Steve Smith

Gianfranco Conti

Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Language Leaners How to Listen.To cite use Conti and Smith (2019).This book is for language teachers who want to help their students become more effective listeners. It focuses on the processes involved in aural comprehension, blending the latest research evidence with over 200 engaging listening activities, as well as lots of useful practical classroom ideas and lesson sequences.Chapters include the principles of "listening as modelling", developing phonological and lexical retrieval skills, grammatical parsing, interpersonal and task-based listening. There are also chapters on how to make the most of songs, cognitive and metacognitive strategies, assessment and preparing for examinations. The final chapter offers a framework for language teachers or departments who wish to develop a strategy for improved listening. The book aims to place listening at the forefront of lesson planning.Gianfranco and Steve have around 60 years of classroom experience between them and a track record of offering instantly usable, low-preparation activities for the classroom, supported by second language acquisition research. Their handbook The Language Teacher Toolkit is already widely used around the world. Too often, classroom listening is neglected by teachers and a source of fear for learners; how can we make it a successful and enjoyable experience for all? This book is truly unique in its genre, in proposing a different and more impactful answer to this question. We sincerely hope you enjoy it.

Teaching Language Learners How to Listen

Breaking the Sound Barrier

Memory: What Every Language Teacher Should KnowHow do we help students remember? If teachers understand how memory works, there is more chance of helping students do well through effective curriculum and lesson planning. This book is an introduction to memory written specifically with language teachers in mind. Taking evidence from the fields cognitive science and second language acquisition, the authors examine a range of important aspects of memory. These include working memory, phonological memory, long-term memory, cognitive load, implicit and explicit knowledge, prospective memory, metamemory, learning from mistakes, the emotional factors affecting retention and curriculum design with memory in mind. Full references, questions for reflection, and suggestions for further reading and viewing are provided at the end of each of the 16 chapters.The authors apply research evidence to the languages classroom, with suggestions for pedagogy and specific classroom activities.Previous books by the authors are The Language Teacher Toolkit (2016) and Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Langugae Learners How to Listen (2019)

What Every Language Teacher Should Know

Memory

Steven Smith

Steven Smith, (Cl

"Strongly recommend the book: a must-have" "Chapeau! Already on our trainee reading list." "Absolutely loving this! Inspirational, practical, so sensible and backed up by research. Well done, gentlemen, and thank you." The Language Teacher Toolkit is designed with both practising and trainee (pre-service) teachers in mind and uniquely bridges the gap between research and classroom practice. It is a comprehensive and clearly written handbook, particularly useful for teachers of modern foreign languages (world languages) who work in high schools (secondary education). Written by two highly-experienced teachers with an interest in research and theory, it offers a reflective approach along with many practical classroom activities which can immediately be applied in daily teaching. The book closes with sample lessons for French, German and Spanish. Chapters include: - methods - classroom oral techniques - teaching in the target language - developing spontaneous talk - teaching grammar and vocabulary - listening, reading and writing - subject knowledge - using song, drama and games - assessment - using pictures - teaching advanced level students - technology - behaviour and motivation - evaluating and writing resources - translation - lesson planning - example lesson plans The busy languages teacher can quickly find ideas for enhancing practice, while insightful consideration of research helps create a basis for personal development in the field. The authors are two internationally well-known bloggers in the field of language teaching and applied linguistics: Steve Smith is a former Head of Languages, taught languages for over 30 years, holds an MA in applied linguistics, writes the very popular resources site frenchteacher.net and the widely-read blog frenchteachernet.com Dr Gianfranco Conti has taught languages for over twenty years, holds a PhD in applied linguistics, is as award-winning blogger and resource writer for TES and runs the popular interactive website language-gym.com

The Language Teacher Toolkit

Dylan Viñales

The Student Book. This Spanish Listening Booklet matches to the minutest details the content of the 19 units included in the best-selling workbook for beginner-to-pre-intermediate learners "Spanish sentence builders", by the same authors. For best results, the two books should be used together. This book fully implements Dr Conti's popular approach to listening-skills instruction, L.A.M. (aka Listening-As-Modelling), laid out in his seminal work: "Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Learners how to Listen" (Conti and Smith, 2019). L.A.M. is based on the concept that listening instruction should train students in the mastery of the key micro-listening skills identified by cognitive psychologists.Each unit contains around 13 listening tasks, which provide continuous and extensive recycling of the target constructions and vocabulary items and address the development of the key listening micro-skills. The tasks include engaging and tested Conti classics such as "Spot the intruder", "Missing details", "Faulty transcript", "Break the flow", "Faulty translation", "Gapped translation" and "Listening slalom", alongside more traditional listening comprehension tasks.

Spanish Sentence Builders - LISTENING - Student Book

Spanish Sentence Builders is a workbook aimed at beginner to pre-intermediate students co-authored by two modern languages educators with over 40 years of extensive classroom experience between the two, both in the UK and internationally. This 'no-frills' book contains 19 units of work on very popular themes, jam-packed with graded vocabulary-building, reading, translation, retrieval practice and writing activities. Key vocabulary, lexical patterns and structures are recycled and interleaved throughout.Each unit includes:1) a sentence builder modelling the target constructions;2) a set of vocabulary building activities;3) a set of narrow reading texts exploited through a range of tasks focusing on both the meaning and structural levels of the text; - a set of retrieval-practice translation tasks;4) a set of writing tasks targeting essential micro-skills such as spelling, lexical retrieval, syntax, editing and communication of meaning.Based on the Extensive Processing Instruction (E.P.I.) principle that learners learn best from comprehensible and highly patterned input flooded with the target linguistic features, the authors have carefully designed each and every text and activity to enable the student to process and produce each item many times over. This occurs throughout each unit of work as well as in smaller grammar, vocabulary and question-skills micro-units located at regular intervals in the book, which aim at reinforcing the understanding and retention of the target grammar, vocabulary and question patterns.

Gianfranco Conti

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