If you have been studying a language for a while, you might have built up quite a thick wodge of papers. Can you find everything easily? You might naturally be a super-organised person, but most of us need some kind of system to follow. Here’s one suggestion for how to do it:
In a ring-binder folder, make a Contents page, which should show something like this:
Section 1: Topics
1. Self, family, friends, and pets: Describing people, physical characteristics and relationships
2. Home, town, neighbourhood, and region: Describing places where you live, local facilities
3. Free-time activities: Hobbies, sports, music, cinema, and television.
4. World of Work: Your experience of work – past, present and future; job applications.
5. Travel and tourism: Holiday destinations, types of holidays, and experiences abroad.
6. Health and fitness: Issues related to diet, exercise, and mental health.
7. Technology in everyday life: Discussing devices, social media, and online communication.
8. Customs and festivals: National, regional, and local celebrations, food, and traditions.
9. Social issues: Charity work, volunteering, healthy living, and well-being.
10. Global issues: Environmental concerns, climate change, poverty, and immigration.
11. Life at school/college: Subjects, rules, uniforms, timetables, and differences between schools in other countries.
12. International events: The role of global organizations, international sports events, and global problems like poverty and conflict.
There is an infinite number of topics that we could potentially study, but all of them, in a way, refer back to these main topic areas, which I have adapted from the standard GCSE foreign language syllabus.
Section 2: Grammar
1. Verbs
a. Regular verbs: a summary of the verb-endings paradigms, and a few examples of the verb in actual sentences.
b. Irregular verbs (ideally, one page per verb, showing the irregularities in different tenses and some examples of real-life usage)
c. Modal verbs
d. Reflexive verbs
e. An overview of how the respective (past/present/future) tenses function
2. Adjectives and adverbs
3. Pronouns
4. Question forming
5. Stumbling blocks and common pitfalls (particular to the respective languages)
Section 3: Vocabulary
Glossaries that you have compiled or been given; lists of words, annotated diagrams on specific topics
Section 4: Pronunciation
There might not be a lot of printed notes on pronunciation, but you might want to put, for example, the alphabet, with pronunciation guide in here, plus little tips on particular words, phrases or concepts.
Section 5: Miscellaneous
Jokes, fun facts, recipes, interesting articles in the target language… anything else!
None of this is by any means set in stone. As your level improves, you might want to discard material that seems too basic, and you might wish to make sub-divisions in your contents section.
There are plenty of notes that could logically fit in two or more different sections. For example: talking about this summer’s holiday in the past tense: does that go in the Holiday topic section, or in Grammar/Verbs/Tenses? I’ll leave that up to you. I suppose it’s possible to duplicate it and put it in both sections, but I’m trying to encourage less printing, not more!
If you are more comfortable working with a virtual folder rather than a physical one, the same basic principles apply:
· Topic areas
· Grammar
· Vocabulary and set expressions
· Pronunciation (it is of course possible to store audio files in your digital folders in a way that you can’t in your physical folder)
· Miscellaneous
I hope this was not stating the obvious too badly! In my experience of teaching GCSE and A level students, those with the most neatly-ordered folders tended to get the best grades. Granted, massive generalisation, but you can probably understand my point.. I know that most of us are not studying in order to pass exams, but the wisdom is transferable!
Andrew Wenger
SameSky Languages
Sept 2024
Please contact me here if you would like to find out about enrolling on a course: French / Spanish / German / Italian / Japanese
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