Speaking controlled assessment preparation - 21st century style

Our children amaze me.  They work well together, most of the time, and they try ever so hard even in the face of adversity (difficult curriculum provision in our case).  Following 17 weeks of learning German, our students are now working towards their second speaking controlled assessments - I still can't believe it is only 8 weeks (real time) until they sit the final listening and reading exams.  I don't think I would have been able to produce written and spoken work of the quality that they are producing after less than a year of German lessons.  They do amaze me!  When I think, it is thanks to fab tools, like tarsia, TaskMagic, cueprompter.com, textivate, the complex 'intermediate' sections on Linguascope, the fact that they can access our 'core text' (rarely used in lessons, but often used for homeworks) via our VLE - complete with audio and video files, triptico, teachers' pet, the face that that we have mini whiteboards and reate 'human sentences' on them to practise complex word order etc.  We didn't have all of this at school, and I know people often say 'it was harder back in the day'; however, I am almost certain, that I would not have been able to produce work akin to that which our students are currently producing - one year, ab initio GCSE work - they take risks and are keen to try.  Don't get me wrong, there are a couple who need 'coaxing'; but with some TLC, they are all on board, and they produce work at or above their 'estimated' grades.  I still think that the advent of some of these fab tools are not just 'gimmicky', like some people think; I firmly believe that these Year 11 students, who are working towards GCSE French, German and Spanish awards in the face of adversity would not be doing so well if they did not have access to the language through these fab tools and 'tricks'!