frenchteacher

Three interesting reports

2012-01-28T21:11:00.000Z

https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RB184a.pdf

https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RB184b.pdf

https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RB184c.pdf

Dylan Wiliam tweeted these three studies about performance at KS3. I only have time to note a few points from the abstracts. You might find them interesting, particularly the reference to modern languages.

One finding:

Students were generally confident about their overall ability in Year 9 although there was some variation between subjects, with students being more confident of their ability in maths, science, sports and the arts than other subjects. They were least confident about their ability in modern languages. Boredom in lessons was reported by a substantial minority.

This does not surprise me and may simply reflect that language learning is inherently difficult given the demands it places on memory, attention to detail, mastery of grammatical patterns and oral/aural skills, not to mention the psychological challenges of speaking another tongue. It is a useful reminder to MFL teachers how difficult our subject area is and how sensitive we have to be to the fears of students. I genuinely believe that our job is one of the hardest in secondary schools. If you do not pitch lessons just right, handle students sensitively, reduce tension, create a positive and enjoyable environment, then you risk generating a negative attitude to the subject.

Here is another quotation:

Older students (autumn-born compared with summer-born) in a year group showed higher attainment and appeared to increase their advantage by making more progress over KS3.

I confess that I rarely take this into account when assessing a student's progress. It's a point worth remembering.

Time spent on homework, as reported by students, was a relatively strong predictor of better attainment and progress in all three core areas. Spending any amount of time was beneficial, but the strongest effects were for spending 2-3 hours per day after school.

This would, at first view, support the view that homework is useful. This is my view, despite the somewhat unconvincing evidence from some research, but one wonders about the causality involved here. A student who spends more time on homework may also benefit from other home advantages, greater general motivation and higher expectations. Is the greater time spent on homework a cause of higher achievement or a by-product of it? I still strongly support homework for modern languages because it gives the opportunity for greater practice and we know how inmportant practice is in the acquisition of a second language.

On pupils' "dispositions" in Y9:

- Attendance at pre-school (compared to none) had no influence on later dispositions in KS3.
- After background factors were taken into account there were few significant effects for the quality and effectiveness of pre-school on students’ dispositions in Year 9.

The key findings of these three reports are worth a look and highlight, not surprisingly, the importance of early years support and home background. They also indicate that the school environment is a key factor in pupil attainment including leadership from the headteacher, physical environment, support from teachers who care and resources.

Dylan Wiliam argues, of course, that teacher quality is the prime factor in student achievement and he could cite plenty of research to support that view. These three studies show, howver, that the school environment is not without importance.

Back to the A* issue

2012-01-27T17:56:00.000Z

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-24031437-pupils-say-non-to-languages-because-its-too-hard-to-get-an-a.do

Clare Seccombe kindly tweeted a link to the above article in the Evening Standard. It's the severe grading issue raising its head again, but especially the question of A* grades. We have known for a long time that at GCSE modern languages are the hardest subjects to achieve high grades in. At A-level the picture is similar, but with a particular issue with regard to A* grades. I won't go over old ground here, as I have blogged about this before, but I was browsing an old Ofsted report from our school the other day. It dated from 2000 and referred to GCSE results from the year before. French results were particularly good, with a third of our cohort of about 120 students getting A* grades (about 40 A* grades). Last year the equivalent figure was 12.

I find it surprising that the claim is made that standards have remained the same. It is not true. Because the number of pupils entering for MFL has fallen hugely over the last few years, following the decision to make MFL optional at key Stage 4, it has been hard for the exam boards and the monitoring body (now Ofqual) to maintain the same standard for each grade. There are relatively more able students taking languages and far fewer less able candidates. This trend has not been accounted for to a great enough extent. Essentially, it has got harder to achieve A* grades at GCSE. Alongside this, it is apparent that A* grades at A-Level in MFL are also too rare.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel for students and teachers of MFL at GCSE level. As the number of entries rises again with the advent of the Ebacc, then maybe we shall see a gradual return to the patterns of the late nineties.

It is so disappointing that we cannot trust the Ofqual and exam board statisticians to get things right.

Fischer's Ghost in Saltaire

2012-01-27T17:29:00.000Z

A picture from our last gig at the Countess of Rosse in Saltaire, near Bradford. Strat on bass, me on drums, Dot on vocals, Ged on vocals and rhythm guitar, Mick on lead guitar.

Rehearsal at Follifoot Towers:

http://www.myspace.com/fischersghost

Pourquoi les Anglais ont gardé le triple A

2012-01-24T17:25:00.000Z

Je reproduis un article d'Eric le Boucher paru sur slate.fr. Il s'intitule Leçons Anglaises et il explique très clairement les avantages et les bémols de la politique d'austérité (relative) menée par la coalition de David Cameron.

"Du Royaume-Uni, il est possible de répondre à deux questions posées dans le contexte de l'élection présidentielle en France.
1. Est-il intéressant de quitter l'euro et de dévaluer de 25% sa monnaie, comme l'a été la livre sterling? La réponse est non.
2. Concernant l'austérité, faut-il agir très vite et très fort ou mieux vaut-il attendre, comme le suggèrent les keynésiens, que la conjoncture soit meilleure? La réponse, dans le contexte européen, est que l'austérité immédiate est meilleure.
David Cameron fait mieux que Nicolas Sarkozy. Accessoirement, cela explique pourquoi la Grande-Bretagne a conservé son triple A, contrairement à la France, malgré des résultats aussi mauvais dans les deux pays.

Lors des élections législatives en Grande-Bretagne, il y a deux ans, le déficit budgétaire (11% du PIB) est au centre des débats. Tout tourne autour des nécessaires coups de hache dans les dépenses. Les conservateurs de David Cameron proposent de frapper très fort. Effectifs et salaires de la fonction publique, budgets des ministères... tout y passe sauf la santé. La stratégie politique était claire: faire le ménage rapidement pour que les bénéfices commencent à se voir la quatrième année, celle de l'échéance électorale suivante.

D'un point de vue économique, les choses sont également claires. Annoncer l'austérité avant que les marchés ne vous y conduisent les mains dans le dos est une politique préventive qui paie. Autre avantage, la rigueur fiscale permet à la banque centrale d'être plus accommodante dans sa politique monétaire.

Enfin, les conservateurs veulent engager un changement complet de la croissance britannique, trop tournée vers l'endettement, et donc abaisser la demande (notamment par une hausse de la TVA). Cette chute sera compensée, espèrent-ils, par le regain des exportations, la livre ayant perdu 25 % de la valeur depuis 2007.

David Cameron a été élu. Sa politique est-elle un succès? Non. La croissance est stagnante (0,7% ou 0,9% attendu cette année après une récession au creux de l'hiver), le chômage est en hausse dangereuse, à 8,4%, le déficit est encore de 8% en 2011.

Le premier ministre a été pris, comme tout le monde, dans la rechute mondiale sensible depuis le printemps dernier et dans la crise de la zone euro. Conséquence: la demande interne a effectivement baissé. La hausse de la TVA (de 17,5% à 20% au 1er janvier 2011) a ajouté ses effets à celle du prix de l'essence pour donner une inflation de plus de 5%. Comme les salaires étaient contenus, la consommation a reculé.
La déception vient des exportations: rien n'a bougé. La dévaluation n'a pas eu d'effet. Pourquoi? Le gouvernement accuse le plongeon de la zone euro, qui reste le principal client (40% des ventes). Sans doute, mais on ne vend que ce qu'on fabrique: la Grande-Bretagne exporte des services (dont la finance, mais son activité est en fort recul), mais elle dispose d'une base industrielle trop réduite et pas assez musclée pour l'export.

Et les investissements restent décevants: pourquoi bâtir des capacités quand il y en a déjà trop en Europe? Pour la France, qui rêve de réindustrialisation, la leçon anglaise s'appelle prudence. Cela prend du temps. Optimistes à leur habitude, les Britanniques disent encore au moins deux ou trois ans.
Entre-temps, l'économie souffre et les effets de la crise ne s'effacent pas...

Mais l'austérité a convaincu les marchés. «Le gouvernement a réussi à crédibiliser sa politique budgétaire», assure Nick Bate, de Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Sa Majesté a conservé son triple A et le Trésor britannique paie des taux d'intérêt aussi bas que les Allemands. Et ce malgré le déficit persistant. La politique de la Banque d'Angleterre d'achat des titres d'Etat l'explique en grande partie. Mais cette prouesse en dit long sur les énormes avantages d'être préventif... comme, aussi, sur la cote d'amour des investisseurs de la City pour le pays qui les accueille.

En vérité, si la conjoncture mondiale ne s'était pas rétablie (à la suite des Etats-Unis) depuis deux mois, David Cameron, dans la récession, aurait eu bien du mal. Heureusement, tout s'améliore un peu à l'extérieur comme à l'intérieur avec une inflation qui reculera à 2 % fin 2012. Les ménages soulagés, la consommation restera le moins poussif moteur de l'économie britannique.

The simplest no-preparation lesson in the world

2012-01-21T15:58:00.001Z

Tell the class you are going to do a huge vocab quiz with 100 questions. You then, at some speed, read to them items of vocabulary they have covered in the last, say, four weeks. You pitch the vocab so that some is very easy, some is harder and a few are more obscure. Say each word twice and tell the class that if they cannot get any, not to worry, just wait for the next word. They write down the meanings in English. Top three scores get merits.

The task takes about 30 minutes with corrections.

Part of me feels guilty at even suggesting that this might be a good lesson. All I can say is that pupils concentrate very hard, are listening to French non-stop for nearly half an hour and are made to recall a wide range of vocab which you can adjust to their level. They say they like it too. It's interesting how results correlate well with general ability at MFL, showing how important memory is in second language learning.

I welcome comments. Tell me why this is not a good, very occasional lesson.

Jeu de mots

2012-01-20T18:29:00.000Z

Philippe Watrelot, dans son excellent blog sur l'éducation, raconte les progrès d'un projet de loi sur l'enseignement de l'abstinence dans les écoles anglaises. Il faut son post lire jusqu'au dernier mot.....

"Tintin en Angleterre
Le Parlement britannique examine vendredi un projet de loi visant à imposer des cours sur l'abstinence aux jeunes filles de 13 à 16 ans nous apprend la rubrique Big Browser du site Le Monde.fr La députée conservatrice qui mène cette proposition, Nadine Dorries, une élue conservatrice du Mid Bedfordshire, a expliqué en mai vouloir lutter contre les dérives d'une société "saturée de sexe", et aider les jeunes filles à considérer que l'abstinence peut être "cool".
Pour Mme Dorries, citée par le Guardian, il s'agit de gagner un "combat permanent" contre "le taux incroyablement élevé d'activité sexuelle et de natalité chez les adolescents." Sa solution, "c'est d'apprendre l'option de l'abstinence à nos filles et à nos garçons, la possibilité de simplement dire 'non', ceci dans le cadre des cours d'éducation sexuelle obligatoires". Les positions vigoureusement défendues par Mme Dorries ont provoqué un débat houleux en Grande-Bretagne mais le projet de loi a peu de chances d'être adopté sans le soutien des principaux partis, et il devrait capoter…"

A case for some grammar-translation

2012-01-18T17:57:00.000Z

It's a curiosity that translation from English into French remains part of the GCE A2 level examination, but has not ever featured at GCSE. I am one of those teachers, like most I imagine, who practises the translation of sentences or passages in class. I have plenty of examples of such sentences on the frenchteacher.net site and I believe they are used a good deal. How useful is prose translation and what do students think of it?

I asked my AS group of 17 students what they thought of some work we did today, translating sentences into French to practise reflexive verbs in various tenses. Almost to a person, they were enthusiastic about it and told me why. They said:

It helps you perfect your grammar
It makes you think about the details of the written language
It builds up your vocabulary
It makes you analyse the language

I agree with them and would add, on reflection, that it also appeals to the puzzle-solving side of our brains. We had a discussion about the pros and cons of translating into the foreign language and they, like me, thought that it was a good idea in moderation. Too much of it, and you would get less experience of listening, conversation and general comprehension. I still am happy to accept that the real key to competence and fluency in the long run is masses of "comprehensible input", as Stephen Krashen called it.

Grammar-translation is, of course, that practice we inherited from the teaching of Latin and which dominated classrooms for decades up to the 1960s. It led to lazy, uncreative, often dull teaching. It had no basis in language learning theory, yet many teachers continue to practise it in moderation for the reasons listed above. It maintains its place in A-Level exams, largely out of tradition, no doubt, but also, I suspect, because exam boards and teachers feel it makes us give sufficient attention to the detailed practice of grammatical structures. A well-designed sentence can test a wide range of grammatical knowledge very reliably and efficiently. It may be argued, of course, that by translating in a word-for-word fashion we are encouraging a false view of language structure, but this is where balance comes into play. It has to be used judiciously when a structure needs particular practice, when the structure differs significantly from English (e.g. vouloir que + subjunctive; depuis + present tense) or in the lead up to exams when you know certain structures will be tested. Repeated, rigorous practice of common problems leads to competence and the ability to spot structural traps.

Would one do less prose translation if it were not in the exam? Possibly, but I would still make a case for it for the reasons already given. As a language teacher you need to balance theory with pragmatism, and practice seems to show that translation into the foreign language is useful, provides transferable knowledge and is enjoyed by students.

Formative assessment and language teaching

2012-01-14T18:10:00.000Z

Our department has been buzzing a bit more than usual following our training with Dylan Wiliam last week. Most of us have been trying out a few techniques or tweaking our practice a little to make sure all students are positively engaged. I'd like to make one or two observations about AfL (otherwise known as formative assessment), however.

The "no hands up" approach poses problems for us. True, if you impose no hands-up, you are likely to engage a wider range of pupils, but this comes at the cost of pace and at the cost of stretching the most able in the class, who enjoy putting themselves forward and who benefit from doing so. I would argue for compromise in this area, by judiciously allowing hands up, but having sections of lessons with no hands up. Interestingly, Professor Wiliam pointed out to us that the act of raising your hand to answer makes you smarter. Interesting.

Another approach which was recommended to us, and which makes some sense, is allowing students longer to answer questions. We have consciously worked on this. It is so easy, isn't it, to maintain pace by sacrificing the opportunity for the less able to think through an answer. I have been guilty of this in the past, but will allow weaker pupils more time in the future.

However, I do not support the use of equally hard questions for all students, as recommended by Professor Wiliam. So no lolly sticks or random name generators for me, I'm afraid. My instincts tell me to differentiate questions to some extent. As language teachers we depend on careful selection and grading of questions and I shall continue to aim the toughest questions at the most able.

As regards pair and group talk I have always set plenty of pair work - notably using guessing games, information gap tasks, battleships etc, but I am now inclined to get pairs to discuss conceptual issues like tenses and endings. Simply asking pairs to spend a minute working out a definition of the infinitive, or asking them to figure out how regular -er verbs work in the present tense, involves more students in their learning. On a few occasions this week I found myself saying "You've got two minutes - go!" Not rocket science, I know, but you get stuck in your ways after a while!

We have also been doing a bit more checking of progress within the lesson. We have noted, however, that getting kids to put their thumbs up has its limitations, as children will naturally tend to want to please you, even when they do not fully understand. I have to remind myself how often out classes do not understand what we say in the target language. It really is worth checking with students quite regularly whether they understood what you were saying. They appreciate it and you get a better relationship as a result. Not sure whether I shall go down the coloured cups or traffic lights route, but there is a very important principle involved. (If you haven't heard of the cups, you give each student a green, red and yellow plastic cup. If they are following the work they show the green cup on top, if they are lost they show the red cup, if they are a bit uncertain, they show the amber cup.)

Student involvement is very important in lessons, but for effective language learning to take place, lots of listening is needed, so the teacher will have to take a prominent role and talk quite a lot. If we do not supply plenty of TL from our own voices, the computer or the CD, we are letting our students down.

Dylan Wiliam talked a good deal about effective questioning too. This is a tricky one for us, since our questioning is of a very particular type. We ask questions to practise structures and vocabulary as much as to elicit meaning. We should not worry about repetitive drilling and repetition; these are important for the embedding of linguistic competence. In language teaching we exploit the behaviourist dimension more than in other subjects. This is especially true of the early stages. It requires a brisk pace and instant responses, not necessarily a reflective, slow answer.

So, in sum, there are some really good lessons to be learned about formative assessment techniques, but I would suggest that we adapt them to our own personalities and instincts, and that, even more important, we bear in mind what we already know about how language learning takes place.

Frenchteacher updates

2012-01-12T23:19:00.001Z

The main additions to the site are to be found on the A-Level page. I have made a few minor changes to the AS oral booklet to take account of recent technological changes. I have posted a few more gap fill and matching tasks to existing resources, using Taskmagic 3, which I continue to find extremely useful. There is a brand new text and activities on computer games, plus some grammar sheets on the subjunctive.

I have also posted a simple information gap task focusing on the perfect tense and aimed primarily at Y9 pupils (though it could be used with Y8 or Y10 too).

I endeavour to keep the links pages up to date, but welcome any additions which I may have missed.

I have an A-Level student redesigning the frenchteacher.net site at the moment and I intend for parts of it to be accessible by subscription in May. My aim will be to charge a relatively small amount for an annual subscription with a commitment on my part to regularly add new resources whilst updating existing ones. I hope users will consider these resources very good value when compared with other published materials.

http://www.frenchteacher.net

Dernières nouvelles de l'Hermione

2012-01-07T16:13:00.000Z

Le chantier de l'Hermione à l'arsenal de Rochefort - image: Sud Ouest

Depuis plusieurs années nous suivons la construction de l'Hermione à Rochefort avec intérêt. Voici les toutes dernières nouvelles selon Sud Ouest:

"À Rochefort, l'immense chantier de « L'Hermione » va bon train. Ici, chacun attend d'apercevoir le grand navire en bois qui, en 1780, permit à La Fayette de traverser l'Atlantique pour rejoindre l'Amérique. Cette reconstruction à l'identique était jusqu'alors dissimulée sous un chapiteau immense, recouvrant la forme de radoub - pour l'heure asséchée - où se trouve le bateau. Le 3 janvier, l'effeuillage a donc commencé. Il s'achèvera le 11 février, date à laquelle le chapiteau aura entièrement disparu au profit d'un chantier à ciel ouvert. Cela fait, les visites pourront reprendre.
Après avoir posé et peint la figure de proue en décembre, les artisans poursuivent leur œuvre. Ils tâcheront de la rendre élégante pour la grande fête des 6, 7 et 8 juillet, qui correspondra à la mise à l'eau de la frégate. En attendant, il s'agira de sortir le bateau de la forme de radoub Louis XV à l'occasion des festivités. Des bateaux-portes serviront à cela avant la pose des gréements. Une baignade pourra donc avoir lieu dans la Charente le 6 juillet. Elle sera de courte durée, puisque « L'Hermione » rejoindra la forme Napoléon III dès le lendemain.
Cet été, la frégate sera encore loin de sa première sortie, jusqu'à l'île d'Aix (été 2013), et des premiers essais véritables en mer (automne 2014). Enfin, mai 2015 sonnera l'heure du départ vers le grand large… Direction les côtes américaines, sur les traces de La Fayette.
Ce chantier a déjà attiré 3,4 millions de visiteurs en quinze ans. Pour la population, ainsi que pour l'équipe du chantier et les 6 000 adhérents de l'association - financeurs de ce projet -, la mise à l'eau sera un événement unique et historique, qui devrait réunir près de 60 000 visiteurs."

