ICT Training for Teachers|
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Modern Foreign Languages - ICT resources for MFL
Hint: we have tried to give an overview of all the different ICT resources available. If this is all new to you, you may find it rather heavy-going. To make it easier for you, we suggest you skim read the whole section to get a flavour of what is available, and then tackle different sections in depth, according to where your interests lie, giving yourself time to digest each section.
When will ready-made materials be particularly useful?
- When they fit in with the lesson?
- When they extend the work?
- ... ?
When will they useless or even counter-productive?
- When there is no match with the lesson?
- When they are used merely as time-fillers?
- ... ?
However, the teacher will soon want to tailor-make materials which cover language learning tasks more directly suited to the lesson. This is where the easy-to-use matching, gap-filling and text-manipulation programs come into their own. Examples of these kinds of programs which are widely available in schools include 'Matchmaster', 'Gapmaster' and 'Fun With Texts'. If these programs are not available, it is easy for the teacher to make up similar exercises on a word processor, but the advantage of automatic 'marking' of the pupils' work is lost.
Task 2
Check with your head of department or IT co-ordinator to see if you have any MFL games software or text manipulation software. Try the software out for yourself, evaluate its possibilities, think of ways of using it in lessons; let some pupils try it out while you observe their reactions. You can explore further ideas for using this kind of software on the MFL Curriculum ICT Support pages of the VTC, where there is a whole section covering Text manipulation, including 'Twenty activities that work' for you to try out.
How will you ensure that Fun With Texts or a similar program is being used to reinforce the learning? Start with the intended learning outcomes!
These and other language learning CD-ROMs usually cover far more than listening and speaking. They can help in reading, and with their context sensitive vocabulary aids and grammar aids with exercises, often with answers provided, they can help in the production of accurate written work. Some of the Vektor materials also keep records of pupil progress.
Task 3
Check with your head of department or IT co-ordinator to see if you have any MFL CD-ROMs. Try the software out for yourself, evaluate its possibilities, think of ways of using it in lessons; let some pupils try it out while you observe their reactions.
Go to the Becta CD-ROM review pages and do a search for CD-ROMs suitable for MFL lessons. Have a look at a few reviews to get the flavour of what is available.
CD-ROMs are like the ready-made programs discussed above, but they potentially hold far more material and therefore can have far wider application. How would you use the CD-ROMs that you have access to?
Task 4
Have a look at the CD-ROM reference materials available in your school. Use an encyclopaedia such as Encarta to find references to the languages and countries that interest you. Think of ways in which you could use this in lessons.
Have a look at the example in the Lewisham booklet 'Ideas for Integrating ICT into the Primary and Secondary Classroom', pages 45-46 and see if you could do this exercise using the materials available in your school.
Start to compile, on a word processor, database or spreadsheet, an annotated list of materials available within your school, and details of year groups that you could use them with. Keep this in your portfolio.
CD-ROM reference materials are not the same as paper-based materials. What are the advantages of each type? When would you use one, or the other, or both?
Other Subject Specific Software
Most schools will have one or more of the standard word processing packages, such as Microsoft Word, and presentation packages such as Microsoft Publisher. Learning how to use the full power of such programs can seem to take a lifetime, and many teachers are daunted at this prospect. At their heart though, these programs are very simple to operate, and you need only learn the basics to make a start. Some teachers have produced worksheets and departmental notes as a way of learning the rudiments of word processing, and this can be a very good introduction.
Task 5
If you are not already familiar with the rudiments of word processing, you should take some time to explore the package available in your school. Make sure you can do the minimum of the following:
- Start a new document
- Understand the principle of 'word wrap'
- Format words and sentences (e.g. Bold, Underline, Italic, enlarge the font)
- Copy and paste, cut and paste
- Save a document and retrieve it
You can explore these ideas further by looking at the section on word processing in the MFL Curriculum ICT Support pages of the VTC. This section includes the useful 'Twenty ideas for using word processing in MFL', as well as an extension of the ideas we have outlined above.
Have you fallen into the 'copy-typing' trap? If so, what did the pupils gain from this? Or have you been disappointed by their results when using word processing for developing writing? If so, how could you have supported them to ensure better results?
- Word processing can make a pupil's work look very neat, but if all that has been done is that the pupil has copied out a hand-written exercise, perhaps introducing a number of new errors into the text, then there is little purpose in doing this. Copy typing like this has little value in the modern languages lesson, but if we use the power of the technology there are many gains to be made.
