about

The VLRB offers free resources and ideas for teachers to use in their classrooms when delivering courses with a vocational slant. Some examples of these are the Certificate in Business Language Competence (CBLC), National Vocational Qualification language units (NVQ), ABC Certificate in Practical Languages, National Open College Network (NOCN), NCFE Certificate in Foreign Language and Applied GCSE in French.

The resources for the Vocational Languages Resource Bank have been designed by teachers working in schools as well as colleges of Further and Adult Education, all of whom have current experience of teaching vocational languages. Here are some more details of the resources:

• Resources have been developed at entry level up to level 3, although the majority of the resources will be at entry level to level 2
• It is not intended that the website will be able to provide a full set of resources for a particular course, but it will certainly offer a good starting point and will present a wealth of ideas for teachers to develop their own materials.
• Languages currently featured on the site are French, German, Spanish, Italian, Urdu, Japanese and Arabic. This range of languages will grow with time
• The resources are both text-based, visual and with sound, with examples to cover the 4 skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, (although not in every language at every level)
• There are tips for making your own resources, examples of schemes of work and links to other web-based resources
• It is possible to copy and adapt resources developed for one vocational area to use in others

It is anticipated that the Resource Bank will grow as more and more teachers add their own resources. We anticipate that the VLRB will be a useful central point to gather resources that teachers everywhere can share, rather than everyone having to beaver away in their own institutions reinventing the wheel!