Dylan Wiliam

2012-01-07T10:26:00.004Z

I enjoyed one of the best training days in my career yesterday. Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, did a lengthy presentation which had the following structure: firstly, he laid out a wide range of research evidence which leads to the firm conclusion that to raise standards you should focus on improving individual teachers, rather than schools. Secondly, he arued that teachers get better by using assessment for learning more effectively. He prefers the term formative assessment. Thirdly, he went on to present a range of ideas or tricks which can improve formative assessment and therefore pupil achievement.

Much of this will be familiar to those who have read any of Dylan Wiliams' articles or books. It was nonetheless a convincing argument which chimes with a gut feeling I have held for years, namely that it is not systems, organisation, academies, selection and the like which hold the key to improvement; it is getting teachers to be more effective.

A couple of observations, however: the current emphasis on assessment for learning is very useful, but it is not the only way of looking at teacher effectiveness. In the past there have other attempts to pin down what makes a good teacher. You can analyse, for example, the intervention types of teachers as well as the role of teacher personality. Ultimately, as Wiliam acknowledged, you cannot distill what makes a good teacher.

Another observation I would make is this: Wiliam relies on his vast knowledge of research and data to make his arguments. He compares education researchers to climate scientists and argues that our knowledge on pupil achievement is as settled as climate change science. I am not so sure about this. Is social science research as reliable as hard science? No. In twenty years from now we shall be saying more or less the same about climate change; I bet the same will not be true of education.

I recommend Dylan Wiliam's site:

http://www.dylanwiliam.net

Paris

2012-01-05T22:04:00.001Z

We just got back from our short trip to Paris. We stayed in a pretty little apartment in Montmartre just off the Rue Abbesses. We seemed to get through a lot in two and a half days: the Musée de l'Orangerie with Monet's water lilies was the highlight, but we also took in the Père Lachaise cemetery, the Quartier Latin, the Eiffel Tower and two lovely movies about movies which I thoroughly recommend: The Artist and Hugo (called Hugo Cabret in French). If you are at all a film buff see these films! Okay, if you are a film buff you've probably seen them already. The first picture is from the top of the Eiffel Tower. It looks like the Earth is being phasered from space, but it's just the projector from the top of the tower pointing towards the Sacré Coeur. the second shows yours truly with wife and son.

Now, here's an odd one. The film Hugo Cabret is really all about Georges Méliès, the pioneer of French

cinema (think of that image of a rocket stuck in the moon) . We subsequently came across his tomb in Père Lachaise and couldn't resist the photo. Is that weird? We resisted smiling.

And finally, here is Oscar Wilde's unusual tomb:

The longest day?

2012-01-05T20:50:00.000Z

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8993039/Labour-call-for-a-longer-school-day-in-education-overhaul.html

Labour's shadow education minister Stephen Twigg is reported to be in favour of lengthening the school day. Some Free Schools and academies are said to be doing the same, or experimenting with the school week in other ways. Michael Gove would seem to be in favour, or at least in favour of experimentation.

http://www.inca.org.uk/documents/Table15Organisationofschoolyearandschoolday.pdf

When you look at international comparisons, England and Wales are not out of the mainstream. We do a higher than average number of days and a school day of probably about average length. (We are talking averages here: in my area schools finish as early as about 2.30 and as late as nearly 4.00.) The Germans are unusual in that they start very early at 7.30 and finish very early at 1.30. The French and Spanish finish quite late, which may be explained in part by their latitude and climatic factors.

One can see certain advantages to a longer day: the chance to include more in the curriculum, a greater range of activities (including more "extra-curricular"), the opportunity for more independent learning, including homework, which many children do not do even when they finish at 3.00 or earlier; finishing later may reduce anti-social behaviour after school and may suit parents as far as child care is concerned with younger children. Stephen Twigg argues that a longer day prepares children better for the 9-5 world of work.

On the other hand, the school day is demanding already, both on children and teachers. Do we wish to take away even more time from family life? If you add homework to a longer day, do we want to make school days a drudge? If the longer day is crammed with "academic" work, do we risk limiting a child's other social and extra-curricular activities?

I have observed the long French day for many years and have not been persuaded that you need to work beyond 4.00 at the very latest. I do see a case for limiting the amount of homework we sometimes impose on dedicated children. A slightly longer day would be a social leveller and allow the less dedicated to get things done at school. It may allow a little time for supervised private study too and a little less of the "factory approach" to education, as it is sometimes labelled.

And what about the teachers in all of this? Here is an international comparison of teaching hours from 2008.

http://www.teacherly.com/bruno/posts/6-Teaching-Hours-International-Comparison

Unfortunately there is no data for England and Wales, but you will note that the Scots feature very near the top. If you do your own calculation you will probably find we are not far from the top of that league. My French colleagues do significantly less than us.

I reckon we work too many hours already, so any length of school day would have to be accompanied by more teachers or supervisors. Is that going to happen in the current climate?

What can we learn from the Finns?

2011-12-30T17:08:00.003Z

This is a very good piece in The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/#.Tv3aqQ-SLlZ.twitter

Essentially it is argued that an educational system based on cooperation rather than competition, with no private schools, little accountability or inspection, no standardised tests or league tables, no streaming or tracking, well paid and highly qualified teachers, achieves better results than the American or British model. In answer to those critics who point out that Finland is a small, relatively wealthy and socially homogeneous nation with 600 000 pupils as opposed to the 7 million or so in England and Wales, the article cites evidence that other educational jurisdictions including Norway or some states in the USA, with similar levels of wealth and social homogeneity, still do less well. Norway's model, for example, is more like the American than the Finnish.

All this should lead us to question our own heavily bureaucratic system which tests children repeatedly and sets school against school, department against department, teacher against teacher. Has all the accountability we now see in Britain led to higher standards? My guess is that it has had some effect, but that (and this is a major hunch) our main problem remains one of social inequity, deprived areas and sink schools with moderate leadership and, I daresay, moderate teaching. If selective and private schools did not exist would we get, on average, higher attainment from our children? Would national sampling of performance, which is what the Finns do, be as useful as our highly detailed, school by school, pupil by pupil analysis?

On the other hand, could one argue that Finnish parents are not getting the same information and freedom as their British and US counterparts? Could their system be even better with a good dose of accountability? It is noteworthy that the French, whose comprehensive system has more in common with Finland's than with our own, are moving towards more assessment of teacher performance and accountability.

Just to add that the assumption that Finland is a high-achieving nation depends on the reliability of the PISA regime. PISA only measures a limited range of attainment types, not including, for example achievement in the arts, design and music. Furthermore, other educational jurisdictions in the far east with quite different approaches which we would not favour out-perform Finland.

I'm sure we can learn from the Finns and I worry that the rush to academies and free schools will do even more to pit school against school and tempt us back to selection. I also suggest that, whatever model you choose for your society, the most important factor remains the quality of leadership and teaching in each establishment. This depends on careful selection of candidates for teacher training, high quality training, good pay and conditions. In this respect, the Finns do well, demanding high academic standards of their teaching force and paying their teachers well.

Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Centre, has a blog with more on this.

http://www.pasisahlberg.com/blog/

Finally, fancy a tour of the Finnish education system?

http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-education-school-2011-12#finnish-children-dont-start-school-until-they-are-7-1

The oral approach

2011-12-29T11:27:00.000Z

Henry Sweet was one of the founders of a new way of teaching foreign languages early in the twentieth century, a century littered with methodological alternatives to the grammar-translation approach. Sweet, like Gouin in France, believed that speech was more important than the written word and that languages should be taught primarily using the spoken word. The approach which subsequently developed was not a "direct method" as such since the oral approach assumed careful selection and gradation of target language input. It was strongly teacher-led, discouraged formal teaching of grammatical structures, preferring the notion that students would pick up rules from the skilled presentation and practice provided by the teacher.
The appraoch was also situational in that structures would be practised within a meaningful situational context, for example, family life.

Central to the approach is the use of repetition and question and answer in the classroom, along with contextual clues such as gesture, realia and visual aids. The IWB may have largely replaced flashcards and the OHP, but the principle is the same. Pair and group work are allowed for, but structured drilling should precede freer practice.

The approach is primarily structural rather than communicative, but there is clearly a strong communicative element to the traditional approach.

The principles of the oral approach are used, often instinctively, by teachers. who did not explicitly learn it. Nowadays, in this post-methods era, as it is sometimes refered to, many teachers adopt a pragmatic approach mixing elements of the oral, communicative, audio-lingual and grammar-translation approaches. This probably makes sense, particularly in view of the fact that students learn in different ways.

Does theoretical research support the use of the strict oral approach? Well, to the extent that natural acquisition requires considerable meaningful input in the target language, then yes. But there is no theoretical support for the view that conscious practice of structures and vocabulary leads to internalisation of rules. Children learning their mother tongue do not acquire language in this fashion. Experience suggests, however, that structured practice does lead to progress and that the oral approach works with many learners.

2012 - an interesting year to come

2011-12-26T17:39:00.002Z

As the year comes to a close there are exciting things ahead for your blogger. By August 2012 I shall be a retired French teacher, missing many aspects of the job, no doubt, but being a shade relieved that the day to day stresses will be over. My post as Head of Modern Languages is currently being advertised on the Ripon Grammar School website and will appear in the Times Ed in the new year. No doubt I shall reflect more on looming retirement in future posts, so enough of that.

Professionally I shall be devoting more time to the frenchteacher.net website, with the aim of making it a minor commercial venture by May. Not so much a business, more a paid hobby, I hope. I shall also be trying to ensure that the department is all totally in order for my successor who will inherit a talented and enthusiastic team. Being Head of MFL at RGS really is a tremendous privilege. I shall continue to keep close contact with the teacher networks such as mflresources, TES Connect and the MFL "twitterati". We also look forward to our French partner school exchange group arriving at Easter. I very much hope this partnership will continue.

I also have an idea brewing which could lead to some kind of practical guide for MFL teachers. Before I became a HoD in 1988 I had thought that I might get involved with teacher training at some point, but then the demand for such posts dried up almost completely as the nature of PGCE training altered to become more school-based. This desire to share experience and knowledge has stayed with me to some extent, so I might put something together with this in mind. Frenchteacher.net has fulfilled this interest to a large extent, but I may also put together an online guide or even publish something for MFL teachers and trainees via the frenchteacher.net site. An alternative would be some research on the history of MFL teaching in the UK, something I have posted about previously. My stock of old text books is building up and I have lately found a renewed interest in methodology. I have a feeling that methodology is being neglected these days and that in this pragmatic, eclectic, "post methods" era, we may have become too laissez faire.

I may also keep my hand in with some examining, but we'll see about that. I hope I'll be too busy with other things.

On a personal level my wife and are looking forward to trips to Paris, London and Prague, as well as returning to our house in the Charente Maritime département. When August comes we shall free to spend more time in France and elsewhere, as far as family and musical commitments here in Harrogate allow. I also hope to read more, exercise more and improve my drumming skills.

Many thanks for dropping in for a read and tolerating my self-indulgence. If you do not have your own blog, but would like to post something here to do with French, France or MFL teaching, just contact me, as I am thinking of having the occasional guest blog post.

A happy new year to all and I shall endeavour to find some worthwhile things to write about, both in English and French, in 2012.

Latest primary languages news

2011-12-23T13:05:00.000Z

http://changing-phase.blogspot.com/2011/12/slightly-appeased.html

What's going on with primary modern languages? Many teachers in the field would like to know as things have been "on hold" for some time. Although things are still a bit up in the air, Clare Seccombe has posted a very good summary of what has emerged so far from the National Curriculum review. Look at the table she has posted summarising what should be taught at key Stages 1 and 2.

I remain on the sceptical side of primary languages. In Ripon there has been pretty good coverage of French at KS2, but the pupils I encounter in Year 7 seem to be at no great advantage when compared with those I taught twenty years ago. They have acquired some vocabulary, variable pronunciation habits and a degree of enthusiasm (thankfully), but the time allocated to French at primary means that significant progression is limited. Their knowledge is not strongly embedded and they have little or no writing skills. I am sure that my enthusiastic primary colleagues would acknowledge that this is the case. When I look at Clare's table I am struck by how crowded that KS2 curriculum looks and I do not see where sufficient time is going to be made available for MFL to make it very worthwhile.

While reading the Jack Richards and Theodore Rodgers book on Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (Cambridge), I noted one point from the research: it is not so much quantity of input which produces progress, but rather quality (which I take to mean good quality models, clever selection and grading, good methods). Now, I cannot see how this can be produced at KS2 without a large investment in skills and without making sacrifices in other areas of the primary curriculum. I fear we shall continue to pay lip service to real progress in MFL at KS2. If we really meant business, we would be allocating at least three slots a week with specialist teaching and a syllabus based not just on vocabulary, but on simple structures, as well as cultural elements. The realities of spending cuts mean that we shall soldier on with current provision at best.

Le top 50 des verbes français

2011-12-20T22:41:00.001Z

1. Être
2. Avoir
3. Faire
4. Dire
5. Pouvoir
6. Aller
7. Voir
8. Savoir
9. Vouloir
10.Venir
11. Falloir
12. Devoir
13. Croire
14. Trouver
15. Donner
16. Prendre
17. Parler
18. Aimer
19. Passer
20. Mettre
21. Demander
22. Tenir
23. Sembler
24. Laisser
25. Rester
26. Penser
27. Entendre
28. Regarder
29. Répondre
30. Rendre
31. Connaître
32. Paraître
33. Arriver
34. Sentir
35. Attendre
36. Vivre
37. Chercher
38. Sentir
39. Comprendre
40. Porter
41. Devenir
42. Entrer
43. Retenir
44. Écrire
45. Appeler
46. Tomber
47. Reprendre
48. Commencer
49. Suivre
50. Montrer

Source: CNRS and http://monsu.desiderio.free.fr/atelier/freqverb.html

IPSOS-Mori survey finds teachers generally positive about controlled assessment

2011-12-18T20:51:00.000Z

http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/downloads/category/136-other-research?download=1164%3Aevaluation-of-the-introduction-of-controlled-assessment. (Report dated October 2011.)

.... although French teachers are less positive than most, mentioning in particular two aspects: firstly, the fact that rote learning plays such a large role in the production of controlled assessments (p.26); secondly, that there are many practical problems in carrying them out, notably the demands for cover staff whilst orals are being carried out. The survey/report does suggest that the modern language controlled assessments need looking at.

I was surprised to find little reference to the issue of reliability of assessment (i.e. cheating). Although respondents said that they could not control what sources were used by students, the issue is not dealt with in the conclusions.

All in all, it is not the kind of damning report that critics of CA would like to have seen, me included. I imagine Michael Gove may have welcomed something more critical too. It remains to be seen if controlled assessment stays in place over the long term. For the time being it has a stay of execution, but I believe we shall see more schools opting for alternative certificates, such as the new one on offer from AQA.

Maxime Le Forestier

2011-12-17T12:33:00.004Z

Au fil des ans, mes deux chanteurs préférés français, tant pour l'écoute à la maison qu'en cours, ont été Maxime Le Forestier et Francis Cabrel. J'ai découvert Maxime Le Forestier, quand j'étais assistant à Montauban en 1977-8. C'était son apogée, cette époque où la radio passait des chansons telles que San Francisco et Un arbre dans la Ville. J'aimais sa voix pure et la simplicité de ses chansons. Il a continué à faire des enregistrements au cours des années et j'ai apprécié certains albums plus récents, Passer ma route et L'Écho des Étoiles. La clarté de sa voix fait de lui un bon choix pour la classe aussi, donc j'espère que ma classe A2 a apprécié un peu de l'ancien et du plus récent, l'autre jour. Youtube rend l'utilisation du chant dans la classe plus stimulante aussi. Voici deux extraits de Le Forestier. Dans le premier il parle de ses amis de la «Maison Bleue» de San Francisco et la vie en Amérique et en France à cette époque; le second, c'est Maxime qui chante la chanson magnifique Les chevaux rebelles en 2002. Ecoutez cette voix fabuleuse!

Does learning languages make kids smarter?

2011-12-15T23:24:00.002Z

http://www.multilingualliving.com/2011/05/04/learn-languages-make-bilingual-kids-multilingual-kids-smarter-bialystok-petitto/

If you have 28 minutes to spare, have a look at this interesting discussion featuring the eminent Canadian researchers Ellen Bialystok, whose speciality is bilingualism and intelligence, and Laura-Ann Petitto, a neuroscientist. The discussion is pitched at the intelligent layman, but is certainly of interest to foreign language teachers.

The title of this post is simplistic, of course, though Bialystok does state that any stimulating mental activity is good for front brain development, so bilingualism is certainly good for you. She points out that twenty tears ago we would not have been asking if it was good for you, but rather is it bad for you. Times have changed.

Another useful point made by Petitto is that very young learners are better at picking up syntax and phonological patterns, but that vocabulary is equally well acquired by humans of all ages. Does this suggest that we should be focusing more on vocabulary with adolescent learners? She also explains that we should not automatically assume that adults are inferior language learners. If we had five years of solid input at the right level (which is what babies and toddlers get), we would be just as fluent. She also states that sheer quantity of input is not the key. Quality is more important - perhaps an argument against the "natural" or "direct" method and a case for structured input. This corresponds with the common sense exercised by teachers.

Does bilingualism make kids smarter? Depends what you mean by smart, but Petitto does quote evidence that youngsters from lower socio-economic groups, when exposed to bilingual education, improve their abilities in a range of processing tasks. Otherwise, the evidence is not clear, perhaps because we do not have a clear definition of intelligence.

WatchKnowLearn

2011-12-11T12:22:00.000Z

http://www.watchknowlearn.org/Category.aspx?CategoryID=99

Thanks to Isabelle Jones for tweeting this link.

This looks a very useful resource for language educators. They have brought together videos on foreign language learning, along with many other subject areas, and put them all in one place.

This is what they say:

"Imagine hundreds of thousands of great short videos, and other media, explaining every topic taught to school kids. Imagine them rated and sorted into a giant Directory, making them simple to find. WatchKnowLearn is a non-profit online community devoted to this goal."

There is a strongly hierarchical structure to the site with the main languages category broken down into separate languages (e.g. French), then with further sub-categories (e.g. song, grammar, sounds, basic vocabulary). Each of these categories is then broken down further. For example, within the French grammar section you get adjectives, gender, imperfect tense and so on. Not sure this makes for very easy navigation, but I daresay you get used to it. All the videos I saw come from Youtube, but I do see the point of putting them all in one place.

There are no ads on the site and there is a full screen mode, since each video is, as far as I can see, linked straight to Youtube.

WatchKnowLearn is a non-profit organisation. For more detailed information go here.

A discredited exam system?

2011-12-09T17:44:00.003Z

The revelations in the Daily Telegraph about improper practice at examination meetings raise a number of questions. Firstly, let's not pretend that there is anything new in individual examiners overstepping the mark at meetings when advising teachers about how to get the best marks in GCSE and GCE exams. Off the cuff comments about the ease of exams or advice to teachers about what to teach or emphasise may be too careless, but are not necessarily symptomatic of a deeper issue. Examiners have been saying this kind of thing for years. They are nearly all practising or former teachers, so their inclination is to support colleagues as far as possible. As exam boards have become less aloof and keen to offer better customer service, examiners will occasionally overdo it. They are only human.

