The Kate Languages Podcast - S1 Ep3 - My top 5 tips for improving/maintaining your skills as an MFL teacher

Top tips for improving your language skills

This was the first of my "top tips" podcast episodes! In it, I outlined my favourite ways of improving and maintaining my own language skills.

Here is the (abridged) transcript of the episode:

In today's episode, I'm going back to more specific language-related things, and I am going to talk about improving or maintaining your language skills when you are an MFL teacher. So I'm going to talk about, just giving a few ideas, the kinds of things that I do, and I know that other people do, just to keep your language skills fresh. I think the funny thing with the language is kind of like, once you can speak the language, you can speak the language.

But languages do change and evolve, and I know that since I did my degree 20-odd years ago, language has changed and developed a lot. There's a lot of new technology and internet-related language that has come about since then. Fortunately, a lot of that seems to be English, so you can kind of say an English word in a French, German or Spanish accent and hope for the best. But there are always different ways of saying things and different ways of doing things.

So I'm not going to tell you all this new language, but I'm just going to go through different ways of, like I say, improving or maintaining your language skills as a languages teacher. And I have to say one of the best ways of doing it is to teach the language day in, day out, so you've already got an advantage there! 

1. Join a language class 

My first tip is, I mean, I'm obviously going to say this because this is what I offer, is to take language lessons.

I think a lot of people try to use apps or websites or whatever to teach themselves a language or to do it of their own accord. And I think it probably depends on your personality. I know personally, I need to have something in my diary at a certain time every week where I'm like, you need to turn up and you need to do this because you paid for it. Otherwise, I'm like, oh, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll do it tomorrow, whatever. Yeah, yeah, I'll do it another time.

So that's where language lessons are actually really good. I offer French, German and Spanish online lessons for languages teachers, and I think the accountability of signing up to something, paying for it and saying, right, "I'm going to be there at a certain time every week, I'm going to show up, I'm going to do my speaking practice, I'm going to join in", et cetera... I think that is invaluable and really, really helpful. And the feedback I've had from other teachers, the teachers who are taking my online classes, is that that is really, really useful and really helpful for them. And I've got people who have been doing them for a couple of years, so it's clearly going really, really well.

So that's tip number one, to actually sign up for language lessons and work proactively on improving or even learning from the start.

2. Watch TV, films, etc in the target language

My second tip is a bit more chilled out, is to watch TV, films, things like that. I think back to when I was a kid learning languages at school, the idea that I could have just switched Netflix on and watched something in French or Spanish or German, I would have just found that so exciting! I still find it really exciting! 

The only problem I would say is that there's too much choice, especially Spanish, because there are a lot of American and Latin American shows on Netflix that are in Spanish. And there's so much choice.

Some programmes and films I've watched/have been recommended to me are:

• Casa de Papel (Money Heist)
• Chicas del Cable
• Narcos
• Volver
• Lupin
• Intouchables
• The Hook Up Plan
• Deutschland 83, 85, 89
• Das Leben der Anderen

If you want to think about what are good films to watch, have a look at the A level syllabus, because they do tend to be really, really good films that they put on there.

And I'm not going to lie, I always have the subtitles on. Even, I'd say probably German is my best language for understanding because I lived in Germany for like nine months on my year abroad and watched a lot of German TV. Even then, I still, I mean, to be fair, my husband doesn't actually speak German, so we need the subtitles on for him. But I don't think there's anything wrong in having subtitles. The only thing I would say is it does tire my brain out because I listen to what they're saying and I read the subtitles, and in my brain I'm like, that's not quite what they said, or that's an interesting translation. Then I start thinking about how I would have translated it, and then I kind of like miss the next few seconds of the show!

Another option is, you could actually put the subtitles in the target language, so that's more evenly matched up from what they're saying and what the subtitles are.

3. Listen to podcasts

The third tip, this is something I absolutely love, and this is why I have a podcast, is podcasts.

I'm literally obsessed with podcasts. I hate the word literally, but I really mean it in this sense!

There are some really good podcasts for people who are perhaps of a lower level, so still beginners or just post-beginners, like the Coffee Break podcasts. They're available in loads of different languages.

There's a really, really good French one, called Journal en Français Facile, which is the news in easy French every day. But I've got to say, it's not super easy. It is good, authentic French, it's just a bit slower, and the language is a little bit more straightforward than if you're reading Le Monde or something like that, which is a really complex language. And that one, I think, is about 10 minutes, and it's every single day, and it's really great. And again, if you're teaching A-level, for example, for the first time, and you want to get on top of current affairs, then that's really good, and so good for the language and stuff around current affairs. It is international, so it's not just French. I think it's quite focused on Africa. I think it's aimed at perhaps people in Francophone African countries.

There's a really good Spanish one called Hoy hablamos, which again is daily, and they talk about various different things, so sometimes it will be current affairs, sometimes it's just a really interesting topic that they discuss. There's a couple of guys who do it, and again, that is Spain Spanish. I do find Spanish from Spain a lot easier to understand because that's where I've been, and the accent I understand.

