Teachers of the students I'm tutoring who are covering L'Etranger are using a variety of techniques ranging from the "let them get on and read it in class" and fill in a few themes on a worksheet and "bombard them with lots of different exercises on language". When we read literature in the early seventies, the teacher simply went through the book with us and it was translated word for word despite the fact that translations of some of the more popular texts such as L'Etranger or La Porte Etroite by Gide existed. This was a particularly sterile business as previous students had often already annotated the text and then of course we had to write about the texts not in French but in English. This is why I guess it's hard to compare standards from one generation to the next with such differing approaches being taken.
I'm thinking that ebooks would be really good to use as they can easily be annotated-if it were possible to make the teacher version accessible to students. Surely some way of doing this could be found. Then students could read without notes and then with-or maybe first version would be tagged up for vocab.
I'm kind of wondering about doing a visual guide to L'Etranger or exercises which encourage students to think of the book visually. One of the most interesting things about the book is the amount of lines Camus writes in relation to particular topics. He spends practically a chapter on Salamano and the scabby dog something he finds "intéressant", where as poor old mum only merits a couple of sentences. His student career from which he cannot be very far from also only merits a line. I guess maybe that's the point. L'étranger, the person, is the anti-person. Most novels of the 20th century would have made something of the relationship with Marie but of course it's an anti-romance. It's a one sided romance for which only we can guess how Marie Cardona feels.
How to make something of all this visually? Keep your eye on www.alevelfrench.com resources to see what I come up with!
I'm thinking that ebooks would be really good to use as they can easily be annotated-if it were possible to make the teacher version accessible to students. Surely some way of doing this could be found. Then students could read without notes and then with-or maybe first version would be tagged up for vocab.
I'm kind of wondering about doing a visual guide to L'Etranger or exercises which encourage students to think of the book visually. One of the most interesting things about the book is the amount of lines Camus writes in relation to particular topics. He spends practically a chapter on Salamano and the scabby dog something he finds "intéressant", where as poor old mum only merits a couple of sentences. His student career from which he cannot be very far from also only merits a line. I guess maybe that's the point. L'étranger, the person, is the anti-person. Most novels of the 20th century would have made something of the relationship with Marie but of course it's an anti-romance. It's a one sided romance for which only we can guess how Marie Cardona feels.
How to make something of all this visually? Keep your eye on www.alevelfrench.com resources to see what I come up with!
