Skip to main content

Using the language assistant in the classroom

If you are lucky enough to have a foreign language assistant you have a range of ways of getting the best out of them. With A-level students, once they have had the chance to observe the students in class with the regular teacher, I think it is best if they work with small groups of students on their own most of the time. If they show a good deal of initiative they could essentially "do their own thing" with the groups. In this way students will not have the impression that they are doing "more of the same". If the assistant needs more help and guidance, you could provide them with a sequence of topics/lessons to teach. In any case they would benefit from access to all the resources and games you have.

The British Council assistant pages are useful. Their information booklet for FLAs is here.

In the run-up to exams the assistant can help with last minute practice and preparation. They can also be on hand on the orals day itself to do last minute practice.

The main benefit students will get from the assistant is lots of authentic language input. Next most important is the opportunity to develop oral skills within a small group.

With KS3 and KS4 students my own feeling is that the assistant is better used in the classroom with the teacher. Why? There may be behaviour issues with this age range and taking students out of lessons disrupts your teaching. At lower levels too, the regular teacher has a better grasp of what students have done and will understand.

So, with younger groups I would keep the assistant in class and use them to support your regular work. We would usually plan our lessons so that the assistant would be there to support pair work. Typically we would plan a lesson so that the teacher and assistant would model a dialogue or communication gap activity. Then, once the class was underway with pair work, both teacher and assistant would be available to listen in and support, correcting as appropriate.

At the start of the assistant's year (usually early October) we would introduce the assistant to younger classes (Y9-11) by using the sheet below. You could design a simpler one for Y8. I would not do this task with Y7. The teacher would interview the assistant with reference to the worksheet and the class would take notes. This would then lead to whole question-answer/feedback, perhaps with an extension task for an able student where they would give a mini talk about the assistant in the third person.

We would try to leave time for a few questions in French or English. 

These lessons always went well. The format works so much better than the under-prepared "what questions would you like to ask" type lesson. The class got loads of good quality, finely tuned listening input, were actively taking notes and heard a new voice. Each question provides an opportunity to revise the alphabet. If the assistant started using language which was too hard, the teacher could re-word statements or lead the assistant towards easier language.There was also the opportunity for some oral work.

The assistant should ideally see the sheet beforehand. tell them not to worry too much about the absolute truth.

Here is the sheet we used (available on frenchteacher.net too):



                   INTERVIEW AVEC NOTRE ASSISTANT(E)

1.                  Il/Elle s’app____ ___________ ___________

2.                  Elle a ________________

3.                  Elle a _____ _________ qui s’appelle ____________

4.                  Elle h__________ à ___________ dans _____________

5.                  C’est une ville ________________

6.                  On _____ visiter _____________ et ________________

7.                  Comme passe-temps elle aime, par exemple, __ ____________

8.                  En ce moment elle travaille __________________________

9.                  Elle  va finir _____________, puis elle ________________

 10.             Le weekend dernier elle a ___________________________

   et elle a ________________________________________

11.             Hier soir elle a mangé ______________________________

12.             Et elle  a _______________________________________

13.             Le weekend prochain elle va _________________________

14.             Comme musique ___________________________________

15.             Un film qu’elle aime beaucoup, c’est  “___________________”

16.             Récemment elle a  vu “______________________________”


Comments

  1. Thank you for your idea of introducing the TA into the classroom.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the natural order hypothesis?

The natural order hypothesis states that all learners acquire the grammatical structures of a language in roughly the same order. This applies to both first and second language acquisition. This order is not dependent on the ease with which a particular language feature can be taught; in English, some features, such as third-person "-s" ("he runs") are easy to teach in a classroom setting, but are not typically fully acquired until the later stages of language acquisition. The hypothesis was based on morpheme studies by Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt, which found that certain morphemes were predictably learned before others during the course of second language acquisition. The hypothesis was picked up by Stephen Krashen who incorporated it in his very well known input model of second language learning. Furthermore, according to the natural order hypothesis, the order of acquisition remains the same regardless of the teacher's explicit instruction; in other words,

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).

La retraite à 60 ans

Suite à mon post récent sur les acquis sociaux..... L'âge légal de la retraite est une chose. Je voudrais bien savoir à quel âge les gens prennent leur retraite en pratique - l'âge réel de la retraite, si vous voulez. J'ai entendu prétendre qu'il y a peu de différence à cet égard entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Manifestation à Marseille en 2008 pour le maintien de la retraite à 60 ans © AFP/Michel Gangne Six Français sur dix sont d’accord avec le PS qui défend la retraite à 60 ans (BVA) Cécile Quéguiner Plus de la moitié des Français jugent que le gouvernement a " tort de vouloir aller vite dans la réforme " et estiment que le PS a " raison de défendre l’âge légal de départ en retraite à 60 ans ". Résultat d’un sondage BVA/Absoluce pour Les Échos et France Info , paru ce matin. Une majorité de Français (58%) estiment que la position du Parti socialiste , qui défend le maintien de l’âge légal de départ à la retraite à 60 ans,