Hi Kim,

I work for a Malvern based assistive technology company, and personally have helped a number of our non-verbal users access MFL classes using our software and alternate access methods, both literate and symbol users. Exam boards are usually as accommodating to support users to access MFL course work and exams as they are with English and Maths - usually the learners just lose spelling and grammar points as they are either using symbols, or prediction, and then have these tested in isolation using a simple accessible keyboard, without prediction, to compensate.

Any questions do let us know.

Jess (Smartbox Assistive Technology)

I ran French classes with KS2 groups of mainly non-verbal students for a few years. Without the pressure of exams, etc., I developed my own curriculum, and we used to have a lot of fun getting the VOCAs  to pronounce words in French, by inventing the nearest phonetic equivalents to the French words and inputting these into the VOCAs. They routinely succeeded at this, learned a lot, enjoyed themselves, and their English and Maths scores were, in this context, irrelevant!

Incidentally, very sad to read, once again, about pupils with PD being removed from lessons. May I ask, Kim, what did they do while their classmates enjoyed your lessons?

Max

Thank you for that information, Jess,

max - that sounds like a lot of fun with your pupils! I taught French to a mixed class in Special School. One pupil was an elective mute, but could not resist singing in French (or any other language!). The whole school sang a French carol 2 years running at the Christmas concert. I saw some parents wipe a tear away.

The pupils who were taken out of MFL did extra English and Maths, which I always felt was very unfair!

I have downloaded the grid player app in French - it works well, but I haven’t figured une the article yet!

I changed the onscreen keyboard on my iPad to The French azerty one and it can predict French words, which is handy apart from exams. It works with my favourite Notability app, too. I am not sure how good the user’s accent would have to be to have speech recognition work. My French is just about fluent, so it works well for me. However, Notability offers the option of recording all your ideas, playing it back  in short sections and typing it up, which could be helpful.

No problem Kim, Grid Player is actually one of our old free apps. We also offer French in Grid 3 on windows (which you can trial for free for 60 days) and grid for iPad (which you can trial for free for 30 days) which have some full aided language systems used by French AAC users. You can then choose a French voice, and not have to worry about fiddling with pronunciation.