a lot of legacy GCSE resources which may be useful. IGCSE students should find all this stuff useful as well. I also have a few resources written specifically for the WJEC exam board in Wales.  The full contents for the page on my site are here . Foundation 10 reading aloud passages AQA-style Reading paper 8 AQA-style role-plays to read and adapt AQA photo-card conversation booklet Knowledge Organiser based on AQA topics 8 Edexcel-style role-plays to read and adapt 8 more Edexcel-style role-plays to read and adapt  10 Edexcel-style photo card/conversation tasks 10 AQA-style photo card/...

This post was prompted by an exchange on LinkedIn. Rachel Higginson, experienced education consultant and founder of Finding my Voice, posted this under the title: When cold calling is too cold . Let me quote an extract: There has been a concerning and consistent theme in pupil voice sessions that I have conducted over the last year. Cold calling is having a negative impact on learning. Pupils express how they spend the entire lesson anxious about their impending turn and they also explain how this impacts their ability to concentrate on the lesson itself. Interestingly this is also related to what happens when they don't get it right. They talk about lack of acknowledgement and shame and embarrassment. She goes on to write: At Finding My Voice we call cold calling, 'Inclusive Questioning'. This is a deeply inclusive strategy which is intentionally warm... 1) Classroom Culture is based on shared and established Social Norms: 'We are imperfect', 'We think alou...

I'm returning here to a topic I have posted on before. This time I gave Chat GPT some notes to work on, it provided the bones of the blog and then I edited and supplemented it.  We know that language input that students understand is at the heart of language acquisition. If students don’t understand the input, learning doesn’t happen  — it's mere exposire, not language that learners can process. The challenge for language teachers is to  model  input clearly, repeatedly, and meaningfully. Below are five commonly used ways to model input , with concrete ideas on how to exploit  each one , all classroom-tested and easy to adapt. AI makes creating these inputs faster than ever — but it’s how we use them that really matters. 1. Sentence builders Maximum clarity, zero ambiguity Originally known in audiolingual practice as substitition tables,  sentence builders makes the target language completely transparent. Students know exactly what language they will use,...