An advanced listening task: Cinderella

Here is a listening task you could try with an advanced level class. You might preface the task with a discussion about fairy tales, and perhaps specifically the story of Cinderella. After this get the class into pairs and have one partner slowly read this faulty story to their partner (with repetitions where needed). The other partner should try to correct or improve the story. The task might take about 20 minutes. Tell the students that there may be variations in the final, corrected version.

CENDRILLON

Il était une fois un beau jeune garçon, orphelin, qui habitait dans un petit appartement avec sa mère. Le garçon avait deux chiens laids mais mignons.

La belle-mère et les deux chiens obligeaient Cendrillon à regarder la télé toute la journée à la maison. Elle ne devait pas faire la lessive, faire la vaisselle, faire le repassage et préparer tous les repas. Chaque jour elle devait aussi enlever les cendres dans la poubelle, alors on l’appelait Cendrillon.

Un jour, le fille du roi a organisé un concert pour trouver un fiancé. Tous les garçons du pays étaient invités. Ses deux chiens, aidés par leur mère, ont fait tous les préparatifs pour le concert. Cendrillon, très contente, n’a pas osé demander la permission d’y aller. Elle a ri si fort, que son vieil ami, la fée, l’a entendue et est venue. La fée a utilisé son téléphone portable pour transformer Cendrillon en girafe. Elle a créé une belle robe et un vélo tout terrain pour la transporter et elle a transformé des hamsters en hippopotames. Ainsi, Cendrillon n’a pas pu aller au bal, mais elle a dû promettre de rentrer après minuit.

Arrivée au concert, Cendrillon était admirée par tous. Le jeune prince l’a invitée à jouer à la console. A la fin de la matinée, elle était si triste qu’elle a oublié son nom. Dans sa hâte, elle a perdu son iPhone.

Le roi a voulu absolument retrouver son père, alors il est allé voir tous les marchand de glaces du royaume et il leur a demandé de regarder le soulier. Il a promis d’épouser le garçon qui était capable de regarder le soulier . Ainsi il a retrouvé Cendrillon et a vécu en concubinage avec elle.

Written task

Write out correct version of the story.

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The latest research on teaching vocabulary

I've been dipping into The Routledge Handbook of Instructed Second Language Acquisition (2017) edited by Loewen and Sato. This blog is a succinct summary of Chapter 16 by Beatriz González-Fernández and Norbert Schmitt on the topic of teaching vocabulary. I hope you find it useful.

1. Background

The authors begin by outlining the clear importance of vocabulary knowledge in language acquisition, stating that it's a key predictor of overall language proficiency (e.g. Alderson, 2007). Students often say that their lack of vocabulary is the main reason for their difficulty understanding and using the language (e.g. Nation, 2012). Historically vocabulary has been neglected when compared to grammar, notably in the grammar-translation and audio-lingual traditions as well as communicative language teaching.

(My note: this is also true, to an extent, of the oral-situational approach which I was trained in where most vocabulary is learned incidentally as part of question-answer sequence…

Google Translate beaters

Google Translate is a really useful tool, but some teachers say that they have stopped setting written work to be done at home because students are cheating by using it. On a number of occasions I have seen teachers asking what tasks can be set which make the use of Google Translate hard or impossible. Having given this some thought I have come up with one possible Google Translate-beating task type. It's a two way gapped translation exercise where students have to complete gaps in two parallel texts, one in French, one in English. There are no complete sentences which can be copied and pasted into Google.

This is what one looks like. Remember to hand out both texts at the same time.

English

_____. My name is David. _ __ 15 years old and I live in Ripon, a _____ ____ in the north of _______, near York. I have two _______ and one brother. My brother __ ______ David and my _______ are called Erika and Claire. We live in a _____ house in the centre of ____. In ___ house _____ …

A zero preparation fluency game

I am grateful to Kayleigh Meyrick, a teacher in Sheffield, for this game which she described in the Languages Today magazine (January, 2018). She called it “Swap It/Add It” and it’s dead simple! I’ve added my own little twist as well as a justification for the activity.

You could use this at almost any level, even advanced level where the language could get a good deal more sophisticated.

Put students into small groups or pairs. If in groups you can have them stand in circles to add a sense of occasion. One student utters a sentence, e.g. “J’aime jouer au foot avec mes copains parce que c’est amusant.” (You could provide the starter sentence or let groups make up their own.) The next student (or partner) has to change one element in the sentence, and so on, until you restart with a different sentence. You could give a time limit of, say, 2 minutes. The sentence could easily relate to the topic you are working on. At advanced level a suitable sentence starter might be:

“Selon un article q…

Dissecting a lesson: using a set of PowerPoint slides

I was prompted to write this just having produced for frenchteacher.net three separate PowerPoint presentations using the same set of 20 pictures (sports). A very good way for you to save time is to reuse the same resource in a number of different ways.

I chose 20 clear, simple, clear and copyright-free images from pixabay.com to produce three presentations on present tense (beginners), near future (post beginner) and perfect tense (post-beginner/low intermediate). Here is one of them:

Below is how I would have taught using this presentation - it won't be everyone's cup of tea, especially of you are not big on choral repetition and PPP (Presentation-Practice-Production), but I'll justify my choice in the plan at each stage. For some readers this will be standard practice.

1. Explain in English that you are going to teach the class how to talk about and understand people talking about sport. By the end of the lesson they will be able to say and understand 20 different sport…

Designing a plan to improve listening skills

Read many books and articles about listening and you’ll see it described as the forgotten skill. It certainly seems to be the one which causes anxiety for both teachers and students. The reasons are clear: you only get a very few chances to hear the material, exercises feel like tests and listening is, well, hard. Just think of the complex processes involved: segmenting the sound stream, knowing lots of words and phrases, using grammatical knowledge to make meaning, coping with a new sound system and more. Add to this the fact that in England they have recently decided to make listening tests harder (too hard) and many teachers are wondering what else they can do to help their classes.

For students to become good listeners takes lots of time and practice, so there are no quick fixes. However, I’m going to suggest, very concisely, what principles could be the basis of an overall plan of action. These could be the basis of a useful departmental discussion or day-to-day chats about meth…

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