No, the real issue here is the one which other commentators and teachers have raised: the commercialisation of the exam system. Exam boards are competing for schools' business and there is serious money involved. Boards sponsor text books which teach to their syllabus and teachers shop around to be with the board which not only has the most suitable specification, but which also gives the most generous grades. You only have to trawl the professional forums for a while to find teachers talking of switching boards for better grades.

Despite the efforts of Ofqual and the JQC (Joint Qualification Council) there are issues about the relative value of grades from board to board. That's not to say that the exam boards are deliberately lowering standards, but they do give increasing levels of support to teachers as part of their service and with the aim of keeping them as loyal customers. Yes, customers.

There is a way of taking away the profit motive from the boards and to clean up what is a somewhat discredited system. We could have one single examination board offering a range of specifications to ensure the choice which teachers rightly value. I believe it is desirable that not every A-Level French student should study the same prescribed list of authors or topics. So why not allow the one board to offer, say, three alternative specifications? One could offer a prescribed list of texts or topics (à la WJEC), another could allow teachers more freedom (like AQA or Edexcel) and a third might offer a specification more weighted to language with less cultural content.

The government and Ofqual are right to be looking at this issue. It is not new, but the Telegraph story, albeit a little over-heated, may bring it into sharper focus.

Poor exam marking

2011-12-07T22:18:00.001Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16067541

Ofqual reported today a very significant rise in the number of re-marks and re-grades in this year's GCE and GCSE examinations. The rise is partly explained, say Ofqual, by a rise in the number of units being taken. This does not explain the rise of re-marks and re-grades at A-Leve. Whatever, any practising secondary school teacher knows, from plenty of anecdotal evidence, that standards of marking are too variable and may be declining. At my own school this year we had particular issues with AS level history and GCSE French and German.

In French we sent off 15 writing scripts for re-mark and 12 went up by a few UMS points, in two cases leading to higher grades. A small number of our German GCSE students saw UMS points rises of at least 10.

The standard of marking is just not good enough and means teachers lose faith in the examination system. The quality of examiners must be questionable, training and standardisation may be inadequate, and checking by team leaders may need tightening up. In the meantime, schools and students are paying large sums for re-marks because the boards are not competent enough.

The situation with GCSE modern languages was bordering on the farcical this year with severe and erratic marking of writing controlled assessments. Recent feedback meetings run by AQA have been attended by many confused and angry teachers.

Although I see this issue from my own, narrow perspective, I would tentatively
suggest that online standardisation is inadequate, more checking of performance by team leaders is needed and, in languages at GCSE, a wholesale re-working of the assessment regime is called for. Furthermore, if it proves too hard to mark essays accurately, then perhaps more objective forms of assessment should be considered. I would also add, finally, that Ofqual need to be more transparent about how they allocate grades. We pick up snippets here and there about how, for example, they use KS2 data when fixing the grade outcomes. So much for criterion referencing. We really should be told more about these things. After all, schools and taxpayers pay their salaries.

BFI Ciné-Minis

2011-12-06T22:39:00.001Z

http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/teaching/cineminis/

Just came across this site via Serena Dawson on Twitter. The BFI has some French short movies on DVD with accompanying teaching ideas. In theory the material is aimed at KS2 and KS3, but the one film I watched (via Youtube) could be used with older students.

There is a DVD to buy with all dozen or so shorts, but at least two of them are on Youtube. I watched StrictEternum, a quirky eight minute film with clues leading you to the amusing dénouement. The "lesson plan" to go with it would make sense with, say, Y8 through to Y10.

Well worth a look.

Un nouveau paquebot "France"?

2011-12-06T17:55:00.003Z

Article tiré de Yahoo Actualités:

"Le projet de construction d'un nouveau paquebot France se concrétise peu à peu. La troisième phase d'études vient en effet d'être lancée par Didier Spade, patron d'une société parisienne de bateaux de luxe qui se démène depuis trois ans pour reconstruire le mythique navire lancé il y a 50 ans aux chantiers navals de Saint-Nazaire. Après deux études portant sur la conception du navire et la répartition des espaces - réalisé toutes deux par les chantiers STX de Saint-Nazaire -, cette nouvelle phase porte sur l'aménagement intérieur du paquebot et la gastronomie à bord. Le célèbre chef Alain Ducasse s'est d'ailleurs associé au projet.
La construction est désormais envisagée pour 2013. Elle pourrait s'effectuer aux chantiers nazairiens, comme le souhaitent Didier Spade et STX. La mise à l'eau, elle, aurait lieu en 2015.

350 millions d'euros à trouver

Image du futur paquebot (Yahoo)

« Ce sera un paquebot très différent du premier France, relate l'entrepreneur. Refaire une copie serait un sacrilège. Et puis les temps ont changé. » Long de 260 m, le navire sera doté de 300 cabines pour une capacité de 640 passagers. Il serait équipé de 2 piscines, 8 restaurants, une douzaine de salons et bars, un spa en duplex, une salle de spectacle, une palmeraie... Il effectuerait des croisières de luxe avec escales.
Le projet est évalué à 350 millions d'euros. « Le financement ne me fait pas peur car il y a de nombreux investisseurs prêts à placer leur argent dans une telle réalisation porteuse d'une image internationale très forte », croit Didier Spade."

Audio Lingua

2011-12-01T18:24:00.000Z

http://www.audio-lingua.eu

This is rather good! This site offers a large archive of short audio clips, mainly of intermediate level, recorded by native speakers. Clips are in six different languages, with lots in French. The ones I have listened to would suit higher GCSE or even A-level and could be recommended for home use, for example in the run-up to exams for listening practice. Alternatively they could be used from the from of the class or in a computer suite. You could ask studenst to take notes in French or English, or design easy comprehension tasks (e.g. questions in English or French). The audio quality is a little variable, but usually very good. You can dowload clips or just play them from the site, which is what I would do.

Clips carry star ratings and you can select them by difficulty level.

This what they say:

Audio-Lingua, qu’est-ce ? Une base de données collaborative de fichiers audio authentiques, enregistrés par des locuteurs natifs, libres de droits pour une utilisation pédagogique ou personnelle.

Des fichiers audio ? Courts, d’une durée maximum de deux minutes, sur différents sujets…

Collaboratif ? Cela signifie que toute personne intéressée peut contribuer à faire vivre ce site en proposant des fichiers d’enregistrement personnels via le formulaire.

Authentique ? Parce que seules les interventions de locuteurs natifs (anglais, allemand, espagnol, français, italien, portugais, russe) sont retenues ! Tous les accents sont bienvenus.

Objectif ? Faciliter l’entraînement à la compréhension auditive de tous ceux qui ont envie d’améliorer leurs performances.

Ten commandments and one more of language teaching

2011-11-29T17:51:00.000Z

I am grateful to John Canning of Southampton University who posted the following on his blog. The source is the Modern Language Journal from 75 years ago. Harry Kurtz of the University of Nebraska came up with these. He was clearly a wise man.

1. Thou shalt make every student recite every day.
2. Thou shalt make thy questions shorter and distribute them more frequently to the unworthy of thy flock.
3. Thou shalt demand written homework for every lesson as an evidence of individual effort.
4. Thou mayest spare thy strength in the marking of these by having them corrected in class, but thou shalt collect them and check them off on the rolls.
5. Thou shalt refrain from personal eloquence in the classroom.
6. Remember that the strained silence of pupils thinking is worth more than volubility, thine or theirs.
7. Thou shalt plan thy hour and mark thy pages beforehand, so that never, no never, shalt thou ask thy sheep on what page they stopped grazing the last time.
8. Thou shalt have thy watch before thee to guide thee in the passing of time and to guard thee from over-stressing one thing at the cost of another. So shalt thou finish the assignment and never have the ignominy of covering less than what was imposed upon the fold.
9. Thou shalt watch thy pupils’ thoughts as reflected in their faces and hurl the thunder of a question where it may be necessary to recall the straying.
10. And last, so shalt thou prosper and discover the best devices in language teaching in the measure that thou wilt insist upon work and get it.

Not sure what the extra one was.

http://www.johncanning.net

Néologophile ou néologophobe?

2011-11-29T17:41:00.001Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/27/academie-francaise-challenged-new-words?CMP=twt_gu

Vous avez l'esprit ouvert? Vous aimez jouer avec les mots? Ou craignez-vous la destruction de la langue française? Il y a un organisme qui cherche des mots nouveaux.

C'est quoi une "attachiante"? Ou "phonard"? Ou "bête seller"?

Si vous avez d'autres suggestions, il faut les envoyer à:

festival-motnouveau@gmail.com

Je propose "néologophile" et "néologophobe" (à moins qu'ils n'existent déjà).

Merci à Linguascope d'avoir tweeté ce lien.

Ofsted literacy drive

2011-11-27T12:12:00.001Z

Our school, like most around the country, is having a bit of a literacy drive at the moment. Don't get me wrong; bad punctuation, poor grammar and dodgy spelling bring out the Victor Meldrew in me. There are times when I almost feel like a Telegraph reader when I encounter that misplaced apostrophe on the restaurant blackboard. (I have been known to point it out to waiters.)

We hear from the world of work that standards of literacy are falling and that even graduates cannot write in a coherent and accurate fashion. Ofsted have, no doubt, in their myriad inspections, observed inadequate literacy. Not surprising, therefore, that we are witnessing a focus on this area.

My colleague the other day reminded me, however, that there is a danger in getting too het up about this. Firstly, accuracy itself is less important than clear communication. Secondly, what do people actually write once they leave school and no longer have to write compositions, experiment write-ups, reports, punctuation exercises and sentences in a foreign language? Well, in many instances, once you have set aside that minority of people who, as part of their job, have to write reports, articles, minutes and the like, most people probably do the following: post messages on forums and social network sites, write lists, send emails and the very occasional letter and occasionally take notes. Many of these tasks are done on a computer with a grammar and spell-check system, so mastering spelling from memory, it could be argued, is less of a priority than it used to be. Further, handwriting is used relatively little these days once you leave the world of school with its exams and exercise books.

Now, as I said, I would not want to give the impression that literacy is not an issue, but let us not go down the road of lowering the marks of good scientists and technologists in their examinations because they mis-spell some words or forget full stops. Because this is where we might be leading. Let us be vigilant in every school subject about spelling, punctuation and grammar, but let us not leave in out wake dispirited, bright, creative youngsters who find it hard to write neatly and spell accurately. Some common sense is needed.

P.S. I spell-checked this post and found three typos. My wife has just found an error of repetition. (Now edited out.)

Top ten free French teaching web sites for able pupils

2011-11-25T18:51:00.001Z

Oh no! Not another "top ten"....

These are the sites I value the most highly for teaching my pupils aged 11 to 18 in a grammar school. They may not be the best, but they are the ones we use most. In no particular order.....

1. LanguagesOnline.

This is our favourite web site by far for interactive grammar and vocabulary work. It is written and designed mainly by Andrew Balaam from Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. It is attractive, challenging and enjoyed by students. It can be used from the front, but is best used in a computer suite.

2. Curiosphere.tv.

This is the site I first go to when searching out listening material for A2 students. Clips are often interviews with experts ina field. The speech is clear and slow enough for comprehension, with repetition. The standard is challenging, above that required in A2 level examinations. It is a large archive covering many A-level topics. You can use Curosphere in a computer suite or from the whiteboard.

3. Ashcombe School "video quizzes"

Although the sound quality is not as good as one would like, the concept is simple and sound. Interviews with French assistants accompanied by hot potato gap fill exercises. You can reveal the transcript and see a translation. You can use this site in a computer suite or a classroom from the front.

4. BBC Learning Zone Class Clips (Secondary French).

I enjoy using the short video extracts from the front of the class. The BBC has built up a large archive of French videos at various levels. They are a good source of situational French.

5. Youtube.

A marvellous source of songs, slides and videos of all types.

6. TES Connect.

The best repository of powerpoints and worksheets around. the quality and accuracy varies, but if I am looking for an instant resource, it is the place I start (after frenchteacher.net)

7. MFL Sunderland.

This is hosted by Clare Seccombe and has a good range of accurate worksheets and other resources produced by various teachers. Some of the material is too easy for the ablest students, but there are very useful sheets, especially when it comes to controlled assessment time.

8. Languages Resources.

This is Samantha Lunn's site which has a very large range of resources, some of which are too easy for the able learner. It is not error-free, but it is easy to edit Word docs and powerpoints.

9. Lafrancebis

This site is hosted in Japan by Christophe Bergue from Kobe University and contains,among other things, good listening material with interactive tasks good for able Y11 pupils, or AS Level students. Easy to use and interesting sources.

10. Frenchteacher.net

Well, I couldn't omit this site as it is the one we use most. The very large range of worksheets, texts with exercises, powerpoints, lesson ideas and links, all suit able students very well indeed.

The four skills

2011-11-20T16:38:00.001Z

Since the late 1980s, at GCSE in England and Wales, we have been assessing the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing separately. We have moved from discrete skill testing, to more mixed skill testing, back to discrete skill testing. By which I mean that, for example, in a reading tests students are not now tested on their writing at the same time. Interestingly, at A-Level we have not been too concerned about testing each skill in this strict discrete fashion.

At the same time, at GCSE, the weighting of the four skills was, for a long time, 25% for each one. Just recently, this changed to 20% listening, 20% reading, 30% oral and 30% writing. This change was entirely owing to the fact that MFL had to be in line with all subjects in allocating 60% of marks to controlled assessments. In languages this was seen to mean speaking and writing where production of tasks was required. (It would be hard to conceive of a listening or reading task which could be done with pupil preparation in the style of a controlled assessment.)

First of all, which is better: discrete skill or mixed skill testing? Both approaches have their supporters, which may be why exam boards/Ofqual have moved from one to the other and back. Proponents of mixed skill testing argue that separating the skills is artificial and leads to a "backwash" effect in classrooms and course books. This is already apparent, especially as exam boards dictate so strongly the content of course books. It is most likely that we are already seeing less use of the target language as teachers practise exam style tasks, for example, reading comprehensions using English questions. On the other hand, proponents of discrete skill testing argue that it is fairer, more accurate in assessing that particular skill and, it has to be said, easier for less able candidates.

I see the case for both sides, but lean towards mixed skill testing, mainly because British teachers have a strong tendency towards teaching to the test, especially in these days of targets, performance management and league tables. This can lead to poor methodology and a lack of authentic, mixed skill tasks. Just take a look at the latest text books to see what I mean. We accept the case for mixing skills at A-level, but not at GCSE. My assumption is that Ofqual wish to make the GCSE exams accessible to all candidates, not just the most able. At A-Level it is correctly assumed that the aptitude of candidates is higher.

As for the weighting of each skill, it is a pity that we allocate so many marks to the hardest of the skills, writing. The previous allocation of equal marks for each skill was better than what we have now, but I would allocate more marks to the two skills which many would consider to be the most useful in language learning, namely listening and speaking. So, if we have to work in round figures, I would argue for the following weighting: 30% listening, 30% speaking, 20% reading and 20% writing. This still rewards writing to a considerable degree and may reflect a continued bias towards the written medium in assessment, but allocating anything less than 20% may encourage teachers to neglect the skill too much.

When controlled assessments disappear, it will be interesting to see what Ofqual decide in terms of skill weightings. I hope they ask teachers for their opinion.

Byki language learning app

2011-11-19T11:57:00.002Z

http://www.transparent.com/mobile/

Just a quick mention for what looks like an excellent app for iPhones, iPads, iPodTouches and Android phones. Thanks to Graham Davies for tweeting this.

This is what they say:

Learn over 1,000 critical words and phrases.
Hear language spoken by real, native speakers, complete with the ability to learn every nuance with Byki's SlowSound technology.
Read and see your chosen language in its native form.
Search for words and phrases on Twitter to see how others use the language.
Track your progress as you work your way through Byki lists.
Download hundreds of additional vocabulary lists, created by other Byki users from our List Central community.

I shall be mentioning this app to students. There are some convincing testimonials and case studies on the site. The future of interactivity with mobile devices looks very interesting. It's early days at the moment with SIRI for iPhone 4, but I can see the phone becoming a tremendous (and cheap) tool for people wanting to learn languages on the go.

Here are some other apps as reviewed in June 2010:

L'évaluation des enseignants

2011-11-16T17:50:00.008Z

Selon un scoop sur le site du Café Pédagogique, qui s'est procuré de documents gouvernementaux, l'évaluation des profs se profile un peu plus clairement sur l'horizon.

Cette évaluation se fera tous les trois ans et dans les collèges et lycées c'est le chef d'établissement qui en sera responsable.

A mon sens, il est bien temps que les enseignants en France puissent bénéficier d'un système d'évaluation bien conçue, mais cette évaluation tous les trois ans par le directeur n'est pas suffisante. Les syndicats se plaignent que le chef d'établissement n'est pas en mesure d'évaluer les compétences professionnelles dans toutes les matières, mais le problème n'est pas là. L'expérience anglo-saxonne montre qu'un directeur est bien capable de juger la qualité d'un cours car bon nombre des éléments d'un cours réussi sont génériques. Ce qui manque dans les écoles françaises c'est une structure hiérarchique qui permet une évaluation suffisamment fréquente par un spécialiste dans la discipline. C'est une question mathématique. Un directeur responsable de, disons, soixante professeurs, n'a pas suffisamment de temps pour les évaluer tous les ans, leur donnant en même temps des cibles professionnelles annuelles. Pour ce faire il faut des "chefs de section", des cadres axiaux à l'anglaise. Ces personnes seraient responsables à la fois de l'évaluation (à l'aide du chef d'établissement), et de l'organisation de la section en général.

Dans d'autres secteurs de la vie active ce genre d'hiérarchie et d'évaluation est monnaie courante. Elle permet aux salariés d'avancer dans leur carrière et de bénéficier d'une formation continue au fil des ans. Ce qui est proposé par le gouvernement est un pas en avant, mais un pas relativement timide qui risque de ne pas atteindre ses objectifs.

Les syndicats devraient voir les aspects positifs d'une évaluation qui peut mener à des hausses de salaire et de nouvelles possibilités professionnelles. Pourquoi les enseignants devraient-ils rester à l'abri de la responsabilité de leur travail et des résultats de leurs élèves?

Yes

2011-11-14T17:18:00.002Z

Yes in Manchester 13.11.11

I was 18 when I first saw Yes at the Southampton Gaumont. Since that time Elspeth, Joel and I have seen them on various occasions and have never been disappointed. I approached the Manchester Apollo gig with lower than usual expectations, having read some slightly mixed reviews from their recent American tour with Styx.We were not to be disappointed, though, as the band gave a polished and exciting performance to a packed venue. I was pleased the band played plenty of material from the new album Fly From Here. Steve Howe announced the We Can Fly from Here suite by saying it was brave of them to play it. I guess he meant that the loyal Yes fans expect the band to play as much back catalogue as possible. Personally I was glad the band played this new stuff; they have been too conservative in the past with their sets. It may not match the classic Yes songs, but it is still, by most standards, excellent music.

