I WAS recently asked to judge a competition in which pupils had to make a presentation, in French, about their school.
Most of the entries were Power Point presentations. All were of an impressive standard and showed the pupils not only had the technical know-how, but had also done their French homework and had made a real effort.
While the spelling was not always as accurate as their teachers would like I suspect that it was in line with their spelling ability in English.
However, the most remarkable thing to me was that the entries were all from boys. To me this serves to confirm as I always suspected, that boys are equally interested in language learning but are put off by most classroom practice. They will respond well to learning with computers, where they can work on their own, and not have to, as they see it, make fools of themselves in front of the rest of the class.
Rosi McNab
Harbour House
Crinan Lochgilphead
Argyll
