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Exploiting some simple past tense questions

Suppose you have been teaching and practising using the perfect tense with 'avoir' verbs in French — or the equivalent in your language. There are umpteen ways to generate practice, but one obvious route is via old-school questioning. Beneath you'll find a set of questions I uploaded to frenchteacher.net, along with some suggestions on how to design a lesson based on them. You could apply the same principles described below to other languages or areas of grammar and lexis.

I'll list the set of questions first, together withe English translations — which you might want to use with average to weaker classes.

1.    Qu’est-ce que tu as mangé hier soir ?

            What did you eat last night?

2.    Qu’est-ce que tu as regardé à la télé ce week-end ?

            What did you watch on TV last weekend?

3.    Qu’est-ce que tu as acheté récemment ?

            What have you bought recently?

4.    Avec qui est-ce que tu as parlé ce matin ?

            Who have you talked with this morning?

5.    Qu’est-ce que tu as fait pour ton dernier anniversaire ?

            What did uou do for your last birthday?

6.    Quel livre tu as lu récemment ?

            What book have you read recently?

7.    Quel film tu as vu récemment ?

            What film have you seen recently?

8.    Où est-ce que tu as fait tes devoirs hier ?

            Where did you do your homework last night?.

9.    Qu’est-ce que tu as appris en cours de français cette semaine ?

            What have you learnt in French this week?

10.  À quelle heure tu as fini tes devoirs hier ?

            What time did you finish your homework last night?.

11.  Qu’est-ce que tu as choisi au restaurant la dernière fois ?

            What did you choose at the restaurant last time?

12.  Quel sport tu as pratiqué récemment ?

            What sport have you played recently?

13.  Quelle musique tu as écouté hier soir ?

            What music did you listen to last night?

14.  Qu’est-ce que tu as perdu récemment ?

            What have you lost recently?

15.  Qu’est-ce que tu as bu ce matin ?

            What did you drink this morning?


So, how can we design a lesson sequence around these questions? Here is one solution, which assumes that the class has had prior teaching and practice with the verb forms.

  1. Hand out or display the questions, or a selection of them depending on the class.
  2. Read out your own answers to the questions, pausing and repeating as necessary, keeping it all comprehensible. As you do this, students note down your answers in English and get used to hearing multiple utterances using perfect tense forms ('input first, output later')
  3. Elicit from students what they noted, in French with strong classes, in English with others. To do this in French the class will need to use the 'vous' form of the verbs — this will need re-modelling first, especially as it is used much less often in lessons.
  4. Now do some teacher-led work from the front. Ask the questions in turn and get answers, either with hands up or 'cold called' (hands down). Have the class repeat answers chorally. Work through as many as you can in around 5 minutes or so.
  5. Now students practise asking and answering the same questions in pairs. Monitor, help and check that the L2 is being used nearly all the time.
  6. Listen back to a strong pair modelling their questions and answers.
  7. Now have some quite time as the class write down their answers. Monitor and help.
  8. After around 10 minutes or so, hear back examples of answers the students have written down. Write up examples on the board.
  9. As a 'stretch and challenge' activity, pairs can (from memory) try to give their answers to the questions with as few pauses as possible. Who can speak the longest without coming to a complete halt? Make it competitive.
In sum, the principles in this lesson sequence are:
  • Keep it comprehensible — including as much translation as the class needs (no need to be doctrinaire on this)
  • Flood the input with many example of verb forms
  • Personalisation - the teacher and students give their own answers
  • Focus mainly on input at the start — don't rush students into output too soon
  • Include plenty of output practice, primarily oral
  • Change the focus from teacher-led to pairs to silent work — keep everyone active
  • Exploit the modes of listening, reading, speaking and writing — with each one reinforcing the others for better memory
  • Keep the main focus, however, on listening and speaking

In terms of pedagogical thinking here... it's true that this type of work, despite the element of personalisation, has a strong whiff of just 'rehearsing language' (as opposed to carrying out communicative 'tasks'), but I think you can make a case for this in terms of using lots of target language, automatising grammatical forms and producing language relevant to the test or exams you may be working towards. You are leveraging both ends of the theoretical continuum between skill building (automatisation) and a comprehensible input approach.

Worth noting also that this type of lesson needs little resource generation. It's quik to prepare and gives plenty of bang for buck.

maybe you could come up with variations of your own.

.


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