Steve Howe was outstanding as usual. To me, he is now the man who carries the band with his unique style and astonishing virtuosity. Chris Squire still anchors the band with his grunting bass, while Alan White is steady on the drum kit, never missing a beat with some awkward time signatures. On keys was Geoff Downes, who performed Rick Wakeman's parts manfully whilst doing a good job with his own parts from the Drama album (in the track Tempus Fugit) and the new album. Thankfully the keyboard parts were easily audible, which has not always been the case in recent Yes concerts.

And what about Benoit David's vocal performance! His pitch control is not always perfect, but he put in a great performance last night, especially when harmonising with Chris Squire. He managed those high, sustained parts from Heart of the Sunrise ("sharp... distance...") and looked confident prowling around the stage. The Fly from Here songs match his range well, so it's no surprise he made these his own. Vocal harmonies in the higher register have always been a Yes trademark and these were beautifully executed all night. The very good sound mix, with clear vocals, thumping kick drum and rumbling bass pedals, contributed to the pleasure of the evening. Well done, sound men.

Towards the end of the night Alan White announced that his 88 year old mum was in the audience (just behind us), whilst Chris Squire thoughtfully thanked the fans for their loyalty.

I had the impression the band had rehearsed well for this tour and were pleased to get such a good reception from the enthusiastic Manchester fans, both for the classics and the new pieces. There's life in the old dogs yet.

Set list

Outstanding or inspiring?

2011-11-12T09:44:00.001Z

I gather that the latest standards for teachers in England include the word "inspiring". I wonder wherher the DOE missed a trick when they formulated their most recent definitions of what constitutes outstanding teaching, outstanding departments and outstanding schools. If you ever follow my posts you'll know that I, like many colleagues, have a problem with the misuse of the word outstanding and how it has slipped into schools' everyday vocabulary merely because Ofsted choose to use it. Maybe the word inspiring would be more apt to describe those extra special lessons we do sometimes.

If you'll permit me to be anecdotal, my son, who is now at university studying physics, went through secondary schooling encountering barely a couple of what he considered inspiring teachers. He was at a good school too. I consider this a pretty poor hit rate, and whilst I know that only a minority of teachers and lessons will be inspiring, we should be aiming for more. How could we do that?

Defining what is inspiring is not easy and what is inspiring for some may not be so for others. Teaching is not an exact science. I have observed lessons which I consider to be inspiring and the key factors may revolve around a genuine enthusiasm for the subject, good subject knowledge, a real commitment of the teacher to the class and the individual pupil, a good grasp of subject methodology and a certain personality type. Most lessons are not inspiring. They cannot be because we do not have enough time and energy to make them so. Nevertheless if we focused more closely on this word, rather than the word outstanding, maybe we would be more creative, take more risks, focus less on technicalities and the latest trends, let ourselves go a bit more and give our students a buzz. Sure, we have to know about AfL, questioning, "astute planning" (latest buzz word apparently), testing, starters, plenaries and the rest of it, but you can do all that stuff and still, alas, not be inspiring.

When I look back into the murky past of schooling, I think I recall a decent number of good teachers, but very few inspiring ones. At Ripon Grammar School, fortunately, I know a few.

Good old days?

2011-11-10T19:08:00.001Z

http://www.lawnswoodhighschool.com/lhs/Documents.html#GCE

Oldies (and maybe younger colleagues) may be interested to take a peek at a 1959 O-Level French papers, posted at the Lawnswood School site. The papers I took in 1973 were not hugely dissimilar, though I seem to recall we had some listening comprehension in there somewhere.

It would be tempting to say that the grammatical difficulty level of those papers (not far away from modern A2 standard) means that standards have fallen over the years. This would be a huge simplification, however. French exams in those days were aimed at a small percentage of the school population and some of them would have found such papers hard. In addition, there was far more emphasis on translation and grammar at the expense of oral and aural work. Most modern students would barely tolerate the type of preparation which was required to perform well in exams of that type.

To do well on the prose translation and picture essay students would practise set phrases and techniques to gain marks (sound familiar?). The translation and comprehension questions would have required a solid knowledge of vocabulary and structure gained after many hours of practice in class and at home. To perform well, rote learning was not sufficient; you had to adapt your knowledge so in that sense the tasks were more intellectually demanding than those which contemporary students have to do. But the 1950s and 1960s student did relatively less oral and listening work, so those skills were less developed. I would hazard a guess that the average student in those days was more bored too - much would have depended on the teacher.

I was rather lucky. My teachers were enlightened enough to do lots of oral work in class and used French most of the time. They then primed us well for the needs of the O-level exam, which did not resemble what we did most of the time in class hitherto. My memory is that it was only in Year 11 (Fifth Form) that we focused on the exam.

Those old papers belong in a museum and we would not want exams like that these days, but they are revealing of a methodology which had certain merits. That methodology assumed that a strong foundation of grammar and vocabulary was at the root of competence and that the listening and speaking skill could emerge from this later. For some it worked, for many it was a nasty shock to have to cope orally in a foreign land.

Une bière par jour est bon pour la santé

2011-11-08T17:38:00.001Z

Article et photo tirés de slate.fr:

Les Anglais ont un dicton: «An apple a day keeps the doctor away» (une pomme par jour vous tient éloigné du médecin). Il semblerait que la maxime puisse s'appliquer également à la bière.
La consommation de bière avec modération peut réduire les risques de diabète et d’hypertension, et même aider à perdre du poids, selon une récente étude réalisée par des médecins espagnols. En fait, la bière contient de l'acide folique, des vitamines, du fer et du calcium, qui ont des effets protecteurs pour le système cardiovasculaire, et a les mêmes effets positifs pour la santé que ceux attribués au vin en quantité modérée, expliquent les scientifiques.
L’étude a été menée conjointement par l’université de Barcelone, la Hospital Clinic de Barcelone et l’Institut de santé Carlos III de Madrid. Les Dr Estruch et Lamuela ont étudié 1.249 hommes et femmes de plus de 57 ans, et ont observé que ceux qui boivent des faibles quantités de bière de manière régulière avaient moins de risques de souffrir de diabète et d’hypertension et avaient moins de graisse corporelle, rapporte Richard Alleyne, journaliste scientifique du Telegraph britannique. Les chercheurs recommandent la consommation de bière (jusqu'à une pinte par jour) combinée à de l’exercice physique et à un régime méditerranéen riche en poissons, fruits, légumes et huile d’olive. Le docteur Ramon Estruch, co-auteur de l’étude, explique:

«La consommation modérée de bière est associée à des bénéfices nutritionnels et pour la santé. Elle n’est pas forcement associée à un gain de poids, car la bière ne contient pas de matière grasse et n’est pas très calorique.»

Les méfaits de la consommation «à l'anglaise»

«Nous détruisons un mythe, explique le Dr Lamuela. Nous savons que la bière n’est pas responsable de l’obésité.»
D’où vient alors l’idée largement répandue que la bière fait grossir? Selon les médecins, la consommation de bière «à l’anglaise», c'est-à-dire en grandes quantités et sans exercice physique, est responsable de cette idée reçue. Comme le souligne le Daily Mail, une pinte de bière (environ 500 ml) contient 200 calories, soit l'équivalent d'un café au lait fait avec du lait entier.
Le Dr Estruch souligne la différence entre la culture espagnole, où l’on boit la bière dans des petits verre en accompagnement des tapas, et la culture britannique:

«Ici, les buveurs de bière ne ressemblent pas aux Britanniques, qui boivent en grande quantité, en restant souvent au même endroit tout en mangeant des chips et des saucisses.»

Depuis plus de dix ans, de nombreuses études ont montré les bienfaits de la bière consommée avec modération. Dès 2000, un article dans la revue scientifique Lancet suggérait les effets positifs de la bière. Le site de Forbes proposait quant à lui un tour d'horizon des études sur le sujet dans cet article de 2008.

Google Translate (bis)

2011-11-04T18:31:00.002Z

TES discussion here: http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/531090.aspx
OK. So, how about an advanced piece of French to English? Here is an original extract from slate.fr about the abuse of anti-depressants in the USA:

La dernière épidémie qui touche les Etats-Unis n'est pas une maladie mais une addiction: héroïne, cocaïne? Non, telle une armée de Dr. House, les Américains se tuent à coup de vicodine, méthadone et autres puissants antidouleurs, médicaments sur ordonnance.

Le Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (Centre pour la prévention et le contrôle des maladies, l'agence fédérale de santé publique qui avait notamment publié un très bon guide pour survivre en cas d'invasion zombie) sort un rapport alarmant: plus de gens meurent d'overdoses d'antidouleur aux Etats-Unis désormais que ceux qui meurent d'overdoses d'héroïne et de cocaïne! Un niveau qui a atteint celui d'épidémie dans la dernière décennie, explique le CDC.

Here is the unadulterated translation from Google translate:

The last epidemic in the United States is not a disease but an addiction: heroin, cocaine? No, such an army of Dr. House, Americans kill themselves to blow Vicodin, methadone and other potent painkillers, prescription drugs.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Center for Prevention and Disease Control, the agency Federal Public Health who had published such a great guide for survival in case of zombie invasion) comes an alarming report: more people die of overdose of painkillers in the U.S. now that those who die of overdoses of heroin and cocaine! A level that it reached an epidemic in the last decade, says the CDC.

Not so good, eh? Now I'll see if i can improve on the above version by looking at some other options:

The latest epidemic in the United States is not a disease but an addiction: heroin, cocaine? No, as a host of House MD, Americans are killed with shot Vicodin, methadone and other potent painkillers, prescription drugs.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Center for Prevention and Disease Control, the agency Federal Public Health who had published such a very good guide for survival in the event of zombie invasion) comes an alarming report: more people die of overdose of painkillers in the U.S. now that those who die of overdoses of heroin and cocaine! A level which it has reached an epidemic in the last decade, says the CDC.

Better, but a significant issue is word order, as when you highlight words for other options, you do not get the option of changing word order, although you could certainly do this yourself.

There is no doubt that Google translate is an extremely useful tool for non-linguists who need a reasonable, rough and ready translation, but you would not rely on it for a letter to a solicitor!

Google Translate

2011-11-04T18:13:00.001Z

Prompted by a post on TES Connect by Graham Davies I thought I would take a look at Google Translate, which I almost never used. Graham was arguing that it is so good now, especially given that you can interact with it and refine translations, that it may not be worthwhile setting translation or composition for homework.

Here is a sample Eng-French translation from an intermediate level piece of text:

Original:

I believe that I have a fairly healthy lifestyle. I eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, at least four portions a day, I do exercise three times a week and I never smoke. I occasionally have an alcoholic drink, but rarely drink to excess. Last night I had a nice glass a of red wine with my meal.

Google's "unadulterated" version:

Je crois que j'ai un style de vie assez sain. Je mange beaucoup de fruits et légumes, au moins quatre portions par jour, je ne l'exercice trois fois par semaine et je ne fume jamais. J'ai parfois avoir une boisson alcoolisée, mais rarement boire à l'excès. Hier soir, j'ai eu un bon verre de vin rouge une de mes repas.

You can see that the translation is not consistently successful. If you then try some other options you are offered by Google translate, you can arrive at this best version:

Je crois que j'ai un style de vie assez sain. Je mange beaucoup de fruits et légumes, au moins quatre portions par jour, je ne l'exercice trois fois par semaine et je ne fume jamais. J'ai occasionnellement une boisson alcoolisée, mais rarement boire à l'excès. Hier soir, j'ai eu un bon verre de vin rouge une avec mon repas.

It's better, but is still recognisably a computer translation. A skilled student could certainly use Google translate as a first version, then adapt it. A weaker student would find it hard to hide cheating.

So where does this leave us? In the long run, as I have blogged before, the teaching of writing may become redundant, except as a tool for reinforcing other skills and grammatical knowledge. For the moment I believe we should put up a strong front to students and warn them that using Google translate is cheating and will be sanctioned. At our school we thankfully get few cases of internet translator abuse and we set a great deal of composition work, along with some translation, at all levels.

In the meantime, some teachers are beginning to find ways of circumventing online translators by adjusting the style of homework task they set:

http://vickyloras.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/if-google-is-translating-then-ill-start-revamping-guest-post-by-naomi-ganin-epstein/

Thanks to Graham for that link.

Je tweete, tu tweetes, il tweete

2011-11-02T18:19:00.000Z

http://www.slate.fr/lien/45807/twitter-mort-langue-anglais

Article intéressant sur Twitter et son effet sur la langue anglaise.

Je dois avouer que je suis devenu un peu accro à Twitter. J'y jette un coup d'oeil tous les jours et je tweete très souvent. Mais je me suis imposé une règle: je ne tweete pas sur n'importe quoi. Je ne vais pas perdre mon temps et celui d'autrui en racontant les menus détails de ma vie personnelle. Par contre je suis content de partager des liens utiles qui touchent à mon métier de prof. Mes collègues du "MFLtwitterati" font généralement de même. Par ce moyen j'ai eu accès à pas mal de blogs, de sites et de points de vue différents. Dommage que les profs qui tweetent restent relativement peu nombreux. Les 140 caractères autorisés vous obligent à être très concis, donc ce n'est pas un lieu de discussion sérieuse. Le blog et le forum sont un meilleur endroit pour ce genre de débat.

Je ne sais pas si je resterai fidèle à ce moyen de communication, mais pour l'instant je suis un addict.

Updates

2011-10-30T19:19:00.000Z

Just got back from our exchange and the kids seem to have a good time, with no problems to report. That will be the last exchange I do as I am joining my wife in retirement at the end of this academic year. I'm hoping that we can keep our long-standing exchange going with the Institution Saint Louis. It is odd knowing that you are doing something for the last time. That'll happen a lot this year.

One thing I have decided to do, to keep my hand in, is to develop the frenchteacher.net web site into a minor commercial concern. I hesitate to call it business, because my aim is not to make a lot of money out of it, but to develop the site further whilst maintaining the motivation to add new resources. The site has been a enjoyable hobby of mine and the resources I have posted over the last few years, with some help from colleagues, have all been used with our classes at Ripon Grammar School. I know they are widely used in other schools, both in the UK and abroad. Once I stop teaching I would like to keep making resources, but will only find it worthwhile to do so for a small fee.

With that in mind an able sixth-former,as part of an A-Level ICT project, is in the process of rebuilding the site to make it a subscription resource. I am planning for the new-look site to be ready by May 2012, complete with a significant number of new resources. I am also anxious to make sure that I do not infringe any copyrights so some of my existing resources will either disappear or be changed. As my living will not depend on the site, I shall charge a small sum for an annual subscription, whilst assuring users that there will be regular new resources. I actually enjoy designing worksheets and in retirement I shall have more time to keep up my hobby.

I hope that some of the site's regular users will find it worthwhile to pay a small amount for my work. I have no idea at all how many subscribers I will get, but I will certainly give value for money!

The problem with specs

2011-10-27T10:45:00.002+01:00

In the days of Zeppelin and Floyd we didn't have specifications or syllabuses for modern languages. Like the British constituion, we relied on tradition. We also looked carefully at past papers and made sure our students were prepared for what they would encounter in the prose, unseen translation, comprehension and essays. The nearest we came to a syllabus was the sometimes unappealing list of prescribed literary texts from which we could select. We were effectively preparing students for a French degree at university.

We are probably in a better place now. We test listening skills, use more authentic texts and rely less on translation at A-Level. We also have a clearly explained specification which lists topics, structures, skills and which tells us what will be in the exams and how the mark schemes work. All this enables us to be far more explicit with students about how they will be assessed. We also know that most of our students will not continue with French in higher education and we want them to use their language as a practical tool.

But with modern specs come a number of issues. Whenever you tell teachers what will be taught and assessed, they nearly always do their best to follow instructions to the letter. They follow the spec faithfully, making sure they stick to the topics: media, cinema, new technology, sport etc. There is some sense in this too, because the topics have been chosen by exam boards to supposedly match with students' interests. Indeed students and teachers are consulted carefully when the spec is drawn up. The problem, however, is that in this desire to prepare students effectively, teachers may avoid doing other topics, going off the syllabus, taking risks. If writing is assessed by essay, teachers set lots of essays instead of summary, translation, question and answer. Teachers are encouraged to play safe by text books designed to fit the spec closely and which are sponsored by exam boards. (Have you noticed how dull and uncreative these books and their associated online tasks are?)

Furthermore, when mark schemes are spelled out in detail, teachers spend an inordinate amount of time preparing students to attain the highest grades. I inwardly groan when I display a mark scheme and explain carefully what hoops to have to jump through to make sure you get the highest mark. (Marks which, by the way, as I have commented on previously, often depend as much upon ideas and structure as on linguistic skill.)

I would not argue that we should turn to the 1970s way of doing things, but I do suggest that we should be less slavish to the specs, keeping in mind that the structures and vocabulary we teach are often transferable to all kinds of topics. We should be creative, not use resources because they happen to be in the text book, do other topics beyond the specs, see A-Level as general studies through the medium of French, whilst making sure we do what we must to ensure students are well prepared for their exam.

Echange

2011-10-24T14:35:00.005+01:00

Voici un premier essai avec l'appli Blogger pour iphone/ipad. Voyons...

Hmmm... mal formaté mais je ne sais pas le modifier. Tant pis. Voilà notre groupe à l'amphithéâtre gallo-romain de Saintes et au Château de la Roche Courbon.

How useful is homework?

2011-10-23T20:06:00.001+01:00

I reacted somewhat abruptly on Twitter to a blog post which claimed that research showed no causal relationship between homework and academic achievement. I have always assumed that setting and marking regular homework was an important part of helping students make the most progress. I have occasionally heard colleagues claim homework is a waste of time and some research, notably a much-cited study by Cooper et al. of other research, found no correlation between achievement and homework for younger pupils. The Cooper et al. study did, however, find a good case for homework improving achievement at secondary school level.

Now, research in this kind of area is notoriously hard to conduct and results need to be looked at critically, but in this instance I would also make a case for common sense and experience. If I set two written tasks a week on top of the four lessons of mainly oral and aural work i do, then I expect the skill and knowledge levels of my students to increase. I am sure they do. Golfer Gary Player quipped that the more he practised, the luckier he got. We know what he meant. Practice makes perfect. So it seems to me that, provided the type of homework set is appropriately challenging, you would have to find some very convincing reasons not to set it.

Homework encourages autonomy, builds persistence, develops research skills, reinforces classroom learning points and gives students a chance to show off their skills. It also allows more time to be spent in the classroom engaging in communicative, social learning.

Arguments against? It creates conflict between students and teachers? Oh dear, how sad, never mind. It is too often mindless and set just for the sake of it? In that case, teachers should plan better and set it appropriately. Pupils should have their free time to themselves? Why? They get long holidays and should want to achieve their very best.

As long as homework is set appropriately we should continue to have faith in it.

http://www.sedl.org/pubs/sedl-letter/v20n02/homework.html

Good summary by Harris Cooper.

Lingua Ludica

2011-10-21T18:38:00.000+01:00

www.lingualudica.com

I have been given a gift of this excellent board game which can be played by between two and sixteen people. It would really suit A-Level students and could be used with the regular teacher or a foreign language assistant. There is a board around which you move your counter by the roll of a dice. You can land on one of eight spaces with the following French names: expression, jeu de rôle, vocabulaire, joker, définition, grammaire, culture. When you land on a category you pick up a card at one of three levels and talk.

Here's an example from the "définition" category:

Expliquez sans faire de gestes: "Révolution". Il est interdit de dire les mots guerre, France et peuple.