For instance, you could give a text with gaps to be filled in, or an outline text which has to be expanded, or a list of words and phrases which have to be used. By using cutting and pasting, the pupil can produce accurate written language. The editing facilities (even foreign language spell checkers) can be used to the full to correct mistakes. Pupils could use clip art drawings (i.e. banks of ready-made illustrations provided with the word processing package) to illustrate their work - the addition of a visual helps to reinforce the learning. This can be particularly effective when pupils produce posters using a program such as Microsoft Publisher.
Of course, word processing tasks bring certain problems to the lesson: one concerns the painful slowness of most pupils' typing. A way round this, in addition to providing much of the text before they start, is to ensure that they use a fairly large font size: this makes it look as though they have produced a fair amount of work, which is encouraging for beginners! Another problem concerns the use of foreign accents and characters. Most schools will produce 'prompt cards' to help the pupils do this easily. Different systems and programs have different ways of doing this: Click here to get a list of foreign characters in Microsoft Word for the PC.
A very useful side-effect of word processing is the pupils' work, if they save it, can be used over and over again, either to improve it, or to adapt it for different purposes, or even to produce extra copies to go on the wall. How can we make best use of this facility?
Our aim must be to use the power of the word processor to the full so that pupils can eventually work creatively, drafting, redrafting and editing their work to achieve high levels of accuracy. Pupils can learn or develop many word processing techniques this way. Work presented on the screen or printed out can have the effect of making mistakes more apparent: it is harder for pupils to 'fudge' spellings or grammatical endings, and this can lead to significant gains in accuracy.
Some schools have invested in foreign language versions of their word processor program, so that the pupils are working in a completely different environment with the onscreen instructions and the spell checker all in the target language.
How useful will this be? Will the program require different key boards (e.g. AZERTY) or key board settings to cope with the accented keys found on foreign keyboards. Are there other advantages or problems?
With written tasks it can be a little more difficult to find authentic audiences for pupils. One way round this is quite simply to expect the pupils to suspend their judgement, as they do when speaking to each other in the foreign language, and to send each other written notes. The use of ICT can help here in a number of ways, not least because typed text is easier to read.
Some schools have a network messaging system which allows pupils to send notes to each other either inside the same room or elsewhere in the school. (Schools that do not have such a system can achieve a similar effect by printing out messages and physically taking them to the target area.) It is very easy to think of tasks which will exploit this. For instance, you can simulate hotel or campsite bookings: pupils send their requirements over the system to another machine, where other pupils make the bookings and send confirmatory messages back. E-mail allows records to be kept of both sides of the correspondence, so it is easy to see if the message has been understood. The German case study on the TTA CD-ROM has a much more elaborate version of this exercise, where records are entered on a spread sheet, and the communication is done via a phone system with the teacher.
Task 6
Investigate the messaging possibilities in your school.
- Electronic mail (e-mail) is now very much part of the global communication system, and there is no reason why schools should not make full use of this exciting medium. Finding someone to communicate with can be the first problem, but many schools have teachers who are native speakers of the target language, or teachers, not necessarily in the modern languages department, who are sufficiently fluent in the target language to be willing to respond to e-mail messages. It is even more effective and motivating if the audience is truly authentic, and the foreign language assistant, members of the governing body, parents, local businesses (the restaurant and hotel trade can be particularly helpful here) can all be pressed into service to provide that added authenticity. E-mail messages which leave the school's internal system and are truly sent out into the world can add a sense of great importance to the task. The Spanish case study on the TTA CD-ROM has an advanced example of this kind of work.
One advantage of e-mail is that it is electronic: it is easy to draft and redraft a message you want to send until it is correct. Another is its speed. Provided the exercise has been set up properly, a meaningful response can be expected very soon. A third is its cheapness: it costs no more to send one message to one person than it does to send one message to thirty people. And it costs no more to send a message to the other side of the world than it does to send one to the other side of the street.
A further advantage which schools can put to great use is that the responses are also electronic. You can put the messages you receive into a word processor, remove unwanted parts of the message, change the font size or the layout, and make use of the text for comprehension. Or you could put the information into a database (better still: get the pupils to do this!) and use it as a stimulus to further oral and written work. Thus a school which has a good link with a partner school could set up an exercise where each side sends extensive information in their own language which can then be used in a variety of further ways by the schools.
For instance, one school set up a project where each pupil in a class wrote an email letter in German to pupils in a class in the partner school in Germany. The partner school then matched the pupils to its own pupils who responded in a similar way in English. There then followed a further exchange of information where each English pupil wrote a detailed message in English giving details such as age, hobbies, parents' jobs, descriptions of their house, pets, siblings etc. In return they received similar messages from the German pupils in German. The school now has a large bank of detailed messages, all in authentic school-pupil German, all held electronically, which it can use in many different ways and at many different levels.
