Scroll down for a link to download a completely free Windows desktop program with lots of interactive exercises and worksheets based on a sample essay on "l'éducation".
The resources below are taken from a unit initially aimed at older primary / younger secondary age children, to teach and practise:
- family members
- brothers and sister
- s'appeler (je / tu / il / elle)
- avoir ... ans (je / tu / il / elle)
So everything you see below is based on one very short text and 16 matching items of vocabulary...
This is a very short post, but packed full of free resources.
I made a TaskMagic3 Mix&Gap file based on a news story from BBC Afrique.
I printed out the worksheets as pdf documents using doPDF - http://www.dopdf.com
On this occasion I've converted the 9 pdf worksheets into 1 pdf file using MergePDF - http://foxyutils.com/mergepdf/#
See below. Simply scroll through the pdf file to access the various printable activities. The activities are:
I think there is a growing sense that MFL teachers spend too much time introducing new vocabulary. It's the kind of thing MFL teachers have been doing for years: present vocab / choral repetition / individual repetition / selective repetion such as repeat if it's true / what number is it? / is it A or B? / what's missing? / playing simple games in front of the class with the vocab, etc, etc. I'm sure all MFL teachers are familiar with this sort of thing. Lots of singing and dancing at the front of the class & lots of noisy repetition from students.
Vocab mats etc are used by some to avoid the need to spend so much class time presenting new vocab: give them
Loads of pdf worksheets below, all based on one simple Spanish dialogue - ordering an ice-cream.
These were created in the following way.
1. I typed a dialogue into the Dialogues editor in TaskMagic3.
Lots of pdf worksheets below based on a simple Spanish text about food and drink in a cafeteria.
The pdfs can be accessed and printed by anyone.
If you don't want to print them, you can use them in full screen mode with your projector / IWB (if you have one). (You can also copy the text and paste it into Word, for example, if you want to resize components and put more than one exercise on one page.)
There are 9 pdfs based on the text itself:
I recently came across an activity on the mflresources forum (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mflresources/) suggested by Vincent Everett (http://languagesatnorthgate.wordpress.com/), and it got me thinking about exploiting images for language practice using TaskMagic3.
Vincent introduced his activity as "a bit of reading, dictionary work, colouring in and culture". The activity was aimed at getting students involved in a bit of independent learning. As Vincent says:
In the most recent TaskMagic3 update, 5 new exercise formats have been added to the Mix & Gap component of TaskMagic, which now has a total of 23
At the bottom of this post you will find a link to download a free standalone TaskMagic program containing a unit of work in Spanish on ordering food and drink in a cafeteria. The level is ideal for older primary school children, but it will also work well with older children working at a fairly low level or in need of revision. There is a fairly wide range of difficulty within the various exercises in the unit.
The download contains 16 TaskMagic3 files, which are accessed via a simple menu screen.
In a previous post (see here), I discussed how it was possible to exploit a source text to generate a whole range of interactive exercises and worksheets based on the text itself, as well as on the lexical items within the text, and how this can be achieved in a matter of minutes using TaskMagic3.
This post will take a quick look at how short transactional or situational dialogues (or any short series of exchanges on any topic) can be exploited in a similar way, using the Dialogues component of TaskMagic3 as the starting point.