Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

I imagine most of you use choral repetition, especially with beginners or near beginners. There are good reasons for doing so. Students listen carefully, briefly process what they hear, repeat and get used to using their motor skills to produce different sounds, syllables and words in an unthreatening way without having to perform in front of their peers or a partner. It helps, of course, if the class knows what the material being repeated actually means! It is a handy controlling device for teachers who may feel insecure about class control too; when a class is all repeating in unison there isn't much opportunity to do anything else off task. Teachers also get instant feedback on whether the class is having difficulty pronouncing tricky sounds. Choral repetition can be based on flashcards, flashcards with text, text on the board, an audio text, video text or just things that you say. I also felt that, when doing teacher-led oral work, choral repetition could be carefully timed if ...

  The term Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT), first coined in the USA in the 1990s, refers to teaching which is sensitive to different cultures both within and outside the classroom. “It is an approach that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes" ( Ladson-Billings, 1994 ).  Issues to do with diversity and racism have come to the fore again in recent years and attracted growing interest in language teaching and education circles in general. It was not a subject on my agenda, I have to confess, no doubt owing in part to the setting I taught in (rural, generally mono-ethnic at that time and mono-cultural). But I think language teachers would do well to be aware of some of the issues at stake, if they are not already knowledgeable about these issues. First, what is culture? One definition has it as the norms, beliefs, and behaviours passed down from one generation to the ...

This post is for teachers in England. Do you remember when, not too long ago, Ofsted were at pains to tell schools that they had no preferred teaching style? In our subject area we’ve had the TSC review of MFL pedagogy (2016), the establishment of NCELP and a revised GCSE for first examination in 2026. All of these have involved the hand of government in various forms (notably the choice of authors and panel members). Meanwhile Ofsted decided it wished to place an emphasis on curriculum, arguing that this is the cornerstone for a school’s success. Its series of research reviews (selective and flawed) have reinforced the notion that learning is about turning declarative knowledge into automatised skill. This is tied up with a view of language learning based on the idea of building blocks (phonics, vocab and grammar - the ‘three pillars’).  This is a one-sided view of language learning and curriculum design, frequently criticised in the second language acquisition research literature...

My previous blog was about working memory, and how to identify and support students who may be struggling because of working memory deficits. In contrast, this post is about high-achieving students. It may be that this is a school or departmental issue or priority for you. The text here is taken from the new edition of my book Becoming an Outstanding Languages Teacher (Smith, 2023). (Yes, 2023. Although the book is already out, its official publication year is apparently 2023.) I taught for well over 30 years in schools with, on the whole, quite high-aptitude pupils, so the text here is based partly on my own experience. I wonder if it squares with your own feelings. Here is the section from the book. Apologies for the errors in formatting, which happen in Blogger when you copy in a text in Word. Stretch and challenge So-called gifted and talented students have a special need of their own, you can argue. I spent my career teaching students of above average aptitude in three schools in ...

In the second language acquisition research literature, some scholars believe that a key factor in language learning aptitude is working memory. Working memory, you may recall, is our so-called mental workspace where we hold things in our conscious attention. Working memory span, or capacity, varies somewhat between individuals and may, or may not, be subject to alteration through specific exercises. In typical memory models (e.g. the famous Baddeley model), by rehearsing things in working memory, e.g. practising silently or saying things out loud, we can help information pass into long-term memory, where we need it to be. Think, for example, how you say out loud a telephone number to help it stick in your memory. As a reminder, here is the general model of memory often shared with teachers these days. For language teachers, phonological working memory is of particular interest, since we depend so much on students listening to language. Phonological working memory, in the Baddeley mode...

My previous post 10 nifty starters for language lessons was popular, with a few thousand views. Since I have been focusing on starters on my site, I thought I’d share another 10 starters I would happily use with classes at various levels. You might find something new here. Or you might not! 1. Guess what I did last weekend We often ask students what they did last weekend, and I blogged about variations on this theme some time ago here . For this starter, just turn things round and get students to guess what you did. For some languages this is an opportunity for students to use the formal ‘you’ form, which can be tricky to work into lesson plans. So students make guesses about what you did and you reply yes or no, or give a whole sentence answer - positive or negative -  to provide more listening input. As soon as they guess, say, five correct things, the starter is over.  2. Number sequence One for near beginners who can count to about 50. Read out a sequence of numbers and s...

One of the staples of my frenchteacher site is 'video listening'. These resources are worksheets linked to online video clips from various sources. I look for short clips of up to about 3-4 minutes, clear language and relevant content. The exercise I design for each video depends somewhat on the content, but in the example below I went for the simple 'questions in French' approach. An advantage of this is that it not only requires comprehension, but the ability to transcribe and adapt the language students here. (In contrast, questions in English require comprehension and translation/summary only.) For the hardest texts I might avoid QA in French since more effort is needed in the processing, so adding the burden of writing in French may overload students. It depends on the student, of course. Below is an example, unusually long in this case, but manageable, given the speed and level of language. I like this source since it relates to a francophone country outside mainl...