Teaching French
This page is in response to the new initiatives
on the island of Dominica
promoting the efficient teaching and learning of French.
The failings
French lessons for seven years, 3 or 4 times a week from the age of 11 to 18, with a highly academic French teacher just did not work! That is, the enormous effort put in by pupils and teacher did not pay off. How many adults express a similar story? True, the teacher may have spoken immaculate French, may have had high flying French qualifications and may have lived in a French speaking country, but unless the teaching and learning styles are compatible, the result is a pupil who stutters and stammers to produce a clumsily formed French sentence, with constant interuptions for an anxious search in a French/English, English/French dictionary. And, after all those lessons, when asked if he or she can speak French, all that pupil (now adult) can answer is "Un peu!" Sounds familiar? Oui ou non?
Learning a language should never be dreary and should never be the drudgery I experienced for 7 years, 3 or 4 times a week, each lesson beginning with,
"And now for this lesson, turn, in your French text book, to the page after yesterday's and begin"
and ending with,
"And for homework, learn the next 15 verbs and add 10 new words to your vocab' list".
My philosophy
In my view, all the philosophies and activities described in the www.show-me-wow.com website apply, not only to the teaching of Language Arts in English, but also to the teaching of Language Arts in French, Spanish, Russian or even outer Mongolian! See Teaching and Learning Principles
So let's repeat the philosophy.
Language learning should be fun, should be visual, active, colourful and creative. Languages are an art form and should be treated as such. This means that there needs to be a variety of learning activities offered, and so there are obviously implications for good classroom management.
Similarly, good listening skills and auditory discrimination skills are crucial to the efficient learning of language and children are too seldom praised for progress in these key areas. See Listening Skills
So next, think big and broad, think........
drama: cafe scenes, market stalls, monologues, dialogues, playlets, group work
poetry (both learning it and writing it see Poetry Writing), postcard making and writing,
picture libraries, (but change the labels to French ones of course!.)
wordgames, crossword puzzles, word bingo and number bingo.
flags, customs and festivals, maps
topics the children are interested in, dinosaurs, fashion, pop groups, motorbikes, football,
illustrating story themes, designing posters, drawing comic strips,
book corners with French books, French comics, French magazines. See How to make a tuffet for a book corner
French tourist information.
Think everything on this website but give it a French flavour. Even Bottle Village, the story can be translated with French labels and French speaking characters and all the other accompanying activities. And Bottle Village to promote literacy can likewise be used. Remember that working in a thematic way builds up vocabulary and sentence construction more naturally, in fact similar to how a native speaker learns his language in the first place.
So avoid the text book pages, one after the other and avoid too much chalk and talk.
Teach French as a living and lively subject,
which is exactly what it is...d'accord?