For people who are slightly more advanced and want to have an attempt to understand Latin American Spanish, NPR, which is an American radio station, there's a podcast called Radio Ambulante. Each episode is a different, interesting story from around Latin America. It's very quick, authentic, and like I say, for me, I find it quite hard to understand because it's the kind of American Spanish, Latin American Spanish accent, but great for like really honing your listening skills there.

And then what I've done as well, so especially if you have a higher level of the language, so you know, if you studied it to degree level, but kind of feeling a little bit rusty or whatever, another thing I've done is searched in Apple Podcasts for something that I'm interested in.

So I've got a toddler, so I'm always interested in "mum" podcasts. So I've looked up in Apple Podcasts, in German, for example, like I literally just type in Mutter or something. I found a couple of quite interesting podcasts that I've listened to a few times. And they're obviously not aimed at language learners, but if it's something that you're actually interested in and want to listen to and learn about, then for me, I actually will then want to listen to them rather than just language learning things that might not be topics that I find that interesting. And on that note as well, downloading audiobooks in the foreign language is also a really, really useful thing to do.

4. Reading the news online

Tip number four, I would recommend reading the news. And again, if you're teaching A level, and you need to get up to date with A level, like the topics in A levels of current affairs and things like that, being able to read the news regularly is really, really important, I think.

One example is Logonachrichten, which is a German one on ZDF, which is basically news for children. The language is authentic, but it's quite simple, so depending on your own language level, that's a really good way of accessing the news and current affairs, but through language that isn't too complex.

I have actually used that website with possibly Key Stage 3, but definitely Key Stage 4 students as well, so it's a great website.

The French one that I always recommend is 1jour1actu. Again, it's news, current affairs, and they have loads of lovely little profiles of famous French people throughout history or all sorts about different topics and things like that. It's a great website. Sadly, I've never found an equivalent in Spanish.

Also, one thing I do is I follow quite a lot of news outlets on social media, so as I'm scrolling through my Instagram or Facebook, it will come up with, I don't know, Libération headlines or El País.

I'm not going to lie, I don't tend to read the articles in depth, but I think even just seeing the headlines and the language and even slightly subconsciously having a bit of an idea about what's going on in terms of current affairs in France, Germany and Spain is really quite helpful.

5. Reading books in the target language

My fifth tip is reading books in the target language. 

Obviously, if you're a beginner, then reading books is really quite hard, although there are lots of books out there for beginning language learners, parallel texts, things like that, which are actually really, really helpful as well.

But if you've got A-level or a degree and you want to keep your language skills really, really good, 100% reading novels and reading books in, you know, even non-fiction books, if that's what you're interested in, in the foreign language, it's just such a brilliant way of keeping up your language skills.

I often find I'll be reading a book and there'll be language in there that I know that I know it's somewhere in the back of my mind. And then I think, oh yeah, I remember that word. And then I'm think, "I might use that in my resources or in my teaching", instead of using the same adjectives all the time.

I used to run an MFL book club on Facebook, and a very lovely lady called Elaine has actually taken that over now, and she's doing  a brilliant job with that, because it was one of too many things that I had on my plate. She kindly offered to take over. And so, basically, I think roughly once every term, we alternate between a French, German and Spanish book.

They tend to be more modern texts. My rule is that they're not on the A-level syllabus, so that it doesn't feel like work. It is meant to be for relaxation and pleasure rather than work. We've read a couple of French books by Guillaume Musso, a couple of Spanish books by Isabel Allende. German ones, various different people, like Jenny Erpenbeck and Dörte Hansen, Das Haus. That was a brilliant book. I loved that one.

If you want to join the Facebook group, just search for MFL Virtual Book Club and request to join. And please answer the questions, because if you don't answer the questions, then we don't let you join!

And as I was saying, while I was talking about podcasts as well, downloading audiobooks in the foreign language. So what I often do for the books for the MFL Book Club, for example, I will download them on Audible, so I can listen to them in the car, or I can listen to them whenever. Because actually sitting down and reading a book sometimes just don't have the time for it, but I find listening to podcasts or listening to audiobooks, mainly while I'm driving around trying to get my toddler to nap. I need to find things to do while I'm doing that. And maybe some of you have been in that same position as well!

What I'll often do is download the book (I tend to read everything on my iPad), plus I will download the audiobook, so I might listen to a chapter of the audiobook, and then I'll read a chapter on my iPad. I also often download an English translation of the book as well, so that I can just kind of check that I've understood, and maybe I might read it again. I'll do one chapter in French, and then one chapter in English. If the book is really, really good, I sometimes find myself just reading in English, because I'm like, I want to know what happens, and just reading it really quickly, which doesn't really help my language skills. I'm aware of that! But I still find it helpful!

From The Kate Languages Podcast: My 5 Top Tips for Improving/Maintaining your Language Skills as an MFL Teacher, 30 Aug 2021
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-kate-languages-podcast/id1555498718?i=1000533513520
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