Skip to main content

Situational dialogues on frenchteacher

Some time ago I wrote a series of simple dialogues aimed primarily at adult students. This was in response to feedback I had received regarding more resources for beginner or near beginner adults.

From the feedback survey I am currently carrying out courtesy of Surveymonkey I am seeing that, although some teachers have used these, they may not have come to the attention of many. There is nothing whatsoever original about these, but they are easy to use and to adapt.

I am copying in an example for you to see. This one would work fine with school students, as would some of the others I put together. This one is Au Restaurant. Others are: hotel, campsite, baker's, café, butcher's, fishmonger's, greengrocery, car hire, train ticket office, last weekend, post office.

Apologies for any formatting issues.

Au restaurant

Take turns reading each part, then change the dialogue using the menu to make alternative choices.

Serveur           C’est pour combien de personnes?
Vous               Une personne.
***********************************************************
Serveur           Vous prenez un apéritif ?
Vous               Oui, je prendrai un kir, s’il vous plaît.
Serveur           Cassis, framboise ou pêche ?
Vous               Cassis.
***********************************************************
Serveur           Vous avez choisi ?
Vous               Je prends le menu sympa. En entrée je prendrai l’assiette                                            de crudités.
Serveur           Et comme plat principal ?
Vous               Je voudrais le steack garni.
Serveur           Quel cuisson pour votre steack ?
Vous               A point, s’il vous plaît.
Serveur           Très bien. Vous prenez à boire ?
Vous               Oui, un pichet de rouge, 50 cl.
Serveur           Parfait.
***********************************************************
Serveur           Ç’a été ?
Vous               Délicieux.
Serveur           Vous prenez un dessert ? Nous avons glace vanille-                             chocolat, mousse au chocolat, île flottante ou une 
                       salade de fruits frais.
Vous               Je prends une glace, s’il vous plaît.
Serveur           Et vous prendrez un petit café après ?
Vous               Oui, un café allongé.
**********************************************************
Vous                L’addition, s’il vous plaît.


Restaurant les Pêcheurs
Menu sympa – formule 14€

Entrées
Assiette anglaise
Assiette de crudités
Soupe de poissons

Plats
Moules marinière
Steak garni
Poulet à la sauce estragon
Truite aux amandes
Omelette au fromagre

Desserts
Glace vanille-chocolat deux boules
Ile flottante
Mousse au chocolat
Salade de fruits frais

Vins en picher
Vin de pays rouge, rosé ou blanc

Tous nos plats sont accompagnés de frites ou de légumes au choix
Service non compris


Notes

Fixed price menus
These are usually good value and feature standard dishes, often local to the area. Look out for the words formule or menu. You can always order à la carte. The French word for menu is carte.

Steak
Steak-frites is often thought of as the French national dish. Rumsteak is rump, entrecôte is rib steak, the nearest to what British would call sirloin. Sirloin is aloyau, but you rarely find this on menus.
For the cooking of steak the options are :
Very rare          bleu                                           Medium            à point
Rare                 saignant                                   Well done         bien cuit

Side dishes
If you see the word garni the meat or fish will be served with vegetables, rice, pasta or fries.

Tipping
The French tend to tip less than the British and much less than Americans. You are unlikely to cause offence if you do not tip. 10% is more than reasonable.

Wine
The house wine or wine served in a jug (picher) or carafe and is likely to be fine.

Vegetarians
Vegetarian options tend to be more limited in France than in the UK, for example, although the situation is improving.

Cutlery
When you have finished your plate of food it is customary to leave your knife and fork at an angle across the plate, unlike in the UK where they are laid together parallel.

Coffee
Foe an espresso ask for un expresso or just un café. For a longer black coffee (Americano) ask for un café allongé. For white coffee ask for un café crème.

Apéritif and digestif
A pre-meal drink is also known as un apéro, for short. A kir is white wine with a fruit liqueur named after Félix Kir, a mayor of Dijon. A digestif (less commonly chosen) is a spirit (un spiritueux) chosen to finish the meal.


© frenchteacher.net

Comments

Post a Comment

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
26 comments
Read more