To win the game you have to collect a certain number of cards. I haven't looked into the precise rules of the game properly yet.

Anyway, looks like a clever, fun way of developing oral work with quite able A-Level students. I would use it with good A2 classes in small groups. Costs 36 euros online, or you could make your own simplified version with laminated cards if you really have nothing better to do!

Exchange time

2011-10-18T20:58:00.001+01:00

Roma arena in Saintes

It's that time of year when we do our annual exchange with the Institution Saint Louis in Pont l'Abbé d'Arnoult. Have look at their new web site. We began exchanging in February 1989 so hundreds of students have taken part over the years. I guess it's one of the things I am most proud of in my career. We set off tomorrow for ten days with a smaller group than usual (16 students). We do a morning of lessons, an afternoon watching a movie (I've chosen Etre et Avoir), then a day exploring Saintes and doing a guided tour of the Château de la Roche Courbon which I have previously mentioned in this blog.

It's been a tiring half term, what with getting over some disappointment with GCSE writing marks, plus the usual drain of day to day teaching, preparing, marking, meetings and the umpteen other chores which raise the stress levels a bit. Fortunately, the classroom remains an enjoyable place to be and nearly all our students are keen to learn and, on the whole, not switched off by language learning. At a grammar school like ours, with compulsory French to GCSE, we are shielded from the general crisis in language teaching to which Anthony Seldon, Head of Wellington College, recently referred..

League tables and so-called value addes scores have led to all kinds of unintended consequences in education in our country. On the one hand, we want students to study subjects they enjoy and have aptitude for; on the other, we need to be clear in our curriculum about what we hold important in society. Modern languages have become, to a considerable extent, a pursuit for the middle classes in private schools, grammar schools and the upper sets of comprehensives. We can raise their status again by fair grading, good teaching, clear understanding of methodology and by schools having a determined policy on internationalism. The latter will be hard to achieve because alas, most leadership teams do not share the passion for languages and other cultures as MFL teachers. Universities focus a good deal on the international dimesnion, to some extent for pecuniary reasons, and schools should do the same.

The Guardian ipad edition

2011-10-16T22:46:00.004+01:00

I've been waiting for the Guardian's ipad edition for some time. It has been pretty rigorously pre-tested because they know it had to be good enough to entice people to spend £10 a month on it rather than the minimal sum the iphone/ipad version costs, or spending nothing at all on the standard web site.

If you have an ipad 1 you first need to download Apple's latest operating system iOS5. This took about three hours from the itunes store with a slowish broadband connection. Then it took a little while for the Guardian download and a surprisingly long time (at least 10 minutes) for the Saturday edition of the ipad Guardian to download. I hope it was only this long because it was the first download, but we shall see. Updates on the iphone version are almost instantaneous. The paper is accessed from the ipad's home screen via an icon called "newstand", within which you could place other news sources.

So, I have it in front of me. From the front page, rich in colour and pictures, you can navigate either by a sliding tool bar to all sections of the paper or from the window panes to some of the sections: national, international, financial, in pictures, editorials, money and family and comment. You can also access older editions of the paper from the "issues" button. The front page also features a large banner headline and picture. Today it's the Liam Fox story.

Once you've tapped a window to access another section, tapping a story brings up the article in full, in quite large Guardian-style font. Alternatively you can flick to one side to get the next page of the paper, so navigation can be by tap or swipe. Photography is always very prominent, taking advantage of the ipad's 9 inch screen. I'm a little surprised, however, than you cannot enlarge text with the two finger outward swipe, but the text is quite large, so I guess this won't be an issue. You cannot swipe from a specific written piece, you have to return to the main section page for this.

Some users have bemoaned the lack of comments after articles. I find this both retro and refreshing - it's amazing how many right-wing crazies seem to read Guardian articles online.

A dip into the sport section reveals a total of 34 ipad pages. The main sport page includes an annoying link to Channel 4's TV schedules and an invitation to dowload the 4oD app, but the this is because the Guardian ipad edition is sponsored by Channel 4. In a bar alongside each article there are links to articles on the Guardian's standard website which I find slightly curious. It's almost like an invitation not to subscribe to the ipad edition, but this may be one way of lightening the ipad edition to make download quicker. Within the sports pages there are also links in the sidebar to other sports articles on the app. There is plenty of coverage, including racing, rugby, football and comprehensive results.

It all works smoothly, looks very good with all the high quality photography and it is a world away from the functional iphone app. On the other hand, the iphone app does more audio and video, whereas this app is very much a digital newspaper, with the feel of a classy tabloid. The "in pictures" section is attractive; Saturdays' edition has 13 interesting photos.

So, the £10 question is: after the trial 70-odd editions have been viewed, do you fork out the subscription? I shall wait and see. £10 is still very good value when compared with the cost of the print version. Tablet newspapers are the future, I have no doubt, and if we want the Guardian to survive we shall have to pay for it, so, rather akin to the way we help keep our milkman in employment, I might be tempted to part with the cost of three or four pints for a good cause. This app looks great, is easy to use and really suits the ipad. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on those download times.

Postscript: downloads for Monday and Tuesday were slow, taking about 10 minutes. That's a pain.

Do we need to teach writing any more?

2011-10-13T22:48:00.001+01:00

I have never used google translate, but I have recently been informed that it is becoming more and more sophisticated. It seems likely that, at some point in the not too far distant future, we shall be able to instantly translate between languages to a reasonably acceptable level. So, this being the case, what will be the point of teaching students to write in a foreign language at all?

Well, if we assume that learning one language skill (speaking, listening, reading and writing) supports the others - a reasonable assumption - then one could argue that practising correct spelling and grammar is not just an aim in itself, rather it supports the general development of comprehension and fluency. Writing things down will always help embed vocabulary and structures, especially when language learning is not taking place in an immersion situation.

Perhaps we should question, however, the value we place on writing in formal examinations. At GCSE we currently award an excessive 30% of marks for writing, but only 20% for listening and reading respectively. This cannot be right, and is only the case because modern languages had to fit into a controlled assessment model shared by other school subjects. When controlled assessments disappear we shall have another chance to look at this issue and I hope we reward adequately the skills which most people consider the most important, namely listening and speaking. The old 25% for each skill was better than what we have now, but I would argue for a greater weighting for the oral/aural skills. How about 30% speaking, 30% listening, 20% reading, 20% writing? Although I would value reading skill above writing, I would argue for maintaining a respectable weighting for writing to make it worthwhile practising. The same principle should apply to A-level.

We shouldn't forget the important role we play in the development of general literacy and this is another reason why we should still value the development of correct writing. Finally, for teachers and students to maintain their sanity, some time is needed in lessons for students to write things down!

Lancement de la version française du Huffington Post

2011-10-11T18:25:00.000+01:00

Reportage tiré de slate.fr

"Lundi 10 octobre à Paris, Arianna Huffington, fondatrice du Huffington Post aux Etats-Unis et directrice de la rédaction de AOL-Huffington Post Media Group, a annoncé le lancement avant la fin de l’année de la version française du site. Il se fera en partenariat avec Le Monde et Les Nouvelles Editions Indépendantes, propriétaires des Inrocks.

C'était une nouvelle très attendue en France. Le Huffington Post, créé en 2005, et propriété d'AOL depuis cette année, est un site d'actualité très influent aux Etats-Unis, avec plus d'un million de commentaires postés sur le site chaque mois. Le site sera en français, avec une ligne éditoriale française et des journalistes français. Et il pourra bénéficier de contenus du site américain.

Arianna Huffington espère que le site français, dans la mouvance des journaux américains, fera s’atténuer deux frontières selon elle très françaises: celle entre la gauche et la droite, et celle entre le journalisme papier et le journalisme web, auxquels les journalistes français s’accrocheraient encore."

Alan Partridge tells all

2011-10-08T12:28:00.002+01:00

It's the autobiography for which we have been eagerly awaiting. Former BBC sports reporter, radio and TV chat show host, Radio Norwich disc jockey and now radio presenter for North Norfolk Digital, Alan Partridge has finally put it all in print. He has laid his soul bare. His book I, Partridge (We Need to talk about Alan) is now available from all good book sellers.

To give you just a small flavour of Partridge's story, here is how he starts to talk about his troubled childhood:

As I write these words I'm noisily chomping away on not one, but two Murray Mints. I've a powerful suck and soon they'll be whittled away to nothing. But for the time being at least they have each other. For the time being, they are brothers. Which is more than can be said for me, for I was an only child. I will now talk about being an only child.

The book follows his life chronologically, from beginning to end, and one wonders whether he is in the twilight of his career when he writes, in Chapter 34:

Everyone has a shelf-life - whether they're a finely tuned athlete, a surrogate mother, or a lady newsreader. Disc jockeys are no exception. The last thing you want to do is to plough on long past your sell-by date, trading on past glories (Simon Mayo) or pretending you like classical music (Simon Bates). The dignified approach is to recognise when your magic is gone, and serenely slip away, having negotiated a handsome severance package and delivered a stinging broadside against youger DJs and station controllers (also Simon Bates to be fair).

You'll have your own views on Partridge. Always controversial, willing to challenge the status quo (for example when he famously described Wings as the band the Beatles might have become) and loyal to his local fiefdom of Norfolk. I dare you to buy this book, but be prepared to laugh and cry (sometimes simultaneously).

Scandale au pays du cassoulet

2011-10-07T19:02:00.000+01:00

Merci à Esther Mercier (atantot.com) d'avoir partagé cette vidéo sur Twitter:

The F-word and a training session

2011-10-07T18:05:00.002+01:00

1. I'm talking about fun, of course. I just had a look at Philippe Watrelot's blog on education news in France and he refers to the claim that there is too little pleasure in French schooling, especially beyond the primary level. School is too boring. Work = boring.

http://philippe-watrelot.blogspot.com/2011/10/revue-de-presse-du-mercredi-5-octobre.html

Hold that thought.

2. I recently had a conversation with a former colleague who is a PE specialist working in higher education. He was having a lively debate with a colleague overseas about whether "having fun" could be a viable objective for a lesson. Should we have as a lesson aim "to have fun"? My friend thought you could, whilst his colleague felt it might be a desirable outcome of the lesson, but should not be an aim in itself.

3. We had a training session on "good to outstanding" yesterday. It was well-led and thought-provoking. We watched teachers on video and talked about what was good and what could be even better. Good bread-and-butter stuff. We should do it more often. The "fun" word was not used, but there was an idea put across that a feature of outstanding lessons is that students should be working with the teacher, with each other and that they should be happy in their learning. The really good teacher is often able to create this atmosphere in the classroom. Education is done WITH children, not TO them, was a phrase used.

These tenuously linked points make me think that, firstly, we try very hard in the UK to make lessons stimulating and relevant. We train our teachers rather well, have systems in place which encourage teachers to question their practice and to get better, and we often work hard on the details of running lessons where pupils want to learn and take pleasure in learning. Many teachers do try to create pleasurable activities, "fun" activities, if you will. Language teachers work especially hard at this, maybe because it is a challenge to make language learning palatable to many children.

So, if I can try and bring this together....

I'm not sure we should try too hard to make lessons fun. A really good (I am not going to use the Ofsted word) lesson should be stimulating, challenging, preferably enjoyable, led by a teacher who is firm, friendly and fair (FFF - I only learned this last night). There should a humane, supportive atmosphere, skilled interventions, pace, variety, structure where appropriate, maybe some humour, but the lesson need not be fun. The best lessons I have watched involve students helping each other, a good deal of communication between teacher and students, as well as between students. The teacher is checking knowledge, referring to objectives, building on prior skills and maintaining a safe and productive atmosphere. Lots of learning is taking place in a warm, cooperative environment.

I came out of our training session a fraction more certain about what a really good lesson is and taught a fraction better today. I wonder how much staff development there is in the French system. How often are teachers given the chance to watch others practise? How often do they have structured opportunities to consider best practice?

Do they need their own Ofsted to help raise the bar in the classroom?

Mr Gove and primary modern languages

2011-10-01T15:40:00.005+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/30/michael-gove-teaching-languages-conference

You have to hand it to our education minister, he's full of ideas. His latest pre-conference interview reveals his plan for compulsory modern languages for all children from the age of five. He says there is a "slam-dunk" case for such an idea. Dude! He adds: "It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter". To achieve his aim he suggests we would have to lengthen the school day. No problem. As Mr Gove says:

"More and more of the young teachers coming into the profession do so because they are idealistic – they want to work as long as it takes to help children succeed. If teachers know the Department of Education are on their side to help them, then any staffroom voices saying 'don't go the extra mile' will be a diminishing force."

I'm not sure what planet Mr Gove is on, but it doesn't have staffrooms.

But let's be serious for a moment. I doubt if Mr Gove understands much about the nature of language learning, language acquisition and bilingualism. To get one thing straight, for example, there is no telling evidence that learning a language makes you "smarter" (whatever that may mean). Research in bilingualism has sought to prove a correlation between bilingualism and IQ and there isn't one. The early Peal and Lambert (1962) study in Montreal seemed to show that bilinguals performed significantly better on verbal and non-verbal intelligence tests, but many subsequent studies have been unable to confirm this and the consensus is now that there is little or no correlation between bilingualism and intelligence, even if bilingualism and language learning bring all sorts of other benefits.

Now, that point aside, is there any worth in compulsory MFL at primary level? According to the Wade, Marshall and O'Donnell report, by 2009 the success of the recent primary languages strategy was patchy, with nearly a fifth of schools unlikely to be on board by 2010. One key finding was: "Respondents’ views on the main challenges to current provision were: finding time to deliver languages within what they considered to be an overcrowded curriculum, lack of staff knowledge or expertise and budget restraints."

The primary languages headteachers' survey by CILT contains plenty of very positive observations about the value of the strategy, along with suggestions to government that more money is needed to recruit skilled practitioners and that a slimmed down curriculum is required to allow enough time for MFL. There are no doubt many success stories and a great deal of enthusiasm, along, no doubt, with some reluctance on the part of primary teachers.

In my local area of Ripon, North Yorkshire, there is a reasonably well established programme of French at nearly all the local primaries. Teaching is either carried out by peripatetic teachers or the regular teacher. There is also an excellent North Yorkshire French curriculum designed to help teachers. We survey all out Y7 pupils on arrival and it now appears that the vast majority have done some French, although usually with one session a week at most, and often less, over the previous two years. How has this affected the abilities and enthusiasm of our Y7 students?

I have to report that most have acquired some vocabulary knowledge, though not strongly embedded. Most do not pronounce very accurately and very few have any written skill. I detect no greater general skill or enthusiasm compared with the time when there was little French at primary school. At the same time, I detect, thankfully, little antipathy towards the subject. Essentially, we have to start from scratch and provide a little extension work for the small minority of pupils who have covered more significant ground. I somewhat regret the fact that what I offer is now no longer new and fresh. My colleagues would share my view.

What we have now will definitely not lead to any greater long term achievement at KS3 or at GCSE.

If it is decided that MFL teaching in some form should be compulsory from the start of primary, then it has to be based on sound theory and methodology. For the younger learner we require an element of immersion and natural acquisition. For this to work we need fluent speakers and sufficient time. Such speakers would necessarily have to be imported and paid. For serious progress to be made, regular sessions, at least twice weekly would be needed over the whole of KS1 and KS2. Along with immersion and natural acquisition, by Y5 and Y6 strong elements of rigorous, structured vocabulary and grammar learning would be needed (the sort of thing one finds at prep schools). Is this feasible? Is it desirable given all the other requirements of a child's primary education? Is it fundable? I would say no.

To complicate matters further, we have the issue of which language to teach? This requires agreement and coordination across local authorities and academy chains. How would parents feel about their child doing six years of French to then go to secondary school to begin Spanish? This is not a trivial issue.

Furthermore, we must acknowledge that language learning is hard, very hard. Less able youngsters would make little progress unless there was considerable immersion and motivation. This will not happen.

So, Mr Gove, when it comes to second language acquisition, it is one thing to say that younger children pick up languages more easily than older ones, it is another to provide the conditions for this advantage to really tell.

Perhaps Mr Gove should read this:

http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1274/1/WRAP_hunt_9670967%2Die%2D280709%2Dprimary_mfl_an_overview_of_recent_research.pdf

New 80 mph speed limit?

2011-09-29T19:02:00.000+01:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15116064

What a good idea! Let's give the NHS more business, increase CO2 emissions and raise more tax to cut the deficit.

But seriously, Chris Huhne should veto this one sharpish. It is completely bonkers. If anything, we should reduce the limit to get people to stick to 70.

The problem with essays

2011-09-29T18:25:00.002+01:00

The essay is a venerable form of writing which goes back centuries to the Japanese and later the Europeans. One simple definition from Wikipedia reads: "prose composition with a focused subject of discussion". We all have a good idea of what an essay is. It is also one of the main ways we use to assess a student's understanding of a subject they are studying. In A-Level modern language specifications, both at AS and A2 level, for AQA at least, it is worth a significant chunk of the marks available on the listening, reading and writing papers. Is it the best way to assess writing skill?

When we changed exam boards a few years ago, moving from OCR to AQA, I had one slight concern, and that was that AQA have traditionally used the essay as a means of testing language competence. I now feel that concern was justified. This is why: at AS level we ask students to write a piece on a subject such as television, advertising, cannabis, new technologies. The exam board come up with a mark scheme which rewards not just the variety and accuracy of the language, but, more importantly, the structure and content of the essay.

So, an able linguist who does not have an abundance of ideas on the subject at hand and who cannot structure an essay very coherently, gets heavily, very heavily penalised. The student is not being assessed on the right things. What is worse, if a student's content is moderate, then the marks for range and accuracy are severely limited. This results is a wide range of marks which do not necessarily correlate with the language aptitude of the students.

At A2 level, the situation is the same, except we also have the somewhat bizarre situation, with AQA at least, that an essay is assessed for structure and relevance, but cannot be assessed for actual knowledge. In theory, a candidate can write plausible nonsense, full of personal opinions and justifications, and still score a high grade. Now, at A2 there is a genuine problem for the exam board, because they want teachers and students to study a wide range of cultural topics, do not wish to prescribe topics (because teachers have told them they want the freedom to choose topics, authors, historical periods and so on), but have to provide some kind of worthwhile assessment to motivate candidates. I am not sure this problem is easily solved, all the while we cannot use coursework and allow students to create their own titles (as we used to do). But at least the mark scheme could reward, above all else, quality of language. It does not. Once again, as at AS level, the language grade is limited by the mark for relevance and structure. Why? I have never heard an answer to this question.

In conclusion ("pour conclure", "en guise de conclusion" etc), I would allow for other forms of writing beyond the essay and I would change the mark scheme to reward the important things: knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. Leave the essays to history, English literature and geography. In modern languages let's move away from the obsession with structure, opinions and ideas, and focus on the essentials.

Course Solex en Deux-Sèvres

2011-09-28T18:43:00.000+01:00

http://www.thisfrenchlife.com/deuxsevres/2011/09/calling-all-petrolheads-solex-grand-finale-at-la-boissiere-en-gatine-sunday-2nd-october.html

Suivez le lien pour savoir un peu plus sur l'histoire du Solex, le petit vélomoteur pratique et super économique.

