▼
Saturday, 14 June 2025

Keeping Marking Simple in the Face of Complexity

›
 Year 7 have been writing about food they like and don't like. This is another classic example of where the teacher's focus and the ...
Saturday, 7 June 2025

Really cool translation challenge.

›
 I've been working on a really cool translation challenge for the last 3 days. And I've nearly cracked the first 5 words. You'll...
Friday, 16 May 2025

Reading Strategies - Part 2.

›
 In Part 1 on Reading Strategies , we looked at some of the language reasons why we might want pupils to read texts in the Target Language. ...
Thursday, 15 May 2025

Reading Strategies. Part One - A Rationale.

›
 In the era of "knowledge", it seems that reading "strategies" have fallen out of favour. We no longer tend to have regu...
Saturday, 10 May 2025

Can we sort out Languages in English schools?

›
 Can we sort out languages in English schools? That's a sentence you can read 7 times putting the stress on different words in turn. How...
Monday, 5 May 2025

The problem with THIS A Level

›
 I am going to be writing a post looking at what needs to be done for Modern Languages , which will include explaining why the lack of mains...
Friday, 11 April 2025

Gap Fill with a twist

›
 Gap fills are a favourite activity in language learning lessons. Either with words to select from a word bank, or with free choice of the w...
Sunday, 23 March 2025

Cream or ice cream or custard?

›
 We all know that the human brain can learn languages. We learn our first language. And if we live immersed in another language we can learn...
Sunday, 9 March 2025

The new GCSE was meant to stop rote learning in the Conversation...

›
 My position is: I teach pupils to speak spontaneously, developing their answers. So keeping the Conversation part of the Speaking Exam in t...
Sunday, 2 March 2025

Have we let testing Listening destroy teaching Listening?

›
 I once found the perfect YouTube video for doing actual Listening with my Year 10 class. It was someone complaining about how noisy slurper...
Friday, 21 February 2025

The New GCSE Photo Card

›
 This half term we started working on the Photo Card for the new GCSE. The textbook included it right from the first unit, at least in the a...