Skip to main content

Everyday MFL

This is a plug for an excellent blog I was reminded of today while refreshing and weeding my list of French teacher blogs from around the world.

Everyday MFL is a rich source of very practical lesson ideas for language teachers. the anonymous author writes:

"The vision for this blog was to create something that MFL teachers can use. My hope is that the ideas are practical, adaptable and easy to use in your classroom. Perhaps, you will stumble across something you have never tried before that inspires and enthuses your students. Maybe, you will happen upon an idea long forgotten. Alternatively it might just be that something on here sparks your imagination and creativity into life."

Mission accomplished, I would suggest.

Recent posts include:
  • A comprehensive list of practical revision techniques, including ones entitled "last man standing bingo", "environmentally-friendly strip bingo" (nice!), vocab battles, dictation, collaborative mind maps and detailed advice on preparing for exam papers (from a teacher who clearly knows their stuff).
  • A ready-made Y9 lesson for talking about options for GCSE. Ideas for the lesson include providing a list of jobs and asking pupils to think how languages would be useful for them, getting pupils to list companies with connections to France, Spain and Germany, then talking about Brexit. Various short videos are provided to enhance the lesson.
  • A post covering a range of pedagogical issues including using 50/50 hands-up/no hands-up, the use of "core language sheets", "Find someone who" tasks and Snakes and Ladders oral board games to maximise target language use.


Here is one idea the author describes as follows:

How long can you keep it up for? 

"This one is all about conversation. Give groups of 3-4 students a series of cards with questions and maybe some support via a speaking mat if needed. Nominate a starting student. Explain that student 1 can question any of students 2,3, and 4. After 2,3 or 4 has answered then they have 3 options. The first is to ping the question back at person one. The second is to ask someone else the same question. The third is to ask another question of someone else. Tell the group they have to keep the conversation going as long as possible. Write up on the board the amount of minute and half-minutes they have managed to keep the conversation going in Spanish. I think some teachers call this group talk. It may well be that but I want the focus to be on the time aspect. They tend to feel more confident and sit taller when they realise they have just managed 5 minutes in Spanish together."

There are plenty more practical ideas you could try out, with examples being in Spanish, German and some French. I suggest you go and have a look if you'd like some more ideas for your repertoire.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What is the natural order hypothesis?

The natural order hypothesis states that all learners acquire the grammatical structures of a language in roughly the same order. This applies to both first and second language acquisition. This order is not dependent on the ease with which a particular language feature can be taught; in English, some features, such as third-person "-s" ("he runs") are easy to teach in a classroom setting, but are not typically fully acquired until the later stages of language acquisition. The hypothesis was based on morpheme studies by Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt, which found that certain morphemes were predictably learned before others during the course of second language acquisition. The hypothesis was picked up by Stephen Krashen who incorporated it in his very well known input model of second language learning. Furthermore, according to the natural order hypothesis, the order of acquisition remains the same regardless of the teacher's explicit instruction; in other words,

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).

La retraite à 60 ans

Suite à mon post récent sur les acquis sociaux..... L'âge légal de la retraite est une chose. Je voudrais bien savoir à quel âge les gens prennent leur retraite en pratique - l'âge réel de la retraite, si vous voulez. J'ai entendu prétendre qu'il y a peu de différence à cet égard entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Manifestation à Marseille en 2008 pour le maintien de la retraite à 60 ans © AFP/Michel Gangne Six Français sur dix sont d’accord avec le PS qui défend la retraite à 60 ans (BVA) Cécile Quéguiner Plus de la moitié des Français jugent que le gouvernement a " tort de vouloir aller vite dans la réforme " et estiment que le PS a " raison de défendre l’âge légal de départ en retraite à 60 ans ". Résultat d’un sondage BVA/Absoluce pour Les Échos et France Info , paru ce matin. Une majorité de Français (58%) estiment que la position du Parti socialiste , qui défend le maintien de l’âge légal de départ à la retraite à 60 ans,