Pour un petit aperçu:

Germinal

2011-09-25T14:19:00.001+01:00

Just watched Claude Berri's Germinal with my A-level class and enjoyed it very much. One of two of my more squeamish students found certain scenes shocking, but I am sure their eyes were opened to a different world. Having seen the film some years ago, I was struck this time how powerfully it presented the cruelty of miners' lives, how heavy-handedly, yet effectively, it contrasted this life with the bourgeoisie who ran the mines and how honestly Berri was willing to depict the bestial behaviour of working people subject to this environment. He was only rendering faithfully Zola's novel, and I did read comments to the effect that Berri did not emphasise enough the political struggle of the miners, but I did not have that feeling.

The film is shocking in its naturalism, well acted, particularly by Depardieu, Miou Miou and Jean-Roger Milou who gives an outstandingly committed performance as the frightful Chaval. Judith Henry is frail and touching in her role as Catherine, though I was left unconvinced by Renaud as Etienne Lantier. Just one too many close-ups of his emotionless facial expression for my taste.

So I do not believe this should be seen condescendingly as a high budget "heritage movie", devoid of creativity or political commitment. It is a very powerful and enduring indictment of a system which debased both workers and the men who employed them. It is also a striking reminder of class differences which, though less stark these days, still persist.

Linguee

2011-09-22T18:44:00.001+01:00

http://www.linguee.com

I've just come across the brilliant dictionary and translation/search engine site Linguee. This is a major addition to the tools available to teachers, students and translators. It comes from a team in Germany and could be serious competition for Wordreference. You can search individual words or whole phrases and idiomatic expressions and it will use its search engine to find the translations in real contexts, something Wordreference does not do. I would need to spend longer with it to see how useful it is in everyday use, but first impressions are very good.

They say:

Linguee is a unique translation tool combining an editorial dictionary and a search engine with which you can search through hundreds of millions of bilingual texts for words and expressions.

The Linguee search results are divided into two sections. On the left hand side you will see results from our reliable editorial dictionary. The results are displayed clearly and offer you a quick overview of the translation options. On the right hand side, you will find example sentences from other sources to provide you with an impression of how your search expression has been translated in context.

Compared to traditional online dictionaries, Linguee contains about 1,000 times more translated texts, which are displayed in full sentences. , Linguee will show translations for expressions such as "strong evidence", "strong relationship" or "strong opinion", and even for rare expressions or specific technical terms.
The young editors are at pains to say that it is not an internet translator. They add:

The vocabulary you see on the left hand side has been checked by our editors and is constantly enhanced manually.

The majority of the example sentences you see on the right hand side is from the bilingual web, particularly from professionally translated websites of companies, organizations, and universities. Other valuable sources include EU documents and patent specifications.
A specialised computer program, a web crawler, automatically searches the internet for multiple language webpages. These pages are detected automatically, and the translated sentences and words are extracted. The texts are then evaluated by a machine-learning algorithm which filters out the high quality translations for display. This system is capable of autonomously learning new quality criteria from user feedback to tell good translations from bad ones. It has found out, for instance, that a page is usually machine translated if it contains the word "Wordpress" while many words are literally translated. Through this training process, our algorithm is continuously learning to find thousands of such correlations and reliably extract the best translations autonomously. Our computers have already compared more than a trillion sentences. At the end of the day, only the top 0.01 per cent, i.e. 100 million of the translated sentences, are retained.

Un marteau de forgeron pour casser une noix

2011-09-22T18:19:00.001+01:00

Hind Ahmas - photo: Magali Delporte pour the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/19/battle-for-the-burqa?INTCMP=SRCH

Pour la première fois un juge a condamné à une amende deux femmes vivant dans la banlieue de Paris. Il s'agit de Hind Ahmas, 32 ans, et Najate Nait Ali, 36 ans, qui ont reçu des amendes de 120 et 80 euros respectivement. les deux femmes ont été interpellées le 5 mai près de la mairie de Meaux, dont le maire est Jean-François Copé, l'architecte en quelque sorte de la nouvelle loi entrée en vigueur au moi d'avril.
Les deux femmes avaient apporté pour Monsieur Copé un gâteau d'anniversaire aux amandes ("amendes" - vous avez compris). Elles voulaient exposer l'absurdité de la loi et étaient soutenues par l'association Touche pas à Ma Constitution. Leur avocat dit vouloir faire appel à la Cour Suprème et éventuellement à la Cour Européenne des Droits de l'Homme.

Apparemment les Néerlandais vont eux aussi passer une loi contre la burqa. Cela existe déjà en Belgique. J'ai déjà évoqué cette question dans mon petit blog et je reste convaincu que cette loi, qui concerne si peu de femmes, n'est ni nécessaire, ni juste. C'est un geste politique qui a déjà créé des victimes d'agressions et de propos racistes dans la rue.

Un ministre britannique a dit une fois qu'en Angleterre il n'est pas dans nos traditions de dire aux gens ce qu'il faut ou ne faut pas porter. Je partage son avis et j'espère qu'un jour la Cour Européenne tranchera en faveur de la liberté d'expression dans ce domaine.

DSK chez Claire Chazal sur TF1

2011-09-19T18:13:00.002+01:00

L'école est nue

2011-09-19T18:10:00.000+01:00

http://www.liberation.fr/societe/01012360273-les-dieux-de-l-estrade

Voici une manière d'attirer l'attention aux lacunes du système éducatif français:

Photo: http://www.ecole-depouillee.net/spip.php?article2

Speaking the target language or playing the CD?

2011-09-17T13:23:00.000+01:00

First, this talk by Patricia Kuhl about child language acquisition, the brain and picking up sounds, is both interesting and occasionally amusing. But about eight minutes in she describes experiments carried out with American babies in which they are exposed to Mandarin either by human talk with toys, a video with pictures of toys, or just audio with a picture of a toy. Only when the babies interacted with humans did they learn to discriminate certain phonemes.

Now, it has often occurred to me that in the modern language classroom, students seem to prefer, and seem to understand better, language spoken by me rather than the CD. I had assumed this was because I slow down a touch and emphasize certain words. I think I also had a hunch that students naturally prefer to listen to another person rather than a recording. So I wonder whether the preference which babies unconsciously demonstrate in language acquisition persists in later life, despite the brain's inferior language acquisition ability.

In any case, this might be an argument for teachers talking more, rather than playing the CD. For this, very good fluency and pronunciation skills are needed. The CD still has to be used so that students hear a variety of models and are prepared for the exam situation.

Teachers talking to kids is a little out of fashion these days, although it has been demonstrated that lecturing is the most efficient and effective way of transferring knowledge. In our subject area talking to classes is one of the most important things we do, and we should not shy away from it.

By the way, Patricia Kuhl has a number of talks posted on youtube.

Underperforming teachers

2011-09-16T20:53:00.000+01:00

Here is something from the TES:

"Dealing with the bottom 10 per cent of the worst-performing teachers would improve our schools immeasurably, argues the Sutton Trust. But is it that simple?

Last week, hundreds of thousands of men and women - some young, some old - took a deep breath (some perhaps even let out a quiet sigh) and stepped in front of class to begin another school year. For some, it will be their first time alone with a whiteboard and children; for others, that terrifying classroom debut will be just a distant memory. But whether these teachers have been doing their job for two minutes or 20 years, one in six is performing poorly.
At least that is the claim according to research on teacher quality published today by the Sutton Trust, which campaigns to improve social mobility through education.
The study suggests that some 64,000 teachers working in England’s schools are not performing as well as they should. If the figures are correct, you may be sitting next to one of them in the staffroom as you read this. Three or four low-performers you have encountered during your career may immediately spring to mind. One of them may even be you.
To put the Sutton Trust figure in context, consider the scale of the controversy caused by former chief inspector of schools Chris Woodhead when he claimed there were 15,000 underperforming teachers.
According to the Sutton Trust report, replacing or improving just the lowest 10 per cent of those working at the chalkface - roughly 40,000 - to bring them up to the UK average, would have a truly seismic impact on England’s schools and their pupils. The trust’s research claims that - all other factors remaining the same - tackling the bottom tenth of teachers would see the UK’s position in international league tables rocket in just 10 years from 21st and 22nd, in reading and maths respectively, to as high as third and fifth."

I am left wondering how one defines an under-performing teacher. The data collected by Ofsted on teaching quality is bound to be unreliable because they only see a selection of teachers teaching a selection of lessons in somewhat artificial circumstances. How else could they be counted accurately? Most, if not all, teachers perform well on some days and less well on others. Working teachers are aware that some teachers have a reputation for being particularly good or moreorless disastrous, though I have rarely come across the latter in the three schools I have taught out during my career.

So, whilst it is safe to assume that there are some incompetent or lazy teachers, just as there are incompetent or lazy layers, accountants, engineers and cabinet ministers, it is hard to put a number on them. I do agree that there should be measures that can be taken to help or remove such teachers. The development of performance management over the years has no doubt helped teachers in difficulty and the nature of modern teacher training may expose early incompetence more clearly than in the past.

My admittedly narrow experience is that teachers seem to have got a little better and seem to work a little harder than when I began teaching in 1980. They are more accountable, probably better trained (at least in practical teaching, if not theory) have better schemes of work, do more team-working, use their time a little more fruitfully and use a wider range of methods and resources.

Changing educational paradigms

2011-09-13T20:47:00.000+01:00

This is an entertaining and thought-provoking animation based on a talk by Sir Ken Robinson. A colleague put me on to it. Not sure what you think, but a few thoughts occurred to me:

Some actual knowledge needs to be transmitted to children before they can think in usefully creative ways. In science you need the basics of Newtonian physics, chemical reactions and the like before you can move to higher levels.
Some fields of learning, such as my own (second language learning) are about acquiring skills and knowledge and the most efficient ways may not necessarily be the most creative - aspects such behaviourist repetiton can go a long way.
Economic necessities mean that what Sir Ken calls "batch" systems and the traditional classroom are difficult to avoid.
I am not sure I agree with him when he says children do not believe that getting a degree will lead them to a good job. Many children but into the system and know how to make it work for their benefit.
Ken makes an assumption that children find their education boring. This is not always true!
Grouping children by age usually makes sense, socially and educationally, doesn't it?
He is absolutely right that we are heavily conditioned by the division between academic and non-academic learning. Policies such as languages for all up to 16 and the Ebacc have been attempts to break down this division. All children, these initiatives assumed, can access so-called academic subjects.
To a large extent, new technologies notwithstanding, we are still doing what we did in the 1950s and we find it hard to escape traditional thinking in education.
Politicians and parents conspire in maintaining the status quo. We seem to value testing, uniforms and conformism.
Sir Ken, as others have done, seems to dislike the division of the curriculum into subjects. How, in practice, can this be avoided?
We are in the habit of bemoaning the failures of our education system. We could look down the other end of the telescope and claim that it is remarkably successful, given the challenges schools face.
Is it a coincidence that all developed countries have developed systems with great similarities? No, because despite their limitations, they actually work rather well.

Le pour et le contre de la télé

2011-09-11T19:31:00.000+01:00

http://www.frenchteacher.net/alevel/alevelindex.htm

I've posted an essay on the pros and cons of TV for AS Level French (AQA). It's a slightly artificial piece, written as a model essay, but some teachers may find it useful along with the accompanying vocab list, exercises and gap fill task made using Taskmagic 3.

Still smarting over dodgy GCSE grades!

elspethjones.com

2011-09-11T00:08:00.000+01:00

Just uploaded my lovely wife's web site. She has recently retired from her job at Leeds Metropolitan University and is now doing some writing, consulting and lecturing on internationalisation in higher education. Take a look!

http://www.elspethjones.com

Mondial du rugby: les emblèmes des équipes

2011-09-10T13:52:00.001+01:00

http://www.slate.fr/story/43263/coupe-du-monde-rugby-emblemes

Article intéressant sur les symboles des équipes participant à la coupe du monde de rugby. Parmi ces emblèmes:

La fougère argentée des All Blacks:

"Les forêts humides originelles de Nouvelle-Zélande comptent plusieurs centaines de variétés de fougères. L’une, la Cyathea dealbata, a le dessous des feuilles argenté, ce qui en fait la plus belle et la plus recherchée des touristes. La fougère est aussi présente dans de nombreuses légendes maories et sa jeune pousse en spirale, dite «koru», représente l’éveil, l’énergie et la croissance."

Le coq du quinze tricolore:

"A l’origine, les premières équipes de France portaient deux anneaux bleu et rouge enlacés. En 1911, cinq ans après le premier match des Bleus, le capitaine Marcel Communeau proposa d’imposer le coq gaulois comme emblème. Ce symbole est associé à (la France) depuis l’invasion romaine, puisqu’en latin, gallus se réfère aux habitants de la Gaule tout comme au gallinacé chanteur."

La colombe (eh oui) des rugbymen tongiens:

"Ne vous fiez pas aux apparences, les valeureux rugbymen tongiens ne sont pas des colombes. C’est pourtant cet animal qui orne leur maillot, avec un rameau d’olivier dans le bec. Le tout enchâssé dans une croix rouge sur fond jaune. La croix rouge est le motif du drapeau national, le fond jaune et la colombe viennent du drapeau de la royauté, qui diffère. La colombe est un animal commun dans ce petit royaume du Pacifique."

Le jaguar des pumas (Argentins):

"Le cas des Pumas est une erreur historique avérée passée dans l’imagerie populaire. C’est en effet un jaguar qui orne le logo de la fédération argentine. Selon la mythologie établie, un journaliste sud-africain cherchant une métaphore animalière pour éviter les répétitions dans un article à rendre de toute urgence confondit les deux animaux lors d’une tournée des Argentins dans son pays en 1965."

La rose anglaise:

"La rose est un emblème royal remontant à la guerre que se livrèrent les maisons de Lancaster et d’York pour le trône d’Angleterre à la fin du XVe siècle. Un mariage servant à en finir avec les effusions de sang, la rose royale est à la fois rouge et blanche, mais surtout rouge. Elle fut adoptée comme armoirie par le collège de Rugby, où un imbécile eut un jour l’idée de prendre un ballon de foot à la main et de courir avec."

(Cette histoire de William Webb Ellis est en réalité un mythe populaire, quoique Wikipedia prétend que le rugby a son origine à Rugby School.)

Le chardon écossais:

"Selon la légende, des envahisseurs vikings tentant d’attaquer de nuit un château des Scots lors des invasions du VIe siècle se piquèrent dans des chardons. Criant leur surprise et leur douleur, ils réveillèrent les gardes et furent repoussés. La fleur est devenue le symbole de la résistance des hommes des Highlands à l’envahisseur, et fut donc choisie avec astuce pour leur premier match face à l’Angleterre en 1871."

Les plumes d'autruche du pays de Galles - eh oui, ce n'est pas trois poireaux.

"Les Diables rouges détestent leurs voisins anglais. Quand ils peuvent les empêcher de rafler un Grand Chelem, comme en 1999, ils ne s’en privent pas. Reste que sur leurs maillots, les Gallois font tout de même allégeance à la Couronne britannique.

Leur emblème? Les plumes d’autruche du Prince de Galles, préférées au poireau au XIXe siècle, pour signifier la loyauté à la monarchie. On trouve aussi le sigle de la fédération galloise, qui a remplacé l’expression «Ich dien» («Je sers», en allemand) au cours des années 1990. Pour l’anecdote, sachez que les plumes furent choisies comme emblème après la bataille de Crécy, au XIVe siècle."

Gestion rigoureuse, mais pas de rigueur...

2011-09-07T17:45:00.000+01:00

... ou comment la politique économique de la France ne ressemble pas à celle du Royaume Uni. Qui a raison? Je n'ai vraiment aucune idée, mais mon instinct me dit que les Anglais, se trouvant au début d'un cycle électoral, suivent la bonne voie.

Le Monde:

"Nicolas Sarkozy s'est livré à une grande explication de la crise mondiale et de ses conséquences, mercredi 7 septembre, lors du déjeuner qui réunissait les députés UMP à l'Elysée.

Le chef de l'Etat, qui s'est efforcé de faire de la pédagogie – avec une pointe d'autosatisfaction – a d'abord souligné que "l'heure n'était pas à la campagne présidentielle". "Il y a des urgences et je suis au travail", a assuré le chef de l'Etat cité par des participants à ce déjeuner.

"ON NE PARLE PAS DE RIGUEUR"
Ensuite, le président de la République a clarifié sa position sur un des débats actuels de la majorité : "On ne parle pas de rigueur, a dit M. Sarkozy à ses troupes. La rigueur, c'est la baisse des prestations sociales et des salaires. Nous menons une politique de gestion rigoureuse, qui vise à baisser l'endettement de la France."
"Nous avons un objectif et une obligation : conserver le AAA [la note de la France pour les agences de notation]", a t-il insisté, selon des participants.
En réponse à ceux qui réclament plus de rigueur, M. Sarkozy a lancé : "Si on va plus loin dans cette approche, il y a des risques d'empêcher le retour de la croissance. Nous ne toucherons pas cette année à une réduction massive des dépenses publiques."

HARO SUR "LES NÉGOCIATIONS À L'UNANIMITÉ"
Le président de la République a poursuivi en faisant un développement au sujet de la régulation de l'économie mondiale : "A l'heure actuelle, le système patine. Les négociations à l'unanimité ne permettent pas d'être suffisamment réactifs." Le chef de l'Etat a alors pris en exemple la proposition de taxe sur les transactions financières.
"Si le G20 garde sa règle de négociation à l'unanimité, cela ne verra jamais le jour. Nous devons apprendre à fonctionner avec une règle majoritaire : je vais le proposer au G20 [qui aura lieu début septembre, à Cannes]", a plaidé M. Sarkozy, toujours selon des députés présents.
En conclusion de son exercice de pédagogie, M. Sarkozy a indiqué aux députés UMP qu'il se laissait du temps avant de décider de convoquer – ou non – le congrès pour inscrire "la règle d'or" budgétaire dans la Constitution. Le chef de l'Etat a renvoyé sa décision sur une éventuelle convocation du Congrès à "fin septembre", selon les élus. "Laissons le premier ministre faire ses consultations : il y a le temps de la pédagogie, le temps du débat, puis le temps des décisions", a-t-il justifié."

La rentrée

2011-09-07T17:35:00.000+01:00

As we get back into the routine of lesson prep, marking, data analysis, development plans, class lists etc etc, I prefer to think of this....

A* grades

2011-09-04T17:15:00.000+01:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/8739422/Want-an-A-grade-Do-Art-not-French.html

Glad to see that the issue of the lack of A* grades for A-Level modern languages has been picked up by the national press. Only 19% of the A*/A grades in French this year were A*. Only drama and media were tougher subjects to get an A* in. You'd be much better off doing maths (40%) or sciences (around 28%) if you need a top grade for the so-called top universities.

When you also take into account the fact that a small percentage of candidates will be native speakers, who tend to score very highly at A-level, it becomes even more difficult for able students to get an A*. Incidentally, the exam boards do not record the number of native speakers.

Ofqual's limp response is that subjects vary and cohorts vary. Curious, because the ability profile of A-level MFL students is high. They get a large number of A grades. Are they saying that because languages are hard there should be fewer A* grades? So why are there even fewer A* grades in drama and media?

Put simply, they are not doing their job properly. They can easily adjust the raw mark to UMS calculations to manufacture more A* grades and to bring language more into line with other subjects. There can never be a perfectly level playing field in this area, but the current situation is unacceptable.

