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I was delighted to be asked to chair the ICT Show and Tellat Language World. Although our group was small, all contributed and sharedtheir ideas and tips true to the MFL Show and Tell model.
 Voki: The avatar site has a  text-to-speech facility that can be used forstudents to practise pronunciation in an independent manner, digital recordingscan also be added to make speaking controlled assessment preparation moreengaging.
French vocabulary flashcards: learn with music and rhythm. Ictcan disguise the har
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Wendy’s workshop included a lot of suggestions andno-nonsense advice to enable students to find “what works for them”.
The first piece of advice was to make it obvious that memorywork is hard work. There is no shortcut despite the messages sometimes spreadin the media. Memorisation in a foreign language is difficult as you need tomemorise the pronunciation of the word, its meaning in English and spelling inthe foreign language.
Wendy spends 3-4 lessons on memorisation at the beginning ofyear 7, a few weeks into September.
Memorisation skills need to be taught explicitly and ithelps if students are aware of their pref
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" La musique a besoin de solfège comme la parole abesoin de grammaire" Eric Orsenna
Historically, grammar went out of favour after the demise ofO Level. The National Curriculum tried to define a recommended approach togrammar to include communication and knowledge about how the language works.
I agree with Martine Pillette that grammar should be FORcommunication and presented as a tool, not as a problem. Students should begiven the opportunity to find out about structures on their own, compare withEnglish. Although it can be very challenging, teaching the grammatical languagein Target Language helps sustain Target Language use in the classroom-and muchof the grammatical terminology is very similar between French/ Spanish andEnglish.
1.
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The principles of Jolly phonics in can be applied in French throughcreating an association between sounds and images with phonics being introducedright from the first lesson.
No one usually alert language learners to the fact thatletters make different sounds in different languages. Phonics makes studentsmore independent as it allows them to try out and transfer pronunciation rules bythemselves.
Sue Cave presented the 7 steps to her approach to embeddingphonics in language learning and teaching, with the first three steps focusingon Oracy and steps 4-7 focusing on Literacy development.
Steps 1 and 2: Identify and practise the individual soundsin a word (1) a
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The panel chaired this year by Rosie Goldsmith consisted ofactor Larry Lamb, headteacher David Kennedy, young entrepreneur Lizzie Fane andEC Head of UK  Interpreters David Smith.
As somebody who is in the classroom, I always find debatesabout languages by non-teachers both fascinating and worrying. We arediscussing languages education and the members of the panels often have apartial view of it depending on the degree of their direct involvement with it.It is sometimes difficult not to feel this is all too anecdotal but the truthof the matter is that anecdotes do shape our views-whether positive ornegative.  
I found th
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Elaine Taylor gave a very thorough update of the situationof languages in school from an OFSTED perspective.
Primary Schools
50 schools were inspected for last report. All schools hadsome language provision of some kind.
Many examples of good practice were observed including thefollowing:
Students were observed developing their reading and writingskills-single words and copywriting skills at sentence level.
Students were given some opportunities to be creative anduse their reference skills.
Students were taught to use text to support speaking andused familiar stories to develop both their speaking and writing skills.
Display was used in a very imaginative way to support thelea
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Looking at my notes from the ICT into Languages Conferenceat Southampton University in February, I have decided to make my own checklist from allthe wonderful ideas exchanged at the conference.

As mentioned in @joedale ‘s keynote speech, follow theexample of David Mitchell, @DeputyMitchell to use blogging to encouragestudents to write and improve their literacy in general-especially boys. Hisconcept of “Quad blogging”-four schools from around the world blog about alight theme is certainly worth investigating…
Look at setting up simple projects integrating Skype orvideo conferencing as a way to bring languages to life.
Develop my use of Triptico  and share my experiments via the Trip
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I had a great at Language World today.
Here is a copy of the slides and the handout I used for my presentation on developing students' independence and confidence.

After the launch of the ebac, the debate about whether studying a language is only of benefit to a worthy elite resurfaced. Despite the UK having less and less home-grown linguists after languages were made optional in 2004, everybody seems to have an idea about the impact of learning a foreign language. From the common myth that learning a foreign language can affect a child's ability to master English to the strong opinion that it “won’t be needed” for certain students, a lot of misconceptions are going around and taking hold.
Languages can not only support the development of high-level literacy skills, but also provide low attainers with an opportunity to feel positive about learning again. The benefits are for everyone, a little bit of language can take you far…
Equ
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Like I told you before nowadays most of the students like to make movies with photos and movies from different activities . For this reason youtube, the biggest video platform made a partenership with others to allow you and your students to unleash the power of your creativity . Some of this apps allows you to make awesome animations directly on youtube . In next post I will describe gr8 tools to make killer presentations on-lin...... [ Read the rest of this story ]

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