Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

 " Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others" ( Groucho Marx). I posted earlier this year two blogs, each one featuring 10 lesson starters which I think would work for many students at various levels. In this post, I'm going to offer ten more, partly using examples I've posted on frenchteacher.net. So, if you weren't keen on some of the first twenty, you might find a few here to add to your low-prep repertoire. Before I kick off, the other two posts are here and here . 1. True or false cultural facts For near-beginners, just display a series of statements on slides. Students must decide if the sentence is true or false. They can show their answers on mini-whiteboards. After each slide, follow up with any other relevant cultural facts. Examples I used in my slides for French were (translated into English): The capital of France is London. Montreal is in Belgium. In Switzerland they speak English. Marseille(s) is a city in France...

The government has just announced it will invest nearly £15 million in a new ‘centre of excellence’ for languages, with a larger number of hub schools than the current NCELP arrangement. The details are here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/millions-invested-in-language-lessons With just two years left of this dysfunctional government and a likely new Labour government, one wonders how far this initiative will get. But a key point to note that the new body, whether it be run by a “trust, university or business” will have to be aligned with the principles of the flawed TSC Review (Bauckham, 2016). This means sticking with the three ‘pillars’ of phonics, vocabulary and grammar, and a very explicit approach to language teaching. The new contract may be awarded again to the team at York University under Emma Marsden and Rachel Hawkes. They have already put in a mass of work on research and lessons. More broadly, it’s hard to see how a centre of excellence with a small number of hub sch...

This short blog is an adapted extract from Memory: What Every Language Teacher Should Know (Smith and Conti, 2021). Priming is an important concept to be aware of as a language teacher. In terms of general learning, priming is about the kind of unconscious 'triggers' which get you to remember or act in a particular way. For instance, you might happen to see a Facebook ad for a product, then the following day end up buying the same product without even remembering that you had seen the advert. You were primed to carry out an action. Or else you might find yourself using an expression a friend has used, without being aware that you had paid attention to it. In more detail, there are said to be two main types of priming which have powerful learning effects: Perceptual priming . When you see or hear something a second time you process it faster. Conceptual priming . The same as perceptual priming, except that the two things need to be related by meaning....

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 ...