For a topic like this, it makes sense to start with three very simple questions:

• How is this going to be assessed?
• What vocabulary will they need to do well?
• What obstacles might I encounter in teaching this?

Exam Type	Ways it could appear
Listening	Someone talking about a celebrity they admire Interview with a celebrity
Speaking	Questions about a celebrity you admire Roleplay discussing a celebrity Photocard where questions are about a celebrity or opinions on celebrity culture Reading aloud task about someone famous
Reading	Text about a celebrity Short texts with people giving opinions on celebrity
Writing	Write about a celebrity you like or admire and explain why

Vocabulary

Looking at the exam board vocabulary list, the following words jumped out at me:

well known	brand	follow	born	trick/deceive
alive	fashion	introduce	married	cry
dead	influencer	present	divorce	promote
behaviour	vote	advert	separate	relate to
interview	record	media	establish/set up	to direct/manage

Many of the words on the vocabulary list will naturally come up during the teaching of the module. The ones above were a mixture of “that’s slightly unusual so will need teaching” or “that’s definitely teachable but could be taught equally in another topic and transferred.”

There will also be significant overlap with free time activities particularly if your free time lessons include music, dance, films, TV and the internet.

Obstacles

Potential obstacles in this topic include the following:

• Your resources could date very very quickly as celebrities fall in and out of public eye.
• Celebrities can suddenly be “cancelled” or information emerges about them that might be a distraction from the lesson.
• Exams are less likely to use well-known celebrities so you may need to create or find some resources using people with whom the students are less familiar.

Don’t re-invent the wheel

I have written before about using what we already have for aspects of this new new gcse. Plenty of textbooks have covered celebrities in various guises so far. Those resources (while they may not teach every word on the new spec) will serve you well. For example, our recent AQA Spanish GCSE textbooks had a page on “modelos a seguir” (you can find related resources on TES such as this one). Mira 3 had short biographies on celebrities as a means of revising the preterite. If you have copies of these books lying around and/or gathering dust then use them for this topic. I imagine French and German textbooks will have similar texts that are of use.

Don’t assume students have the vocabulary to talk about these things

You might be thinking that they are surrounded by influencers and instagram/snapchat etc, how would they not know how to talk about it?! Students will be aware of people who are famous, online influencers with thousands of followers but some might not understand the concept of “celebrity culture” itself or have the vocabulary to talk about it in English. For example, discussing the pros and cons of being famous might be a stretch for some. They might not be able to articulate why in a foreign language they do or do not like a particular celebrity beyond “he/she is …” They equally might struggle to articulate this under pressure.

I think a sentence builders approach could work very well here especially for talking about people you admire and also for where famous people have not been good role models. Gianfranco Conti’s post here gives some salient pointers about how to craft a good sentence builder

What opportunities this topic presents (teaching)?

Firstly, opinions and reasons are unavoidable on this topic. A question such as “tell me about someone you admire and why” gives an able student the potential to give a variety of opinion and justification phrases. Secondly, there is a great opportunity for the past tense with some examples “he/she was”, “he/she won”, “he/she recorded/sold/has gone on tour.” Lastly, there is a opportunity to drop in a reference to the future with a simple “I want to meet him/her.” Vincent Everett’s post here gives you an excellent idea of how this could be taught in the classroom.

What opportunities this topic present (cultural capital and making the case for languages)?

Firstly, there is an opportunity to build our students understanding of the target language culture. You may need to do a little bit of research if you are not up-to-date with your Spanish/German/French influencers. The majority of our students are online, on TikTok and Instagram. Give them some good role models to follow from the target language country. Lots of videos are subtitled so students can read the language as well as listening to it.

Secondly, this topic is a good opportunity to remind students that a lot of famous people are bilingual or multilingual and that they learnt it like the students did: in school. Kylian Mbappe – in one interview – mentions he “wasn’t the best in school at Spanish” but he kept learning. In another (the one below) he mentions that sometimes people “still speak too fast”. A good reminder that mastering a language takes time!

This topic would tie in quite well with options too.