Technology in Language Teaching (TiLT) at Stockport Grammar School a great success

Stockport Grammar School kindly hosted our fourth Tilt (Technology in Languages conference) on 20 March 2025. Which was extremely successful and highlighted new ways of engaging students with language learning

Katherine Psaila-Harris, Assistant Head of MFL and Head of Spanish delivered an excellent presentation about how she and her colleagues use Sanako Connect in the delivery of their curriculum.

Katherine uses Connect to help students to practise for the stimulus card activity, which is part of the A-Level speaking exam. She uploads the stimulus card picture as well as an audio file with pre-recorded questions. Students then prepare using the picture and work through the series of questions, inserting their voice so that their answers appear.

They then submit their activity, and Katherine goes into the system and listens to their submission and gives them some bespoke feedback (either written or oral) which students can then read or listen to.

Katherine says she finds this really impactful as students can work on their recorded answers at home if needed, as the system is web-based and can be used seamlessly at school and at home. Katherine says it’s also very helpful that students receive the bespoke feedback that she provides.

Student's work and feedback will always stay on their area of the system and they can look at, or listen, to it again next time they come to do some stimulus card practice, to ensure that they are responding to the feedback.

Another way that Katherine uses Connect is to embed website activities, such as Quizlet, which don’t require a login.

Rather than asking students to go to the Quizlet site and search for the specific activity, she saves a lot of students’ time by embedding the specific activity into Sanako Connect.

This was new to me and I have now experimented with it. I will be adding it to the list of suggested ways that teachers can enhance the delivery of MFL lessons to reduce teacher workload and support student progress.

Finally, Katherine listed all the ways that she finds Connect useful in her teaching, shown on the adjacent slide. In case you can’t read them very well, they are the following:

Being able to plan activities ahead of the lessons
Being able to re-use activities once they’ve been created
Being able to set activities for homework and not have to wait solely for the language lab
Exam classes being able to practise specific speaking skills individually and then receive personalised feedback
Being able to create a ‘lesson’ that pupils can work through at their own pace
Variety of exam practice activities available compared to the previous programme

We’d like to say a huge thank you to Sylvia Gibson, Head of MFL, Katherine and of course the headteacher, Mrs Sarah Capewell, who allowed us to run this event, which teachers from schools across the region attended.