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Task 7
Find out what e-mail provision there is in your school. Experiment by sending messages to yourself, then to a friend or to your tutor.
There are some further ideas on using e-mail in language learning on the Linguanet site, and links to partner finding agencies. (Linguanet is a web site that you will want to explore thoroughly when you have time.)
Print out some sample e-mails you have sent and received and keep them in your portfolio.
What are your aims for using e-mail in the MFL lesson?
- To help pupils develop care in the accuracy of their writing?
- To exploit the speed of electronic communication?
- To exploit the authenticity of the communication?
- ... ?
Students love sending text messages by mobile phone. Some of these phones have predictive text entry - and you can select the language they display. Have you explored this as a text-writing activity?
The browsers also allow pages to be saved in two formats:
'html' - this is the format which displays it as a web page, and is the way to save it if you wish to use or edit the page in its on-line format.
For instance, you could go to the tourist board pages of a town in the country whose language you are teaching and download details of the town's tourist attractions. The material so gathered could then be used in a number of ways, depending on the level of the learners and the depth to which you wish the pupils to explore it. For relative beginners the level of questioning could be quite simply 'What's this page about?', 'What can you do here?', while more detail would be required of more advanced pupils. Web pages are usually attractively designed with plenty of colour and illustrations to aid understanding. Topics are often broken down into small sections for ease of display and again this helps understanding, even if the language is well above the level that the pupils have reached. The downloaded pages can also be used as a model to help pupils to generate similar pages of their own using other software such as Publisher.
Web pages can give up-to-date news items which can be read at different levels for understanding and inference, and can provide statistical and other information such as weather details, local prices, lists of hotels, travel details - the possibilities are really unlimited!
Over time a useful set of pages can be amassed which the school can use as its own mini-version of the net: this is generally referred to as an 'intranet'.
- What sort of pages would you collect?
- Howl would you keep them?
- How could you use them?
Task 8
Get to know how you can go on-line in your school, and find out how your web browser works.
Download some information and experiment with it either as a web page or in your word processor. Print out some examples and keep them in your portfolio.
Find out how you can access web pages off-line.
Explore some of these ideas further by looking at the rationale for using the Internet in MFL learning on the MFL Support pages on the VTC. If you have time you can look at the Language teaching activities for the web on the Linguanet site.
- We have already touched on how schools can create databases which can be used to develop language learning. Pupils can build up databases of hobbies, professions, holiday accommodation and so on. They can then search for specific information, perhaps in a simulation of a tourist office, employment agency or a dating agency, or present the information in different numerical and graphical forms and discuss their findings. They can also access databases on the Internet: one useful site is La Redoute, where they can access categories on a mail order catalogue. You can also buy CD-ROMs of authentic foreign language materials, but make sure they are not too advanced for early learners.
Ready made databases can be a great addition to the MFL department, but if you want to set up your own database, you'll have to learn how to use some more software. However, spreadsheets can be used as databases, and this will cut down on the amount of learning you have to do. Talk to your ICT Coordinator about this, and look at the next section for more ideas.
Task 9
Explore ideas for databases further by looking at Using databases on the MFL Support pages of the VTC. If you are confident, you can also look at the detailed KS4 data-handling activity.
Remember: spreadsheets can help you in two very different areas. They are a great teaching and learning tool, and they can be used for keeping departmental records, converting marks to percentages, producing class and year order lists, and in automating dozens of other chores.
Task 10
If you are not already familiar with databases and spreadsheets, this is a good time to find out more. A package like Microsoft Excel can be used either as a spreadsheet or as a database, and this saves on learning time. Spreadsheets can be enormously helpful in departmental administration, for instance in producing class and set lists: you can add test and exam results and sort the lists by alphabetical or rank order. As a minimum you should be able to do the following:
- Know the difference between rows and columns
- Understand cell labels
- Enter text, numbers and formulas
- Sort data
- Add up a column of figures
- Format text and numbers (e.g. turn numbers into properly formatted currency)
- Produce a chart (such as a pie chart) from your data.
Use a spreadsheet or database for departmental records or for an exercise with pupils. Produce a graph. Write a brief description of what you have done, using a word processor, and add this to your portfolio.
If you weren't familiar before with 'office' software, you've probably noticed by now that the different programs work in very similar ways, with the same icons for the same functions. It will soon become very easy for you to swap between different programs.
How can you use this facility to best effect with your pupils, and with your own personal professional development?
Discussion 
Activity