AS level resources

I've been happily sitting here for the last couple of days putting together templates for each A level examination board's different skill areas so that it will be quick and easy to put together practice material for each skill area.  A level French resources for AS will be available from the middle of September on www.alevelfrench.com covering all skill areas.  The sample material will cover education and future careers and my collaboratrice and I are having great fun putting it together, learning many new skills along the way.   I have to say that from being a hater of using MS Word I am now really appreciating the things it does-it does seem to be a bit more user friendly than it used to be although I've realized that to get the configuration on a page I really want I do need to create tables which helps the layout stay together.  Any other way of doing it and I'm going to need to do a week's course I'm afraid.

I'm certainly glad I chose the Silence de la Mer to do resources based on a colleague's request.  There seems to be a lot of interest in it-I guess I hadn't seen it as a subtle love story the first time round so when you take the perspective on it it gets a whole lot more interesting.

I'm also glad I decided to do Le Blé en Herbe by Colette as the tension within it is so colourfully depicted despite the sometimes annoying omniscient narrator moralizing in the background.   

The reason I would be increasingly promoting the literary texts is that reading seems to be becoming more prominent than writing, particularly in the WJEC spec.   Without a background of developing deductive reading skills in a sustained way I would think a student may be disadvantaged.  It doesn't seem the same to me somehow to be reading around the life of film maker or whatever.   Then I am a confirmed book worm and am totally biased. 

The series on literature of the 20th century on BBC has been very interesting putting a range of the most popular authors into context.  It was good to see people like William Goulding of Lord of the Flies and Doris Lessing of the Golden Notebook in conversation.