When one also considers that the percentage of A* grades fell this year at GCSE too, even though the number of entries fell significantly (meaning, in all likelihood, that the quality of the cohort rose a little), I think teachers and students would be justified in getting a serious answer from Ofqual and the examination boards.

Please speak to us.

Here are the numbers:

http://www.all-london.org.uk/2011_a_level_a_star_issue.htm

http://www.all-london.org.uk/2011_gcse_numbers.htm

Linguatrivia

2011-08-31T11:55:00.000+01:00

http://www.linguatrivia.com/index.htm

The nice people at Linguascope are organising a national competition called Linguatrivia for Y7 French students. There is a small entry fee for schools whose students take part. The dedicated website has a practice test and full instructions about how to enter. The deadline for entry is early in 2012, so there's plenty of time to think about it. Looks like an excellent initiative. There are some very nice prizes on offer and apparently everyone wins a prize! I might have to enter under a pseudonym.

Fin de vacances

2011-08-30T21:39:00.000+01:00

It's been a good few weeks. First I had the Year 8 French trip to Normandy. Nice to have Elspeth me for the last one. The kids were great and we had good fun as a staff. First timers Liz and Arwen were brilliant and we even got Glenn to sign up for Facebook. The coach broke down on the way home, but that didn't spoil a very enjoyable and stress-free time.

My brother-in-law and family came to stay and it was good to spend some time with them, seeing the three children growing up, doing some local visits (Newby Hall and Harewood House). The Himalayan garden and vegetable garden are amazing at Harewood. We had fun digging up potatoes and carrots from the new vegetable beds in our totally revamped garden designed by Elspeth. We've had some fabulous cabbages, spinach, carrots, lettuce, beetroot, swede, sugar snap peas, potatoes and ripening tomatoes. If you have never grown your own carrots, try it - they taste superb.

We got to Puyravault by August 10th. Our friends Douglas and Isabelle came for a few days. Anne, Tony and family had stayed at the house just before us and left us supplies of wine and ice cream. We always have fun together cycling, eating and lounging on the beach. The Leeds-Nantes route is really handy. We spent time with Jacques and Catherine, plus some of their family, including baby Perrine. We read a bit (Ben Elton for me, Philip Pullman for Elspeth), drank rosé (Plessis-Duval Cabernet d'Anjou is "the one") watched Boston Legal and The Killing on DVD, including one marathon eight episode session of the latter, cycled, walked, sat on the beach and popped over to St Jean d'Angely to see friends. Did a little decorating in the house and played the drums, though not much. Pleasant slow drive back up to Boulogne, avoiding motorways for a second time. Just like the old days.

So, back to school on Thursday and time to get the brain back in gear, with new colleagues, new classes and old friends. I bet the sun starts to shine!

GCSE

2011-08-30T18:43:00.001+01:00

http://helenmyers.blogspot.com/2011/08/gcse-and-level-june-2011-statistics-and.html

http://www.all-london.org.uk/2011_gces_numbers.htm

Helen Myers of the London branch of the ALL has commented on the recent GCSE results in modern languages. She picks up the key points, which, just to reiterate, are the fall in the number of entries again this year (one might have expected this to have bottomed out by now), the continuing issue of severe grading and the fall in the number of A* grades at GCSE, both in total numbers and as a percentage. The latter is incomprehensible; with a falling cohort we might have expected relatively more A* grades.

Then, of course, there's the continuing issue of a lack of A* grades at A-Level.

Am I missing something? Have the goalposts been moved a shade? One wonders how carefully the examination boards finalise their grading patterns and what factors come into play in their calculations. The results analysis sections of the boards' web sites are a great step forward, but there is room for more transparency if we are to have confidence in the system.

A new specification can take a while to bed in, so marking standards on those sections where judgment is required (Speaking and Writing) need to be looked at critically. Exam markers are human and, despite the boards' mechanisms to ensure accuracy, experience tells us that many errors are made, so re-marks will sometimes be the order of the day. This has been my experience so far.

Back to school on Thursday! Time to get into work mode.

Air Sarko One aménagé

2011-08-26T14:40:00.001+01:00

http://www.slate.fr/story/42635/avion-luxe-sarkozy-jet-prive

Il est rassurant de voir que Sarko prend bien compte de la conjoncture économique actuelle. L'année dernière l'état français a acheté un Airbus d'occasion pour le président de la République. Il a été totalement refait pour lui et maintenant on continue à le moderniser. La facture totale de ce moyen de transport peu nécessaire: plus de 250 millions d'euros.

Imaginez si la reine faisait une chose pareille. En fait, ils n'oseraient pas, sachant le scandale que ça déclencherait dans les médias. Mais les médias en France...

School uniform

2011-08-24T10:07:00.000+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/aug/23/school-skirt-ban-uniform?INTCMP=SRCH

Patrick Barkham in the Guardian has written a good piece on the vexed issue of school uniform following one school's decision to make trousers compulsory for girls.

I have to say that, having worked as an assistant years ago in France, and having regularly observed classes at our French partner school, I have never been a fan of uniform. I also observe that when we have non-uniform days at RGS the behaviour of pupils does not change. Why would it?

Curiously, most of our pupils seem happy enough with uniform, especially the girls who don't have to decide what to wear each morning. Even our sixth-formers wear a traditional navy blue/black uniform with little complaint.

I am little persuaded by the egalitarian argument and certainly not by the behaviour one. There is no evidence, as the Guardian article points out, that uniform raises academic performance or improves behaviour. Uniform is also expensive.

In Britain we rather like uniformity. We are more tribal than most and have been responsible for a number of dress codes in the past: teddy boy, mod, punk. Our footy fans love sport their team's jersey. Teachers dress formally for school; office workers often sport jackets, ties and suits. We associate uniform with respectability and conformity and that is probably the heart of the matter.

For me personally uniform is the biggest curse of my job. Every day I tell kids to button up their collars, tuck in their shirts and even occasionally roll down their skirts. Every morning I have to put on an uncomfortable tie. I'd happily see the back of it and have a sensible work dress code. Pupils would quickly get bored with showing off and turn up every
day in jeans and sweat shirt.

(This post does not reflect the policy of my school!)

"Outstanding" lessons revisited

2011-08-23T09:50:00.000+01:00

http://michellecairnsmfl.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/ideas-for-outstanding-mfl-teaching.jpg

Michelle Cairns has produced a useful mind map on the subject of what constitutes an outstanding modern language lesson. I posted on this a while ago and we had a discussion in our department on the same question. I still balk, by the way, at the word outstanding which OFSTED gave us and which has now become part of our teachers' vocabulary, even though it should not be the word we use.

One comment on Michelle's exercise... On the internet there are well known twitterers and bloggers who share ideas, run training sessions and support each other. This is excellent and I would like to see more language teachers engaging with the whole MFL community. These teachers, unsurprisingly, usually share an interest in trying out the latest developments in ICT. I am one of them... up to a point.

You see, I have had a nagging feeling for a while that we need to be just a bit more critical of what might be seen as gimmicky web tools. There are activities out there which seem quite fun and which students may well enjoy using, but which in fact are not very productive in terms of linguistic progress. In this category I would be tempted to place GoAnimate and Voki, for example. If a task takes a long time, involves too much use of English and does not allow a student to hear or read significant amounts of the target language, then we should question its use.

Going back to Michelle's mind map, I think that many, many teachers do brilliant lessons without recourse to ICT at all. If there's a bottom line here, it's to do with teacher-pupil relationships, use of target language, sound methodology and lots of practice. If a new technology works against any of those factors, we should question its validity.

Fin de l'internet illimité au domicile en France?

2011-08-21T10:29:00.001+01:00

http://owni.fr/2011/08/19/fin-internet-illimite-fixe-orange-sfr-free-bouygues-telecom/

Dans un document de discussion on avance la possibilité de mettre fin à l'internet illimité en France étant donné le risque d'une saturation du réseau. En fait, au Royaume-Uni nous avons déjà de tels seuils. Avec TalkTalk mon fournisseur d'accès je suis limité à 40go par mois. En réalité je ne suis pas conscient de cette limite car je télécharge relativement peu et je ne joue pas de jeux en ligne. Le réseau internet ressemble à la fameuse M25, l'autoroute qui contourne Londres. On l'élargit, mais elle finit toujours par être saturée.

Pour ce qui concerne internet il me semble naturel que ceux qui s'en servent le plus devraient payer plus cher. Peut-être que les autres verront une baisse du prix.

Ce que je voudrais voir en France, ce serait un marché plus compétitif. Tous les fournisseurs pratiquent dese forfaits du même prix et ce sont d prix relativement élevés par rapports à ceux en Angleterre où le marché est plus compétitif.

A-Level results

2011-08-19T08:15:00.002+01:00

I was able to have a very close look at our A and As results thanks to the Enhanced Results Analysis section of the e AQA site. This is, by the way, an excellent service which allows you to see how your school compared with others on whole papers and individual questions. One general observation: it is, once again this year, very hard for students to get an A* in MFL. I wonder how many of the small minority who do get A* are native speakers. For two years running I have seen very able linguists not reaching that grade. You could easily argue that, given the small but significant percentage of native speakers, the overall ratio of A* to A grades should be higher than for other subjects. Maybe the overall proportion of A grades should be higher too. Exam boards do not measure numbers of native speakers, partly because defining native speaker competence is not always easy.

Ofqual really need to look into this area.

The papers report, yet again, a fall in the number of entries for A-Level French, German and even Spanish. French was down 4.7% in one year. This is concerning and is partly explained by lower numbers doing GCSE. It may also have something to do with the rising number taking other hard A-Levels like maths and sciences. (It is worth noting that AS entries rose in all modern languages). The government talks a good game on languages, but the money is going to STEM subjects which sends out an even stronger message.

EBacc will help, despite its shortcmings, as will fairer grading at GCSE, better teaching and strong messages from schools and the media about the value of languages.

Scottish primary languages plan

2011-08-15T19:23:00.004+01:00

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/modern-languages-target-1.1117552?6305

Hot off the press today from The Herald, an intention for all Scottish primary school pupils to learn two modern foreign languages! I add the exclamation mark since, whilst I admire the ambition of this initiative, I wonder how on Earth it will be achieved, especially given how hard it has proved to introduce just one foreign language in English schools. The idea seems to be a response to the falling numbers of children taking languages further up the system. As in England, Spanish is holding its own, whilst French and German are in decline.

It is a curiosity that, as languages are in ever greater demand in Europe...

(http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/pdf/jobs/report.pdf)

British students are showing less and less interest in studying them. The reasons for the relative unpopularity of MFL in England are well known, league table effects, inherent difficulty and severe grading being high on the list. I do not know to what extent these factors come into play in Scotland.

Anyway, we'll see whether the Scottish ministry is willing to match its intentions with cash and good organisation. One should also question whether the aim is sound. I have yet to be
convinced that primary MFL increases subsequent enthusiasm for language learning or higher
take-up. Is there research evidence to support this assumption? And why two languages? Is the
primary curriculum full enough already?

I'll keep an eye on this story...

Here is the original piece if you don't wish to register on heraldscotland:

THE Scottish Government has announced ambitious plans to teach all primary pupils at least two modern languages.

In the week pupils return to school after the holidays, ministers are to announce they are setting up a working group to discuss how to meet the target.

The working group will look at the role of employers, universities and parents in promoting languages, as well as how the subjects are taught at school.

The training of teachers will also be a focus following concerns that primary staff are not taught language teaching as part of their university courses or probation years.

It comes after another disappointing decline in the number of pupils taking modern language Higher exams. Figures published last week showed a 4% drop in the number of pupils sitting French, German and Italian at Higher, with only Spanish showing an increase.

Dr Alasdair Allan, Minister for Learning and Skills, said the working group of key individuals and language organisations would be asked to help devise a language plan for Scotland.

“It is considered normal in most European countries to come out of school speaking more than one language,” he said. “The idea is that young people would be exposed to two languages other than their own, starting in primary school.

“It is early days, but there is strong support for the idea that you boost languages in this way and teach them earlier.

“That means we have to take decisions about teacher training to give primary teachers confidence in this area because it is no longer an option for pupils to arrive in secondary school without any meaningful exposure to other languages.”

The demise of languages in secondary has been blamed on the fact many schools no longer see languages as compulsory, despite school inspectors calling for them to be a “core element” in the first three years of secondary.

In addition, as part of cuts to education budgets, two-thirds of local authorities have scrapped foreign language assistants.

There have also been problems in primary, with The Herald revealing last year that three-quarters of schools were missing recommended targets for the delivery of modern languages.

The announcement from Dr Allan follows comments by Michael Russell, the Education Secretary, that he supported the so-called “Barcelona Agreement” by the European Council, which called for the teaching of at least two foreign languages from an early age.

Dan Tierney, a reader in language education at Strathclyde University, said: “I fervently hope Scotland can meet the proposals in the Barcelona Agreement.

“We have had many reports over the years and have worked hard to improve the languages situation although some of the more ambitious and expensive recommendations have not been implemented. There needs to be greater coherence in language provision to ensure continuity and we need to address teacher training at university.”

Sarah Breslin, director of Scotland’s National Centre for Languages, added: “I fully back this initiative and I think there is a real sense now of the importance of languages for Scotland to take its place in a globalised world.”

A spokeswoman for CBI Scotland stressed the importance of languages to businesses. “Scotland relies on its ability to compete in international markets and operating effectively in a global economy relies on the right language skills,” she said. Staff who can communicate at least conversationally can make all the difference in the conduct of business, consolidating relationships with existing suppliers and customers and opening the way to new contacts.”

Online modern language teaching methods course

2011-08-15T10:17:00.001+01:00

http://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/

Readers may already be familiar with the excellent Français Interactif from the University of Texas. Well, they have produced another outstanding resource and I thoroughly recommend this online training course for modern foreign language teachers. It consists of a series of modules in the form of discussion points and short videos. Many of the main issues facing language teachers are dealt with with an emphasis on the practical rather than the theoretical. The videos are snippets of lessons or seminars. Modules include the teaching of speaking, listening, reading and writing. There are also modules on, for example, assessment and culture. Modules are supported by further references which have an American bias.

The site is clear, easy to navigate and uses both Flash and Quicktime for video, so is accessible to ipad users.

I have just spent half an hour browsing the course and can see how it could be used not only for trainee teachers, but also for staff development. There are some controversial claims made in there regarding methodology, for instance, so you could take a video and then use it as a basis for discussion.

I came across one telling section on the use of technology to help us make up for the lack of classroom time we are given. It is reckoned to require 500 hours to reach an intermediate level in a "category 2" language like French, Spanish or German. Chinese, a "category 4" language is said to require 1000 hours to get to that same level. One for the Mandarin enthusiasts to think about there!

European teachers will detect some differences in terminology and a bias towards American resources (not unusual in the US language teachinh community, but this is not necessarily a bad thing as it gets us thinking differently.

We should be seeing more of this type of initiative online. It's a great advert for Austin.

All in all it's a tremendous initiative, professionally executed.

Les personnalités préférées des Français

2011-08-14T13:26:00.000+01:00

http://www.lejdd.fr/Societe/Images/Le-Top-50-du-JDD-en-images/

Chaque année le Journal du Dimanche fait faire un sondage sur les personnages préférés des Français. Le lien vous dirige vers un diaporama qui pourrait servir de cours culturel. Mon chanteur français favori, Cabrel, y était à la cinquième place. Yannick Noah reste en pole position pour la deuxième fois consécutive.

On n'a pas ce genre de sondage en Angleterre. La Radio 4 de la BBC fait une enquête annuelle, mais il s'agit de personnages du monde entier. Time magazine aux USA fait quelque chose de semblable.

Je ne sais pas comment les gens peuvent répondre à ce genre de question, mais je trouve intéressant quand même que les sportifs, les chanteurs et les acteurs occupent, pour la plupart, les premières places. Les chanteurs de "variétés" tels que Cabrel et Goldmann ont énormément de fans. En Angleterre la "chanson" a moins d'importance, même si notre pays reste très créatif musicalement.

Les personnages politiques ont une chose en commun entre nos deux pays: on ne les aime pas.

Pourquoi les émeutiers s'arment de battes de baseball

2011-08-13T09:47:00.001+01:00

http://www.slate.fr/story/42393/pourquoi-battes-emeutiers-britanniques-baseball

C'est un article curieux que j'ai vu sur slate.fr. Apparemment les ventes en ligne de battes de baseball ont augmenté. L'auteur pose la question pourquoi la batte de cricket n'est pas l'arme préférée des voyous.

Ce qu'il ne dit pas, c'est que la batte de cricket, plus lourde, est un peu plus difficile à manier que la batte de baseball. La crosse de hockey, elle, est peut-être un peu trop longue. Je parie également que la batte de cricket est plus chère. Certains des voyous responsables de la récente vague de criminalité n'auraient jamais vu un match de cricket de toute façon.

En passant, j'ai appris le terme "coquille de protection des testicules". En anglais ça se dit tout simplement "box".

Big County Chorus

2011-08-09T12:23:00.000+01:00

In my spare time, one of musical hobbies is barbershop singing.

I wrote that with a straight face.

If you like singing and if you particularly like singing in harmony, smiling with pleasure as you hear a ringing chord, then I recommend you seek out your local barbershop harmony club. It isn't just a men's hobby, by the way, although most clubs are male only.

Want to see a really good example of barbershop chorus singing?

Vocal Majority, from the USA, are the most famous chorus and are one of the best choirs in the world.

Here is one of the best choruses in Britain:

I belong to the Big County Chorus, a barbershop chorus from the Leeds-Bradford area. I've been maintaining their web site for a few weeks. If you are interested it is here.

French and Saunders on Gérard Depardieu

2011-08-05T12:48:00.000+01:00

Claude Berri update

2011-08-04T19:26:00.001+01:00

I have been adding some exercises and links on Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources to the A-level page on frenchteacher.net. I used Taskmagic 3 for some gap fills and a matching task on plot and characters. I also found a nice little video interview, originally from the INA site, with Daniel Auteuil, the day of the premiere of Jean de Florette. You get the impression he is still just a little in the character of Ugolin! Or was it my imagination? There is a worksheet to go with it if you happen to be working on this film.

Here is a link to the Daniel Auteuil video.

I heard an interview with him a few months ago on the radio. He seemed such a nice guy and he recalled what an important role Ugolin was for him.

In addition, I have uploaded some resources for Lucie Aubrac and Germinal. Do let me know if you know of any other materials.

La France votée le pays préféré des retraités américains

2011-08-01T15:33:00.000+01:00

Et pour la cinquième fois consécutive, paraît-il.

http://french.about.com/b/2010/01/09/france-quality-of-life.htm

Si vous suivez les liens fournis par Laura Lawless sur son excellent site, vous trouverez que les Français eux-mêmes ne prennent pas trop au sérieux cette étude.

Et moi, qui passe plusieurs semaines par an à vivre en Charente-Maritime avec un certain nombre d'amis français avec qui j'ai passé pas mal de temps, qu'est-ce que j'aime dans l'Hexagone?

