Cultural Podcasts for KS3 French, Spanish & German
Original podcasts provide authentic and engaging cultural insight!
Designed to inspire KS3 students and spark learning, podcasts and activities showcase challenging language in a natural and informal way.
- Family and Friends (Y7)
- Food and Drink (Y7)
- Sports and Hobbies (Y8)
- School and Technology (Y8)
- Hometown and Tourism (Y9)
- Culture and Festivals (Y9)
Ideal for years 7, 8 and 9 – with 6 worksheets per year – though fully flexible to use based on the capacity of the class and your scheme of work.
A male and a female native speaker provide varied cultural perspectives from different target-language countries on core KS3 topics – such as family and friends, and culture and festivals – with attention also paid to future GCSE requirements.
Straightforward and easy to use, visually appealing, very well sequenced and structured
Your top learners will:
- hone their listening comprehension skills and develop better pronunciation
- learn new vocabulary and grammar to reuse – including idioms, colloquialisms and key expressions
- apply their knowledge to a variety of stimulating activities
Structured learning:
Each podcast is accompanied by a transcript of about 150 words and two worksheets.
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What do teachers say about this resource? (11330)
This is one of the best KS3 resources I have seen in years – and I am a teacher, resource author and review so I have seen a lot!
I like the range of activities the sequencing of them, the conscious focus on grammar with very short but very targeted activities, and the use of interesting conversational structures such as ‘como yo’ which illustrate the communicative aspect of language learning.
The first worksheet allows the students to develop listening and comprehension skills; the fact that the speech needs to be transcribed helps students concentrate in the meaning. The second part allows students to practice their grammar and other productive skills, which can be easily set as homework. Differentiation can be easily adapted to how many times the track can be listened to. The fact that there are two set characters makes it a little bit more appealing to follow. There is a great range of activities and there is little sense of repetition. Instructions are clear – I really like how one specific tasks indicates the need to only answer with one or two words, this is most helpful practice for students. Younger students like colouring in and there are some lovely introductory activities to support this type of activity. The grammatical points are spot on, not only very relevant but very well matched to the actual content of the topic, some excellent choices. Activities that demand organising activities into a given time frame (Sat or Sunday) are very helpful too.
Straightforward and easy to use, visually appealing, very well sequenced and structured. The icons show straight away the kind of activity students are dealing with. Since all transcripts are necessary for students to complete worksheet 2, the text should be included in worksheet, either at the beginning or at the end. Having the transcripts in a separate section is very inconvenient, specially as they are very short texts and the teacher would have to make multiple photocopies, cut and distribute.
Topics are guided towards the AQA spec, and are relevant and engaging. The question types will be very helpful for students transitioning into GCSE Listening papers. Gap fill activities in the target language where students have to write what they hear help their own lexical knowledge and reinforce spelling accuracy.
[Would you purchase this resource?] Absolutely yes
Well done, a great resource, my congratulations to the author!
This material is excellent and inspirational. I find this resource very appropriately written for its year group (KS3). I feel that there are many resources for GCSE and A-Level but there aren’t enough for KS3 so in my view this is a much needed resource which included a variety of topics, exercises and it is well designed. The fact that this is a podcast and it offers the listening opportunities as well as the reading practice makes it likeable and versatile. It gives so much cultural information and is so related to GCSE topics and real life events. From these points of view this resource is fantastic.
What do teachers say about this resource? (11826)
This resource provides useful and engaging additional listening material with accompanying tasks that will develop vocabulary and practice grammar across the whole of KS3. Each of the six topics is presented via two podcasts, one by a female speaker purporting to be from Austria, the other by a boy from Berlin. This allows for the topic to be explored from two different viewpoints, adding a cultural dimension which will appeal to our learners. This resource allows the busy languages teacher to go beyond what the course book offers. Listening materials are by their nature more difficult to source than written texts and this resource goes a long way towards filling this gap. The tasks and exercises accompanying each podcast increase in difficulty, leading from simple word/sound correlation or word recognition, to transcription and comprehension tasks. I am particularly impressed with the fact that task types which will feature in the new GCSE (to be examined from 2026) are already anticipated by the inclusion of transcription tasks.
What do teachers say about this resource? (11891)
This resource is so much more than just ‘listening’! This is a useful resource, particularly for departments looking to expand their range of listening material which their pupils have exposure to OR for departments who do not have a course book. The topics are appropriate to KS3 and will appeal to pupils as well as increasing some cultural awareness. I really like that the listening material is exploited in different ways so that it is not just a piece of listening and one exercise. This means that pupils have the chance to listen to the material again but for different things. This might help them to identify the types of tasks they are good at and which they find harder, providing useful information for them and their teachers when it comes to revision and GCSE preparation.