20 years, 20 A-level text activities

Well, well. 

It only just occurred to me that frenchteacher.net has its 20th birthday this year. In 2002 I built a simple website using a guide from W H Smith and began to share worksheets I was making for my own classes. When I retired from the classroom in 2012 I decided to keep it going on a subscriber basis. This was partly for income, but mostly, I think, because I enjoy writing resources. To this day, my default daily activity is to write something new for the site.

Anyway... Here are some reflections on writing A-level text-based resources with 20 of my favourite activity types.

First, a principle or two.

Key principle!

Since I know that proficiency develops overwhelmingly through exposure to and interaction with meaningful language, I keep the main focus on aural and reading texts and their associated activities. 

How I choose texts

I begin by reworking a text usually written or spoken for L1 users, as exam boards do. The choice of text is mainly driven by the needs of the A-level syllabus, but not always. I am aware that users of my site are not all from my own country, so I occasionally write texts of general interest. I keep in mind what will interest many students of this age, but also that we need to educate students about topics they don't know much about already. This is one of the joys of teaching A-level - learning new things along with your students. But essentially, I have to respond to the needs of my subscribers to make membership worthwhile for them.

I aim to make my texts of around 95% 'comprehensible'.  With A-level students I believe you can go a bit lower than than this since they are better at inferring the meaning of unknown words than beginners or intermediate level students. This is of course a bit tricky, since what is comprehensible to one student won't be so for another. But I use my experience of students over the years to make a judgment. I can tell how comprehensible a text is by the number of words I need to gloss. If there are too many, then I simplify the text by choosing cognates, removing text or just using words or phrases I think students will know. This is in line with the Paul Nation principle of having texts at least 95% comprehensible words and, as it happens, with the very broad Krashen principle of i + 1 (the idea that input needs to be at or just above the current level of student knowledge).

What I do with texts

Texts come in all sorts of forms, but one point I would note is that texts based on personal experience of issues can be more engaging than informational texts. Not only can they be more engaging, but they lend themselves to more creative activities such as retelling a narrative or imagining an interview or dialogue. Factual texts can be too dry, although you can make a communicative task out of them. My favourite is the 'Ask the experts' task. You give, say, four students part of a longer texts. These students are the 'experts'. You supply a set of questions to each of the remaining students, who have to get their answers by asking all four of the 'experts'. So you end up with an info gap, jigsaw task where the students have to, in effect, put the text back together. (This is based on 'Ask and move' by Nation and Newton.)

So, as I said, I substantially rework a written text written for L1 users ('native speakers'), usually shorten it and modify the language to a level appropriate for the main target audience - students in school who have done at least five years of French. I very occasionally take a text in English and translate and modify it with the help of Google.

Listening texts cannot be modified, so I link out to extracts carefully from audio and video sources, mainly video since these are likely to hold interest better. The exception is when I create a listening resource based on a written text. I can simplify these as necessary for teachers to read aloud, or I use a text-to-speech app to create an MP3 file - not ideal, since the intonation is not natural. Since listening is harder than reading, for obvious reasons, aural texts need to be simpler than written texts.

What I do with the texts

1. Pre-listening/reading

Here is a little example from a listening resource about political demonstrations:

Pré-écoute

Pourquoi les gens manifestent-ils ? Quels exemples de manifs connaissez-vous ? Pourquoi certains ont-ils recours à la violence pendant des manifs ? Est-ce que cette violence est parfois justifiée ?

And a pre-reading one about online bullying:

Pré-lecture - discussion

C’est quoi le harcèlement en ligne ? Quelles formes prend-il ?

Avez-vous été victime de ce genre de comportement ? Un troll, c’est quoi ?

Connaissez-vous quelqu’un qui en a été victime ?

2. Find the French

To make sure the text is understood, at least superficially, I always add a 'find the French' section, anticipating the words or phrases students will not be familiar with. After this I use a variety of activities to get students to recycle the language as much as possible and to process the text in depth. 