Un peu au hasard, je mettrais en avant: sa belle langue, ses grands espaces, la variété et la beauté de ses paysages, son littoral et ses plages, son patrimoine historique et culturel, son réseau autoroutier et ferroviaire, sa gastronomie, ses liens de famille très proches, son hospitalité et sa convivialité, ses spécificités régionales, sa créativité artistique, architecturale et technologique, son attachement à la justice sociale, son climat agréable, sa démocratie, son cinéma, sa laïcité et sa relative tolérance (mais voir plus bas).

Par contre, je critiquerais: son système éducatif trop rigide, les heures d'ouverture de ses commerces, la qualité trop variable de son service clientèle (on sourit davantage chez nous), ses médias trop peu critiques de la classe politique, sa corruption politique, son manque d'ouverture vers le monde extérieur, sa télévision médiocre, ses syndicats qui refusent le changement, son racisme (quelle déception de voir le Front National gagner tant de voix aux élections) et, finalement, ses petites routes de campagne accidentées et, finalement, ses jardins - mais il faut dire que les Anglais sont très forts dans ce domaine.

Frenchteacher.net updates

2011-08-01T14:08:00.000+01:00

Source: a UKIP member's site!

After realising that I didn't have a really good text with exercises on immigration, I managed to find a pdf of an article based on a report from the OECD on immigration and why it is beneficial. It hits the spot perfectly for A2 level, so I have uploaded it along with some exercises, translation and gap fill using Taskmagic. Given the public's often ill thought out views this issue and the nonsense published in rags like the Mail and Express I feel almost bound to get the issue properly explained to sixth-formers. This article does it effectively.

Just before the end of term I uploaded a few more texts, exercises and gap fills. You can find them all on http://www.frenchteacher.net. Topics include facebook and fashion (barbed clothes).

In the article, the OECD recommends that governments do what they have to to ease social tension between ethnic groups. Easier said than done. However, they really could be more courageous in explaining clearly to peoples why, with ageing populations, and in some countries low birth rates, we need immigration to maintain our standard of living. I wonder how our economy would survive without all those people working in care homes, cleaning, hotel and catering, IT, agriculture and the NHS.

One aspect of A-level teaching I enjoy is the fact that it is rather like teaching general studies through the medium of French. If you are willing to move away from text books and the specification from time to time, there is really interesting work to do.

Yes: Fly From Here

2011-07-30T14:02:00.001+01:00

A teacher once said to me that the music you listen to when you are eighteen stays with you for life. For me, Yes were the band who brought together two things I enjoyed: rock and classical symphonies. Yes are the grandfathers of symphomic progressive rock music and they have just released their first album in ten years.

For this album Chris Squire (bass), Steve Howe (guitar), Alan White (drums) turned for help to their former collaborators Trevor Horn, the esteemed producer, and Geoff Downes (keys), who together formed the Buggles. Remember Video Killed the Radio Star? Horn and Downes had previously made the album Drama with Yes before moving on the other things. The singer is Benoit David whose high pitched tenor resembles that of Jon Anderson, the long standing leader of the band. He has been singing on tour with the band for a good while, having been the singer in a Canadian Yes tribute band.

This new album is seriously good! Trsut me! At around 48 minutes it clocks in fairly short and I did wonder whether in ten years they could have had more material in the bag, but that said, if this album had been released in the seventies it would have been considered a masterpiece of prog. Horn and Downes bring a pop sensibility to the band, so the album is littered with catchy tunes and hooks, but they have protected the symphonic prog credentials of the band by a reworking of an old Buggles tune We Can Fly From Here into a progressive suite, complete with overture, four "movements" and a reprise. As a suite it holds together less well than a prog "epic" like Close to the Edge, but the overture and reprise provide some needed structure. This song opens the album and after a few listens sticks stubbornly in the brain! Highlights are David's vocals and Steve Howe's guitar licks.

Track 7, The man You Always Wanted Me to Be, is penned by Chris squire who also sings. It's a pleasant, very singable pop song with one or two rhythmic twists. Track 8, Life on a Film Set, is pure Horn and Downes with catchy phrases, interesting meters and a touch of heaviness, somethign therwise fairly absent on the album.

Track 9, Hour of Need, is a beautiful Steve Howe song with that very fresh, clean, innocent sound that marked the band out in their earliest albums. Beautiful guitar playing here, along with a memorable melody and pleasing harmony vocals. When the boys sing together you hardly notice the absence of Jon Anderson.

Track 10, Solitaire, is a solo acoustic guitar piece, expertly played in the classical style and which reminds us of Howe's playing on the classic Mood for a Day. Good tunes again.

The closing track, Into The Storm, sees the whole band together again for the most rocking track, notable for some interesting time changes, wah wah bass from Chris Squire and, again, some great hooks.

So, I have to say that Yes, now largely into their sixties, have produced the goods and I am struggling to get the tunes out of my head. So, in the unlikely event that you used to like prog, or even more unlikely, that you still do, try this album!

End of an era

2011-07-29T10:48:00.000+01:00

Got back last night from Normandy after six days with the Year 8s at the Château du Molay near Bayeux. Elspeth came with me this time, which was nice after all the stories I've told her about the place over the years. This was the last trip after 22 years of 2nd year trips, at least 17 of which have been at the château. It was a slight relief to get all the kids back safe and sound, our only hiccup this time being a broken down coach on the way back to Calais which added nearly three hours to the journey.

Once again we went to the Bayeux tapestry, Arromanches, the Mémorial in Caen, Omaha Beach American War cenetery and Memorial, the Mont St Michel, St Malo and Riva Bella beach in Ouistreham. Why change a winning formula?

The kids were brilliant: happy, well-behaved, interested and quite calm. No late night antics to speak of.

I shall miss the château, but hope to go back there to stay sometime in the future. If you don't know this part of Normandy I thoroughly recommend it. It even stayed dry (just about).

Le château du Molay, Molay Littry.

Et si la Wallonie devenait un département de la France?

2011-07-21T18:19:00.000+01:00

Communiqué de Presse de Marine Le Pen, Présidente du Front National :
La crise politique que connaît la Belgique s’aggrave, ne trouve pas de solution et jette Wallons et Flamands dans une incertitude terrible. Personne ne se réjouit de cette situation et chacun en France partage l’inquiétude des Belges.
En cette veille de fête nationale belge, Il est néanmoins de la responsabilité de la France et des Français de tendre la main aux Wallons.
Si la Belgique venait à éclater, si la Flandre prenait son indépendance, hypothèse de plus en plus crédible, la République française s’honorerait d’accueillir en son sein la Wallonie. Les liens historiques et fraternels qui unissent nos deux peuples sont trop forts pour que la France abandonne la Wallonie.
Il va de soi que ces décisions importantes pour l’avenir de nos peuples ne pourraient être prises qu’après consultation par référendum des Français et des Wallons.

C'est un réel soulagement.

The post CA era: what next?

2011-07-21T13:21:00.002+01:00

So, the death knell has sounded for controlled assessments and it looks very likely that from September 2012 we shall see a return to terminal exams for GCSE. I have to say that as we approach our third and last year group doing CAs we have got used to them, students seem happy with the system and the marks they produce reflect their aptitude. My main reservation has concerned the importance of pure memorisation in the speaking tests. This was a step too far. The written CAs are very much like part of the old coursework format and allow all students to produce acceptable work.

Anyway, the wheel turns and there has been some discussion on the TES forum, mainly led by Martin Lapworth of Taskmagic fame, about what type of exam we should have for GCSE.

Here is my two penneth:

Firstly, tiering should be maintained to allow the examination to be a good test, but manageable by the relatively less able whom we are encouraging to keep languages going.

Secondly it should be fair but challenging test.

Thirdly, it should be as reliable as possible, marked externally.

Fourthly, the testing regime should resemble to a good degree the teaching regime.

And last, grading should be in line with other subjects, which will require some adjustment.

I would be happy enough to see a return to an equal balance of marks across the four skills. I would maintain separate tests for listening, reading, speaking and writing. There are good practical reasons for this: firstly, listening will still be carried out using a CD player or similar from the front and should take at least 30 minutes. If you add on a reading test of about 50 minutes this could make the exam too long.

I would not combine reading and writing for the same reason.

Listening

A mixture of conversation and announcements tested using test types such as matching, gap fill, multi-choice. I would allow greater use of English on the paper for Foundation Tier, but would favour avoiding English as far as possible at Higher Tier. The "backwash effect" is powerful and we would end up with course books filled with English and too little target language use in the classroom. Testing needs to resemble teaching.

Reading

A range of sources, some of them authentic or adapted from authentic sources. A range of test types including matching, multi-choice, gap fill etc. Again, I would discourage English on the paper at Higher Tier. The hardest questions could use multi-choice with good use of distractors. It makes sense to produce papers which can be marked quickly and cheaply, so multi-choice works well.

Speaking

I would return to tiering. We need a balance of tasks which support the less able and stretch the most able. Role-play ensures a degree of spontaneity, traditional conversation allows for a good degree of prior learning (why not?) and a degree of improvisation if the guidelines are set correctly. I would not return to pre-learned presentations. Pictures for discussion are a possibility at Higher Tier. Foundation tier orals need not be shorter as less able candidates often speak more slowly and need more time, even if they have less to say. Orals would be recorded and marked externally.

Writing

Tiered again. This could be a one hour examination at Higher Tier, about 40 minutes at Foundation. The Foundation paper could include a simple grammar assessment (e.g. cloze) and a piece of connected writing based on English bullet points. A choice could be offered. The Higher paper could consist of a grammar task (e.g. cloze) and a piece of connected writing using English bullet points of increasing difficulty. Again, a choice of tasks could be offered. No dictionary (dictionaries vary so this they would make the grading less reliable).

You could argue that what I have laid out is unadventurous and traditional. Well, I could have gone more prehistoric by including picture essays, translation to and from the foreign language, more questions in English. I could have looked forward by suggesting a greater use of technology, such as video recordings for listening assessment or individual listening facilities as per A-level, but there are costs involved in this. I could have allowed for more creativity from students, but as soon as you allow students to produce coursework style pieces of writing, you are introducing an element of unreliability in the assessment because you cannot be sure how much other help has been received.

I hope OFQUAL and the exam boards are getting on to all this already so that whatever we get will have gone through a consultation with teachers. I hope they will look at models from other sources such as Asset Languages in the UK and overseas.

Memrise

2011-07-19T18:33:00.002+01:00

Just picked up this link via Twitter:

http://www.memrise.com/about/

The team say:

"At Memrise, we're integrating everything we know about the art and science of memory to help you learn faster. Memrise is based in Cambridge, MA and was founded by Greg Detre, a PhD neuroscientist from Princeton, and Ed Cooke, a Grandmaster of Memory. From the science of memory, Dr. Detre brings an acute understanding of how best to strengthen memories, by testing and reviewing them over time in the most efficient manner. From the art of memory, Grandmaster Cooke brings an understanding of how learning rejoices in anything that is pithy, colourful, humorous, fantastical, attractive, scary, important, unusual or vivid.
We think that learning can be a special kind of creative pleasure, and we're building impeccable learning products that will help you learn quicker and more creatively than you ever thought possible."

How is it meant to work?

They say:

"The more your brain does to encode a word, the richer and more robust the memory that results. Memrise has been designed to help you form deep, vivid memories every time. We do this by providing you with mems at the point where you first encounter a new word. Mems are vivid images or nuggets of interesting and relevant information that help deepen the way your brain engages with what you're learning. They work best when they stimulate your senses, imagination and your emotions. Memories that result from such processing last longer, they stand out better and they are more enjoyable and satisfying to recall."

I've had a little go on the site, which is free, and it looks like quite a fun way for committed linguists to broaden their vocabulary. You can compete with others and it links with Facebook. There is a leadership boatrd and you have your own dashboard with your stats. Not sure how it works financially for the Memrise team yet as there are not any ads and there is no subsciption.

It all comes from Cambridge, Mass, USA.

"Resources panic"

2011-07-17T19:01:00.000+01:00

My colleagues in the department have recently commented on what they call 
"resources panic". I know what they mean. We seem to have such a huge range of 
resources: powerpoints, web sites, worksheets, songs, text 
book exercises, CDs and games, that you sometimes feel snowed under. "Back in 
the day" had a text book to work with, cassette, repromasters, worksheets you produced 
and, if you tried hard, the occasional recording from French long wave radio! 
The problem now is not where to find stuff, but choosing from the plethora of 
resources available.

Our approach to the scheme of work (or is it a "scheme of learning" now?) is to 
have a thick ring-binder for each year group with most of our sheets and 
references to other materials all in one place. The SoW is not one in which 
every lesson is mapped out hour by hour. Because we see pupils four or even 
five times a week for 40 minutes at a time, it makes more sense to plan some 
lessons ahead, but to adapt as you go along. I also like the idea of allowing 
my colleagues some scope for creativity. I'd hate to think we all did the same 
thing all the time. If we just had two sessions of one hour or 70 minutes a 
week, I would be tempted to be more prescriptive.

I pick up loads of good ideas from people's blogs, twitter links, emails etc,

but I only end up using a small minority of them, partly because, like many

teachers, I have a limited repertoire of practices which I know work well,

and partly because I am stuck in my ways!

Schools push students into Ebacc subjects

2011-07-13T18:49:00.000+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/13/ebacc-limited-choice-gcse-school-pupils?CMP=twt_gu

I guess this is no surprise and of course it was the whole point! Michael Gove's Ebacc scheme is having the effect he had hoped for as schools get pupils, at short notice it seems, to switch to languages and humanities. There is a tricky balance here, isn't there? On the one hand most language teachers applauded the notion of an Ebacc scheme which would bring back more pupils to modern languages; on the other hand, some fear, as do I, that non- Ebacc subjects will be devalued and some pupils may end up doing subjects which they find too hard, too dull or too irrelevant.

We know that schools have been smart in raising their league table level by allowing students to do subjects they find easier or just more relevant to them. We also know that there are not enough pupils learning languages, history and geography. Headteachers will need to set up curriculum models which allow students to do subjects which are both good for them and which they enjoy. Perhaps it is right that these decisions should be taken at a local level, as circumstances vary from area to area and "one size fits all" is not the way to go.

As the French move haltingly towards more accountability they need to learn from some of the lessons from outre Manche. League tables and value added scores can have some unexpected and nefarious effects!

iSLCollective

2011-07-10T10:58:00.004+01:00

http://fr.islcollective.com

Just come across this very good file and worksheet sharing site. The quality of the worksheets looks generally very good (look out for some surprising errors though) and some would be a very useful addition to a French teacher's resources.

You can search the site via level, skill type, student type (e.g. adult, primary, secondary) and activity type (e.g. game, exam revision, lesson plan, worksheet).

The webmasters say:

"Nous sommes une communauté d'enseignants de langues des quatre coins du globe et nous partageons nos fiches pédagogiques sur cette tribune libre d'utilisation. Ce site s'adresse à tous les enseignants de langues, que vous soyez en milieu scolaire ou que vous donniez des cours privés. Ensemble, collaborons pour simplifer notre planification de cours et rendre notre enseignement plus enrichissant!"

Definitely worth a coup d'oeil.

De quel candidat êtes-vous le plus proche?

2011-07-09T12:00:00.001+01:00

http://www.rue89.com/test/2011/07/06/de-quelle-personnalite-politique-etes-vous-proche-210568

Ok, c'est un de ces tests un peu bêtes, mais je ne pouvais pas y résister. Je me suis retrouvé proche de François Bayrou. Curieux, ce n'était pas forcément la solution que j'attendais!

Têtes de séries

2011-07-06T17:49:00.001+01:00

Je suis fana d'un certain nombre de séries sur DVD (en ce moment c'est Boston Legal, notre plaisir coupable), donc je jette un petit coup d'oeil sur le blog de Pierre Langlais. Chose peu surprenante, on y trouve des anglicismes comme remake (m), brainstorming (m) , playlist (f) et geek (m), mais j'ai été quelque peu surpris de trouver le verbe forwarder dans la phrase:

"Comme leur voix trouvait un échos particulier dans la presse internationale (voir ce solide argumentaire forwardé par un de ces collègues, Guillaume Regourd), j’ai décidé de faire un “pour / contre Treme.”

N'existe-t-il pas d'autre verbe pour exprimer cette idée?

réexpédier? transférer? faire parvenir?

OK, si vous insistez, voici mon top-ten des séries américaines:

1. The West Wing - remarquable du début à la fin
2. The Wire - idem
3. Star Trek TNG
4. Seinfeld
5. The Sopranos
6. Battlestar Galactica (deuxième version)
7. Lost (la première saison surtout)
8. (Dr) House
9. Boston Legal
10. Mad Men

Huffington Post

2011-07-05T23:29:00.000+01:00

Je ne savais pas que le Huffington Post, célèbre journal en ligne, très apprécié par des démocrates aux Etats-Unis, avait une version british. Qui plus est, celle-ci contient des pages sur l'actualité en France.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/france

Should we put grades on pupils' work?

2011-07-03T19:37:00.003+01:00

For a number of years there have been calls from some quarters for teachers to stop putting grades on pupils' work. A seminal article in this context seems to be "Inside the black box" by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam written in 2001. They cite research in a passionate argument against grades. The argument is familiar: kids only look at the grade and not the comment, the bright ones become complacent and the less brilliant are deflated. Allocating national curriculum levels has the same effect, they would argue.

http://weaeducation.typepad.co.uk/files/blackbox-1.pdf

Donald Clark summarises "why marking sucks" in his entertaining blog:

http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/

So why is it that I have resisted a policy of no marks on work? Well, we have spoken to pupils about this and we have discussed it more than once in the department. It has to be said also that our pupils are in the 11-18 age range and are nearly all are of above average aptitude. Black and Wiliam's study, as I recall, found that the effects of "no marks" were greatest for pupils of lower ability.

Our pupils say they would be frustrated not to have a grade. They say they want to see their letter grade (we also give an effort grade). Some say that they are motivated by the fact that they keep getting A grades and do not want less. To state the obvious, a grade is also an efficient, short-hand way of describing the quality of the work. It is the case that many, though not all, MFL homework tasks are routine, repetitive tasks where the focus is on grammatical accuracy and correct spelling. They are often reinforcing a pattern practised in the classroom. There is often little to add to the mark, bar something to the effect: well done, keep it up, you are making good progress, try to remember the endings next time. This contrasts with the type of marking you might see in English, history, geography or art.

I acknowledge that pupils often look at the grade and need to be prompted to look at corrections. I should get them to do corrections more often, just as I should just underline more errors, rather than writing in the correct version. (I think I neglect to get the kids to do corrections because I sense it is a dull task for them.)

We have a system where A= "very accurate, with a good range, among the best we would see at RGS"; B = "good work, but with some error and a narrower range"; C = "quite a few errors, evidence of some misunderstanding"; D = "weak - misunderstood, inaccurate" (I have simplified our descriptors somewhat). We do not routinely use national curriculum levels when marking work.

A primary school colleague recently observed to me that written marking is not very useful and that the most powerful way of motivating a child through assessment is to speak to the child. This makes sense. That little chat you have at the end of the lesson, be it encouraging or otherwise, is often much more powerful than a grade or a très bien.

So my conclusion: try not to mark too much, but do enough so that the kids know you care and are making sure they are getting the work done, resist the temptation to write in corrections when children can often see the error themselves, give marks most of the time because children like them and they motivate, and lastly, write in motivational and useful comments (e.g. how to get better) when you have the time. Oh, and use any colour you like, provided it is visible.

Comments welcomed!