Skip to main content

Advanced listening: a teen at a Montreal high school

One of the staples of my frenchteacher site is 'video listening'. These resources are worksheets linked to online video clips from various sources. I look for short clips of up to about 3-4 minutes, clear language and relevant content. The exercise I design for each video depends somewhat on the content, but in the example below I went for the simple 'questions in French' approach. An advantage of this is that it not only requires comprehension, but the ability to transcribe and adapt the language students here. (In contrast, questions in English require comprehension and translation/summary only.) For the hardest texts I might avoid QA in French since more effort is needed in the processing, so adding the burden of writing in French may overload students. It depends on the student, of course.

Below is an example, unusually long in this case, but manageable, given the speed and level of language.




I like this source since it relates to a francophone country outside mainland France (in this case Quebec). It's all too easy to neglect the other areas of the world where French is spoken. The original worksheet with answers is on my site.

Une adolescente française dans une école à Montréal   7m 25

1.     Où exactement est-ce que Marion va à l’école ?

2.     Quelle est la règle qu’il faut respecter ?

3.     Comment est l’uniforme ?

4.     Quand est-ce qu’elle arrive ? Pourquoi ?

5.     Comment est-ce que Robin a reconnu que Marion est française ?

6.     Que dit Robin sur Montréal et la région du Québec en général ?

7.     Qu’est-ce que Marion et sa copine révisent ?

8.     Est-ce que tous les Québécois sont bilingues anglais-français ?

9.     Quand sa copine parle des attitudes des Français envers les Québécois, quelle impression est-ce qu’elle donne ?

10. Comment est l’atmosphère de l’école ? Pourquoi ?

11. Qui est Sylvie Normandeau ?

12. Il y a trois ans comment se sentait Marion en cours ? Pourquoi ?

13. Comment est l’emploi du temps ?

14. Qu’est-ce que Marion apprécie en particulier ?

15. Selon Marion, quelle est la différence entre les relations profs-élèves en France et au Québec ?

16. Que dit Mme Normandeau de l’intégration de Marion ?

17. Dans la cantine, que dit Marion sur les Québécois ?

18. Où vont les élèves pendant les heures de récréation par exemple ?

19. À quelle réunion va Marion ?

20. Le Canada a quelle réputation en ce qui concerne les droits ? Donnez un exemple précis.

21. Que dit Robin sur son coming-out ?

22. Selon Robin, est-ce qu’il aurait eu la même expérience en France ? Expliquez.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the natural order hypothesis?

The natural order hypothesis states that all learners acquire the grammatical structures of a language in roughly the same order. This applies to both first and second language acquisition. This order is not dependent on the ease with which a particular language feature can be taught; in English, some features, such as third-person "-s" ("he runs") are easy to teach in a classroom setting, but are not typically fully acquired until the later stages of language acquisition. The hypothesis was based on morpheme studies by Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt, which found that certain morphemes were predictably learned before others during the course of second language acquisition. The hypothesis was picked up by Stephen Krashen who incorporated it in his very well known input model of second language learning. Furthermore, according to the natural order hypothesis, the order of acquisition remains the same regardless of the teacher's explicit instruction; in other words,
4 comments
Read more

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 language).
Post a Comment
Read more

12 principles of second language teaching

This is a short, adapted extract from our book The Language Teacher Toolkit . "We could not possibly recommend a single overall method for second language teaching, but the growing body of research we now have points to certain provisional broad principles which might guide teachers. Canadian professors Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada (2013), after reviewing a number of studies over the years to see whether it is better to just use meaning-based approaches or to include elements of explicit grammar teaching and practice, conclude: Classroom data from a number of studies offer support for the view that form-focused instruction and corrective feedback provided within the context of communicative and content-based programmes are more effective in promoting second language learning than programmes that are limited to a virtually exclusive emphasis on comprehension. As teachers Gianfranco and I would go along with that general view and would like to suggest our own set of g
2 comments
Read more