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Frenchteacher updates

I've been less busy than usual with the site over the summer holiday, but there have been some significant additions.

I am aware that quite a lot of my subscribers are previous users who knew the contents of the site well, but I wanted to make potential new users aware of the contents behind the paywall, so I have created a full contents page so that people can get an instant glimpse of what's available. Up to now there are 580 members of frenchteacher.net. I am happy to consider anyone's ideas for new additions to the site.

As far as new content is concerned, well, I have added a text and exercises on Usain Bolt which I have pitched at the upper intermediate level (higher GCSE), although it could be used at AS level for the AQA sport theme. I was going to add English questions, but instead I have added the task: "note down in English as many points as you can". We sometimes used this approach at my former school to encourage students to produce as much as they could according to their ability. I recommend it. I always hesitate before including exercises in English as I would rather work almost entirely in the target language, but using English does allow students to use a text more easily. This is, of course, the current fashion with GCSE examinations in Britain.

For advanced level I have added a few resources:
  • An A2 (advanced) level text and exercises on a racist attack int eh gard département - very appropriate for the GCE specifications
  • An A2 article and exercises on the recent disturbances in Amiens between youths and the police
  • An AS/A2 text and exercises on organic food - the pros and cons of les produits bio
  • An AS text and exercsies on tourism in France
If you want your students to read more in French you could try something we used successfully a Ripon: you give a weekly internet reading task to students. They choose an article, copy and paste it on to A4, add a short vocab glossary and summary in English. They could do it all electronically of course, but we found a paper version convenient. We would read them, sometimes comment, but not assess because we did not want to add too much to our workload, just theirs!

Bonne rentrée!

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