Here are my 'go to' exercises, the choice of which depends partly on the nature of the text.

3. Questions in French - these supply more input and require manipulation of the language, either orally or in writing. Questions in English require comprehension only, and can be useful for harder texts or where you wish to assess comprehension separately from writing or speaking. Factual question can be mixed up with personal responses and opinions. Questions can range from the very finely-tuned (e.g. (in L2) What is another word for... ? What does the figure of 15% refer to?) to the very general (In your own words, what does the writer say in the first paragraph? Do you agree with the writer?)

It's a good idea to get students to practise questions and answers in pairs, orally, before they tackle them in writing - more repetitions, more recycling.

4. True/false/not mentioned

For non assessment purposes, true/false is fine for comprehension. You need three options if you wish to reliably assess comprehension. True/false can be a good way to get students to process the text at a basic level without having to produce their own language.

Alternatively you can have partner A make up false statements which partner B has to correct.

An alternative is a 'tick the correct sentences' exercises like this, from a resource about a volunteer, Elise:

(A) Cochez les phrases vraies

1.         Depuis quelque temps Elise avait pensé être bénévole à une course.

2.         Elle raconte la deuxième fois qu’elle est bénévole.

3.         Elle participe à des courses elle-même.

4.         Cette fois elle ravitaillait les coureurs pendant les 20km de Paris.

5.         Elle s’est levée à 7h 30 pour aller à la course.

5. Multi-choice

To be honest, I rarely do these since they take so long! But, when skillfully designed, they do get students to carefully process what they are reading or listening to. 

6. Note taking

Students write bullet point notes in English or French about a text. These can be the basis for oral discussion or writing.

7. Lexical work

My favourite is to get students to find verbs in a text based on nouns I supply, or vice versa. This gets students re-reading texts carefully and helps them develop their morphological skill and their understanding of the relationships between words. Here is an example.

Complétez en utilisant le texte

 

Nom	Verbe	Nom	Verbe
	établir		sentir
souhait (m)		recherche (f)
	syndiquer		interdire
manque (m)		fouille (f)
	utiliser		mesurer
vérification (f)		équipement (m)
	proposer		enseigner

I sometimes ask students to find synonyms or antonyms, or to give definition of words in the text.

8. Grammar work

If a text contains examples of a grammatical structure I think it's worth dwelling on, then I occasionally include an exercise to drill the point in question. Here is an exercise which is part of a resource about marriage:

Grammaire : subjonctif.

Faites 10 phrases qui débutent « Pour un mariage réussi il faut que…» suivi par le subjonctif.

Exemple : Pour un mariage réussi il faut que le couple fasse des compromis. 

Grammaire : impératif. 

Faites 10 conseils qui débutent par un verbe à l’impératif (2^e personne - pluriel)

Exemple : Faites des compromis

9. Translation both ways

I usually leave this to later in a sequence on a worksheet. Translation into L2 is a demanding task which is usually more successfully done once students have worked with the language in other ways.

10. Summary

I often include this, partly because it's a great way to get students to rework language using their existing knowledge, but also because it is an A-level exam task. Teachers and students like to practise it. I offer advice about this task here.

11. Gap-fill

These are easy to write since you can take chunks of existing text and blank out what you need to suit the needs of the class. You can give options or not. You can gap chunks as well as individual words. I have blogged about variations here.

One particular variation is to make your gapped text a paraphrase of the original, so the task is not simple transcription.

12. Faulty transcript

I recently blogged in detail about this here. This works with aural texts.

13. Sentence completion

This is good with aural texts, e.g. from a resource about the role of the president in France. Effectively the students are doing dictation, but you could ask them to paraphrase instead.

2.         Ecoutez et complétez ces phrases en utilisant les mots exacts de la vidéo

 

a.         La France est une ………………………………………………………………………….

b.         Depuis 1958 ………………………………………………………………………………..

c.         Son fonctionnement et …………………………………………………………………….

d.         Tous les cinq ans ………………………………………………………………………….

e.         Sa mission : ………………………………………………………………………………..

f.          Eh oui, les Français ……………………………………………………………………….

g.         Pour remplir ………………………………………………………………………………..

