Modern Foreign Languages for All is low on jargon and strong on solutions to classroom dilemmas for everyone delivering the national curriculum in a foreign language to pupils with special needs.

There are sections on the national curriculum (how to adapt its requirements for pupils with SEN), preparing schemes of work and how to modify teaching and learning styles (how much emphasis should be given to reading and writing as opposed to speaking and listening?).

There are realistic suggestions for differentiated activities with-out resorting to the “Would you copy this out, please, Jennifer?” syndrome. The section on Individual Education Plans is useful - how to write targets for foreign languages is a little documented topic, as is how to work with a support teacher. The section on resources contains examples of work-sheets, with some mention of commercially published materials. The idea of a “busy book” could well be adopted for when pupils finish a task and cause mischief if unoccupied.

Advice on assessment and record-keeping is valuable, particularly if you are working in isolation in a special school, or setting up a department with no examples of good practice. The book does not provide all the answers, but is nevertheless an unthreatening blend of practical ideas and current theories, infor-mative for everyone involved in what is acknowledged to be one of the most demanding subjects to teach to SEN pupils.

Philippa Davidson