Getting the Students into Languages

This practical guide provides teachers with a range of practical strategies that can be used to motivate pupils of all ages, especially boys. Amanda Barton shows how learning languages can be transformed into a fun and exciting activity with the use of such simple aids as business cards, jokes, comics and red and yellow cards. Many teachers are particularly concerned with the problem of underachieving boys, and specific strategies to address this issue are provided in chapters 2 and 4. Brimming with useful tips and inspirational advice on every aspect of modern language teaching, this book will prove essential reading for every modern language teacher.

About The Author
Dr Amanda Barton is Lecturer in Education and Director of PGCE Modern Foreign Languages at the . She regularly runs in-service training workshops for modern language teachers.

Table of Contents

• Why don’t the buggers love languages?
• Tackling prejudice through language awareness
• Will boys really be boys?
• Parents
• Primary school
• Being ‘cool’
• A cool subject or a girls’ subject
• Using languages and making them relevant
• Explaining the aims
• Which languages are best?
• Boys’ learning styles
• The teacher
• Speaking
• How do boys see speaking?
• Create more speaking opportunities
• Group- and pair work v teacher-led question and answer sessions
• Confidence-building exercises v accuracy
• Making speaking a means to an end
• Mobility
• Creativity
• Expressing opinions
• Drama
• Games
• Problems and solutions
• Listening
• The difficulty of listening
• Making listening purposeful
• ‘Hands-on’ listening tasks
• Training listening skills
• Pre-listening activities
• Listening to each other
• Focus on pronunciation
• Giving pupils control
• Reading
• Do boys read?
• The Internet
• Making reading (inter)active
• Training reading skills
• Reading aloud
• Presenting the written word for the first time
• Reading for pleasure
• Tasks presented as a challenge Listening to the teacher
• Writing
• The problem with writing
• Handwriting and spelling
• Making bridges with English
• Visuals and drama
• Finding an audience
• Creative writing
• Writing independendy or avoiding ‘Copiez les mots’
• Coursework
• The teaching and learning environment
• Pupils’ responses to being taught in single-sex groups
• Behaviour
• Pupil confidence
• Friends
• Reasons for disliking single-sex groups
• The sex of the teacher
• The effects of single-sex grouping on pupils’ attitudes to modern foreign languages
• Teachers’ perceptions of girls’ performance in single-sex groups
• Teachers’ perceptions of boys’ performance in single-sex groups
• What are the potential advantages of teaching single-sex groups?
• Which other factors affect pupils’ performance?
• Looking to the future
• Recommended reading
• Useful addresses
• Index