14. Rewriting

This can take the form of reworking a text from a different point of view. For example, I have a text on the story of four Mexican fishermen, two of whom survive months at sea. One exercise is to imagine an interview with one of them by a journalist. This requires re-using and adding to the source text. This can be improvised or semi-planned as an oral task too.

15. Creative/imaginative writing

Here is an example from the resource about marriage:

Imaginez que vous venez de divorcer après trois ans de mariage. Racontez, au passé composé, ce qui s’est passé. Terminez en expliquant ce que vous auriez pu/dû faire pour que le mariage continue. (150-200 mots)

16. Paired vocab testing

This is simply getting partners to test each other on vocab from a text they have been using.

Matching statements to paragraphs

For instance, if your text is a series of opinions about a subject, you can match sentences to those opinions, as in this example from a resource about Facebook where eight opinions were expressed.

Qui partage cette opinion ?

1.         Le principal avantage de Facebook, c’est qu’il vous permet de retrouver des amis qu’on n’a pas vus depuis longtemps.

2.         Avec Facebook, il y a du pour et du contre. Ça ne fait pas trop de mal.

3.         Il y a toujours le risque qu’on se moque de vous si vous y mettez des images           gênantes.

4.         Facebook prend ta vie personnelle et s’en sert pour faire de l’argent.

5.         C’est simplement pratique pour informer tous tes amis sur ce que tu fais.

6.         C’est bien pour l’échange d’images et pour envoyer des messages.

7.         Facebook est bête, mais tu n’es pas obligé de t’en servir !

8.         C’est super pour les jeunes, mais ça a changé le concept d’un vrai copain.

17. Keep talking!

This is a kind of fluency task where, once you have worked with the text for some time, one partner has to just talk as long as they can about the text.

18. Ping-pong speaking

I can't think of a better name for it, but this is where, in pairs, each partner has, in turn,  to make a statement based on the text. the first partner who cannot say something is the loser. Great for recycling language and ideas and having a bit of fun.

19. Paraphrasing

I mentioned general summary above, but you can get students to paraphrase at a 'micro levl'. This sort of thing from a text about prostitution in France.

Paraphrase

Put the sentences below into your own words

1.     Les réseaux de prostitution s’étendent.

2.     Elles vendent leurs corps.

3.     Katia n’a rien d’une mère irresponsable.

4.     Elle a coaché d’autres adolescentes.

5.     Elle fugue souvent à Paris.

6.     C’est un phénomène qui touche les mineures.

7.     Elle est sortie des griffes des proxénètes.

8.     Les dealers ne craignent pas les punitions.

9.     Elle rechute régulièrement.

10.  L’ampleur du problème est surprenante.

20. Just give a glossary

For harder listening texts I sometimes just supply a bilingual glossary to help students cope with the text. This is from a listening text about the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane during the second world war.

Vocabulaire

résonner – to   resonate, ring out                    glas (m) – bell, tolling of a bell

haut-lieu (m) – centre, hotspot                       cruauté (f) – cruelty

hitlérien(ne) – of the Hitler period                   incendier – to burn down

fusiller – to shoot (fusil (m) = rifle)                  cimetière (m) – cemetery

s’arracher – to drag oneself from                   rassembler – to gather, assemble

grange (f) – barn                                             abattre – to shoot (dead), execute

cadaver (m) – corpse                                      un rescapé (m) – escapee

décombres (m. pl.) – rubble, debris               mitrailler – to machine-gun

s’enfuir – to flee

I could add more task types to this list, but you get the idea and I don't want to go on too long. To return to general principles: is the text at the right level? Is it relevant and interesting? Can it be easily exploited and generate many repetitions of language? Does it relate to students' personal experience in some way? If not, does it teach them something interesting or useful? Does it lend itself to a communicative activity of some sort?

Happy resource writing!