Publishers Strive for Novelty Factor (Red Herring - The Guardian)

A host of interactive tools are appearing as schools are urged to halt the decline in student numbers taking languages at GCSE. In his occasional column on language teaching, John Bald tests the best.

Schools minister Jacqui Smith's recent invitation to schools to set targets of 50%-90% of students to take a language to GCSE stops just short of admitting embarrassment at the catastrophic decline in language learning at key stage 4. ICT, though, remains a rare bright spot in the picture, with publishers scrambling to get new resources to market, sometimes through preview sites before materials are available.

• Leading the rush is Petit Pont 1 (www.eclipsebooks.com, whiteboard licence £65), a well-conceived introduction to French, set in a virtual village. It begins by helping children adapt to French pronunciation through the names of local people and the dog, Domino. There is a good, shallow learning curve in the early stages, enabling children to meet and apply the language they have learned in varied contexts. The tasks and games make excellent use of colour and of the whiteboard - though not essential - and progression is clearly built in, so that there is always a new but accessible challenge for children of all abilities.
  
  Emma Barrs of St Mary's School, Middlewich, Cheshire, has used the program for a year. She says it has eased her transition from secondary to primary teaching. "The children love it. The main things they enjoy are the interactive activities and the songs. These revisit the material in a creative way, so that the children can transfer what they have learned to new contexts - so they learn to use il y a with a range of vocabulary.
  
  "Their pronunciation and intonation have also benefited. Boys are thrilled they can do it. I have tried to get the children to understand that anybody can speak a foreign language. Now that staff have seen the children enjoying it, the head has asked me to run twilight training for them."
  Authentically French
  
  The village seems sanitised but still has a genuine French feel, including the need to watch out for traffic. The teachers' notes are clear and explain features non-specialists may need help with. The pupils' books offer a good range of activities, although at £3.50 they are not cheap. All in all, this is a big step forward in language teaching and would be my first choice for primary and beginning secondary pupils. English, Spanish and German versions, and the second stage of French, are due in the next year.
  


• Chatterbox (www.sherston.com, single user £59.95, also in German, English and Spanish) has too many isolated activities, and too much emphasis on vocabulary rather than sentence building and communication. Some of the work, such as unscrambling words without using them, is pointless, but other games and activities, such as those on telling the time, provide variety and challenge and would be useful for reinforcement. Children have good opportunities to record their own pronunciation of words and phrases.
  
  • For secondary schools, Red Herring (www.learningcurve.info, £50) is a murder mystery in French and German on the same disk. Players enter a cartoon city, interview suspects, gather evidence and accuse the guilty, all the time applying and reinforcing their understanding of basic vocabulary and sentence structures. Each has a €10,000 fund, which they can build up by getting games right or use to pay for translations if they don't understand - a good balance between encouraging pupils to work things out for themselves and providing support when they need it.
  
  Louise McIntyre of Auchterader high school in Perthshire says it is "a way of turning kids on to languages by injecting a bit of cool. Usually, the novelty factor wears off after a few days, but not so for Red Herring, which is still very popular."
  Fun for younger students
  
  McIntyre uses the program from year 7 and finds these pupils are already making more progress in understanding vocabulary than older students. "It is even popular among kids who don't do languages any more."
  The program, which has now been distributed to all Scottish secondary schools, can be used individually or with a class, with Spanish, Italian and English versions coming shortly.
  


• Just Click (French, German and Spanish, licences £320-£400, www.nelsonthornes.com) runs alongside the publisher's textbooks. It has a useful range of whiteboard activities, mostly drag and drop, and plenty of video clips. Some activities, such as verb conjugations, seem a bit pedestrian.
  But Angelina Robin of Christopher Whitehead language college, Worcester, finds the mix of ICT and textbook helps students to see how each element of the work contributes to the whole. She says it has had a marked impact on pupils' motivation and ability to remember what they have learned.