Skip to main content

More frenchteacher updates

I've been quite busy recently producing resources for frenchteacher.net.

The most recent additions include some short news items of the fait divers style, along with a matching exercise, vocabulary, writing task and translation sentences with a focus on the passive in the perfect tense. This resource would suit an AS level group (upper intermediate).

I have also heavily adapted a text from Le Figaro about integration in France. The source text was based on a report produced in 2009 which painted a fairly rosy picture of the progress made by immigrants in France. The basic argument is that "l'intégration marche", which runs counter to what we sometimes read in the press. I have added vocabulary, questions, comprehension, lexical work and general questions about the issue of immigration and integration. This is a very mainstream A2 level topic and the text hits the mark very well.

There is a text on the benefits of tourism to which I have added vocabulary, questions, discussion and vocab work. This would work well with the topic of holidays at AS level (upper intermediate). I have included some general conversation questions on holidays.

Finally, I found an article in Sud Ouest, which I have used as a basis for a text on the delicate issue of abuse of the elderly (la maltraitance des personnes âgées). This seems to me to be a worthy topic for advanced students and one which is not often discussed. The language of the text is quite straightforward, so little vocabulary is needed, but I have included lexical work and comprehension questions. I like to include tasks which get students to relate nouns to verbs and vice versa. If students get a feeling for word relationships, fluency and better comprehension should be encouraged.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a langua...

Zaz - Si jamais j'oublie

My wife and I often listen to Radio Paradise, a listener-supported, ad-free radio station from California. They've been playing this song by Zaz recently. I like it and maybe your students would too. I shouldn't really  reproduce the lyrics here for copyright reasons, but I am going to translate them (with the help of another video). You could copy and paste this translation and set it for classwork (not homework, I suggest, since students could just go and find the lyrics online). The song was released in 2015 and gotr to number 11 in the French charts - only number 11! Here we go: Remind me of the day and the year Remind me of the weather And if I've forgotten, you can shake me And if I want to take myself away Lock me up and throw away the key With pricks of memory Tell me what my name is If I ever forget the nights I spent, the guitars, the cries Remind me who I am, why I am alive If I ever forget, if I ever take to my heels If one day I run away Remind me who I am, wha...

Longman's Audio-Visual French

I'm sitting here with my copies of Cours Illustré de Français Book 1 and Longman's Audio-Visual French Stage A1 . I have previously mentioned the former, published in 1966, with its use of pictures to exemplify grammar and vocabulary. In his preface Mark Gilbert says: "The pictures are not... a mere decoration but provide further foundation for the language work at this early stage." He talks of "fluency" and "flexibility": "In oral work it is advisable to persist with the practice of a particular pattern until the pupils can use it fluently and flexibly. Flexibility means, for example, the ability to switch from one person of the verb to another..." Ah! Now, the Longman offering, written by S. Moore and A.L. Antrobus, published in 1973, just seven years later, has a great deal in common with Gilbert's course. We now have three colours (green, black and white) rather than mere black and white. The layout is arguably more attrac...