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Listening to a language while reading along with the transcript is a great way to improve your comprehension as well as your pronunciation. The following mp3s and mp4s were created by native speakers of French and they are free for teachers and students to download. All of them are spontaneous speech - nothing was scripted or rehearsed, and some were even recorded without the speaker's prior knowledge for an eavesdropping effect.

"Welcome to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012 online. Here you will find the most current version of the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for Speaking, Writing, Listening, and Reading made interactive through the inclusion of glossed terms and multimedia exemplars. You can explore the Guidelines by skill or by level, listen to and read samples in English that represent abilities at each of the major proficiency levels."

Literacy expert Tim Rasinski gave me an idea for a bellringer that I think will improve students' vocabulary, fluency, listening, reading, and speaking skills and get them hooked. Rasinski proposes an acronym for those wishing to improve students' literacy skills, and although Rasinski's research and strategies revolve around L1 literacy, I think his theories align perfectly with L2 acquisition. AMAPPS stands for Accuracy as in being able to sound out words correctly Modeling fluent reading Assisted reading e.g. choral or partnered Practice with a variety of texts as well as repeated exposure to the same texts Phrasing or chunking words in common combinations Synergy of all of these elements

We do not need to teach creativity, but rather inspire its daily practice. Somewhere along the way, we simply forgot to honor this innate gift and how to access its power. Our role as educators is to encourage learning experiences that increase the ability to recognize and listen to our inner voice.

"The NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements are self-assessment checklists used by language learners to assess what they "can do" with language in the Interpersonal, Interpretive, and Presentational modes of communication. These modes of communication are defined in the National Standards for 21st Century Language Learning and organized in the checklist into the following categories: Interpersonal (Person-to-Person) Communication Presentational Speaking (Spoken Production) Presentational Writing (Written Production) Interpretive Listening Interpretive Reading Click within each cell to display the benchmark and the associated Can Do Statement PDF. Or, click on a Level/Mode row or column to expand the entire level or mode."

"Variations francophones, the 12 video-clips and their teaching cards, evoke the various realities of French speakers across Canada whose identities are modulated as much by the culture, the history, the territory as the climate. The teaching cards enable teachers to guide their pupils' discovery of the richness and the diversity of the Canadian francophonie. They will also help students develop oral competence and in particular their receptive language skills. The video-clips are appropriate for students enrolled in francophone schools within a minority context, as well as students enrolled in French second language, intensive French and French immersion courses who work at an intermediate to advanced linguistic level. Indeed, listening to the video-clips will enable students to better understand the various characteristics of French spoken in different locations of Canada as well as the various linguistic registers used."