Skip to main content

Latest resources on frenchteacher

Here is a round-up of the resources I have added over the last month. My big focus at the moment is on listening for GCSE and A-level. These are instant, no preparation listening activities which you can read aloud or record. I now have a handful of tasks designed for Foundation Tier of your pupils are of that standard.

The A-level examples could also be used to practise the paraphrase task in the exam. Indeed, the latest resource, about prisons in France, has a model paraphrase in the answers section.

Here is the list of the new resources, with the most recent first:

Instant 30 minute listening. A-level -  "prisons in France". Source text for teachers to read or record, V/F/PM, single word gap-fill (no options) and an optional paraphrase task. All answers including model paraphrase supplied.
Instant 30 minute listening. A-level. Young people's interest in politics. You could use these for paraphrase work too.
Another in the series of 30 minute instant, no prep teacher-read listening tasks. This one is about describing a holiday. Short text, true/fasle/not mentioned and gap-fill. level: Foundation Tier GCSE (easy intermediate).
Another instant 30 minute GCSE listening task: topic school. Level: Foundation. With true/false/not mentioned and gap-fill.
Another in the series of instant 30 minute listening tasks. GCSE Foundation Tier (easy intermediate). Topic: My House.
Instant 30 minute listening task. Topic: describing a family. This one is aimed at Foundation Tier and has true/false and gap-fill. The teacher reads aloud or records the script. Go at the pace which suits the class, repeat as much as you want.
Instant 30 minute listening lesson - describing the film Lion. This is for Foundation Tier GCSE (easy intermediate). Teacher script, true/false and gap-film with a choice of words including two distractors.
Video listening. A thirty minute activity about the Front National based on a 1jour1question video from Milan Presse. Questions in French to answer and a few transcription/translation sentences based on the listening. This would make a good starter for a "rise of the right" sub-theme and politics in general.

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,