Category: football

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Please note – this blog has not been taken over by football – ‘proper’ post coming later ;o)

And for those of you who are not in the least bit interested in football, but watch for the ‘aesthetic appeal’…

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Who’s your favourite?

I know that Euro08 actually kicked off last Saturday, but for me, it all starts tonight when Spain take on Russia. As the only house in the street displaying a flag in the window (how different from previous football tournaments – and a little sad!, you can’t miss my allegiances. At least without England, I have the loyalties of my children too. Well, half of the eldest’s as he is rather fond of Cristiano Ronaldo. Husband is supporting Turkey – less said about that the better.

So in honour of the kick off at 5pm, and to get you in the mood ….. ;o)

To help you recognise the some of the players (I don’t think Raúl is quite past it yet though!)
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I read an interesting article in the Guardian the other day about language learning and football – two topics close to my heart.

In the Sports Comment section under the title ‘Learning the lingo will net England brighter future‘, Louise Taylor suggests that apprentice footballers, now called ‘scholars’, should learn languages as part of their studies to prepare them for the possibility of playing for teams abroad.

Gareth Southgate recently cited the lack of players experiencing new systems and styles of play as one reason for the stagnation in the national game – learning a language would make a transition to playing elsewhere that much easier.
‘Sadly most are unwilling to step outside their lucrative, cosily familiar, domestic comfort zones and the same could be said for many home-grown managers. Instead of whingeing about continental types – often multilingual and well-educated – pinching the top jobs here, why don’t English coaches start investing small portions of their large salaries on language lessons before emigrating for a while?’

The case of Chris Coleman at Real Sociedad is mentioned – communication difficulties made his job hard – and that’s a man who tried (and succeeded to a certain extent) to learn some Spanish while he was there. Michael Owen is reported to have driven miles just to get an English newspaper when he was at Real Madrid, and we all saw David Beckham’s ‘interesting‘ efforts to speak Spanish (although he did manage to get himself sent off for some colourful Spanish at least once!) Not sure about his excuse that his cockney accent impeded him, but it is true that people can feel embarrassed about the way they sound in the foreign language. Didn’t do a bad job of his last press conference I guess!

One man who did make an effort – and actually succeeded – was Gary Lineker who learned to speak Spanish sufficiently well whilst playing for Barcelona to interview Spanish speakers like Diego Maradona on TV, and also learnt Japanese when he played for Grampus 8. But he is the exception.

At a time when the state of language learning in this country is as newsworthy as the state of our national football team, could this be an answer to both issues? Lots of young lads (and lasses!) aspire to be footballers and look up to their heroes. If it’s known that languages are seen as important, perhaps we’ll see a resurgence in the uptake at KS4? And if footballers are learning languages, they might be more inclined to travel abroad to play, gaining the experiences that might be said to be missing in our national team(s). I don’t know – but something has to change!!

And perhaps it will help them to avoid too many slip ups – although some are inevitable, perhaps they won’t be as spectacular as this one! You can even relive the moment on Youtube!

This session was resented by the very entertaining Nigel Pearson, one of the Primary Language Advisor at CILT and Katja Neubauer, Junior Director of the European Initiative at the Kings School in Rochester.

Beginning by acknowledging that unfortunately England aren’t in Euro08, Nigel and Katya suggested ways in which the event could be exploited and celebrated. Here are some of their suggestions –

Use it as an exercise in ICU:

• Look at the logo – colour, shapes used, design
• There are 16 countries taking part from across Europe – what language(s) is /are spoken by each on? Where are they in Europe? (compass points)
• Flags – kids could make them, wave them and chant the names of the countries whilst you bang rhythm on a tambourine.
• Mark countries on am map
• Have a table of progress to be filled in throughut the tournament.
• Trix und Flix are the mascots (descriptions / design your own) – it takes place in Austria and Switzerland from 7^th June -29^th June (dates – how long is it? What day of the week does it start on? Etc) Cities are Innsbruck, Salzburg, Wien, Kalgenfurt, Geneve, Zurich, Bern Basel (country and location)
• Web searches for information about host towns

Nigel and Katya then introduced us to some vocabulary to do with fitness and football such as run, jog, head (the ball), jump etc with actions and a range of games to practice and reinforce –

What’s missing? ¿Qué falta?

Hot or cold ¿Frío o caliente?

Corners – like NSEW

Flashreading – flash the card very fast – ¿qué es?

Echo the word – using different voices

Throwing words – using a ball, throw it at a word – class read word it hits or teacher says the word and pupils throw it at the correct word. (headers whilst counting in TL)

What’s on the card? ¿Qué hay en la tarjeta? Using sí and no, can also be done with drawing part of a gallows to add to the competition, and could also be developed fromsingle word responses into sentences e.g. Un estadio; Es un estadio; pienso que es un estadio.

Memory game – numbers on front of card, guess the word behind it – practices number and vocabulary too. Kids (and us adults playing today!) are fiercely competitive!!

Number football – headers that you count – can always mime! Or a penalty shootout. And why not some Klinsmann dives!

Further football linked activities included –

Describe a player – uses personal identification questions and answers

Footballers are heroes for many of our pupils so why not let the kids research and use ICT for presentation of their favourite (foreign) player?.

Design shorts / strip for football – can add other equipment for football. Add extra information to reuse vocabulary in different contexts eg colours used for school uniform, favourite colours, eyes etc

Blow football – shout appropriate cheers like animo, venga, gol etc

Songs – Katya and Nigel presented a song in German about football to the tune of Frere Jacques– I’ve quickly translated into Spanish:

Juego al fútbol, juego al fútbol

Es genial, es genial

Muchos muchos goles

Muchos muchos goles

Uno a cero.

Uno a cero.

You can modify the lastline to add more scores, add countries etc

España cuatro, Francia tres or

España gana, Alemania pierde – I think you might be able to guess who I’m supporting :o)

Nigel also shared a French song from the World Cup. I quickly opened Audacity on my laptop and recorded it -i

t’s in My Box of Goodies on the right! :o) (Thanks to Nigel who kindly said that was OK!)

Football sans frontières

Ça c’est super.

Brésil et Bulgarie

Pays Bas et Italie

Belgique et Tunisie

(Nigel kindly told us when to go up and down using his hand ‘stepping’ – that’s the ‘hand thing’ referred to for those who wondered!)

The session concluded with a couple of websites that might be helpful – there will no doubt be more nearer the time, and I’ll post any that I find.

www.uefa.com

www.flags.net

As I’ve blogged before, Euro 08 is already in focus at my school through Chris Fuller’s Euro08 project which joins schools across the country as we find out about our allocated participating country prior to meeting up in June for a tournament of our own. Already in training – Jo Rhys-Jones looks rather nippy and Chris Fuller climbs – and that’s just the teachers 😮
There’s room for more schools to be involved – let Chris know if you’re interested!