Blending the old and the new

Well things are going well with the banlieue topic. I've finished the exercises which go with the book Les Petits Enfants du Siècle and I shall be starting Kiffe Kiffe Demain shortly.  I'm going to create a kind of work guide which picks out relevant bits from each book which relate to the topics covered under the social issues for each board.  This will make the course a lot easier to follow for students.

The links to my film guides from the A level French resources site are getting hit a lot and there have already been some sales.  Stephane of Linguascope shifted several at the ALL conference in York on Saturday.   This is a great inducement to keep working on the materials.

I think I shall be starting the environmental sides of the A2 topics before long using Jean de Florette as a source book as well as the Isabelle Huppert film Home.  I don't know if anyone knows of any other books with an environmental/sustainable living type of outlook.  I'd be interested to hear if they have.

Social issues and lit all in one hit

On my A level French resources site I'm trying to blend resources together so that both teacher and student can have a clear idea of where they are going in the course. Whilst I've had a blind faith over the last decade that teachers are going to see the light and cotton onto VLEs (moodle, fronter or whatever) I am slowly beginning to realize that there are other equally valid ways of doing things that can pack a punch.




The A3 "VLE on a page" idea on the Alevelfrench.com site is a first go at making an accessible course which presses all the buttons to achieve success at A level. It's by no means finished but kind of feels right to me. The main social issues are covered by all boards but it is hard to give students a feeling of engagement without going into the soul of French/French speaking people going through them. I feel personally that it is important to get students reading and to study some of the books that really pull you in. Hence I've chosen Les Petits Enfants du Siècle which I've always enjoyed and Kiffe Kiffe Demain.



These books bring in the early days of what we now consider to be the banlieue with the latter days - both are first person novels through the eyes of young girls. In both we have to do much of our own interpretation of how social issues are impinging on the protagonists. I guess it would be perfectly valid to just do certain extracts from the novels to highlight aspects of the social issues. I just feel that the more humdrum daily routine written in a ironic, humorous tones does a lot more to enlighten us than the violent point of view we see in La haine.



I don't know whether you could do the history of the Banlieue for an AQA topic. In terms of history I thought there are some key individuals who could be brought in -L'abbé Pierre, Le Corbusier, Harlem Désir, Le Pen and Sarkozy, to name but few.



For the Welsh board one of the books could be studied for the oral maybe alongside La Haine for the essay paper. I'd be really interested in what people think with regard to the OCR and Edexcel boards.



I'm intending putting in language powerpoints using the social issues as exemplification and also a student study plan although I guess that would depend on the board. Let me know what you think! To get at the VLE on a page just go to my A level French resources site.

Les petits enfants du siècle

Les petits enfants du siècle duly arrived and I've been spending the last few days doing a summary of it.   I studied it with a couple of classes but had forgotten that it is actually quite a hard book due to the high level of slang.  I shall be doing the vocabulary for it which will be a mammoth task.    The voice of the author coming in through the mouth of Josyane is very strong with lots of strong adult irony. 

The native French birth rate was quite weak for most of the 20th century with all kind of financial inducements to have more and the book I suppose makes the point that by having loads of kids you can't look after is not an unalloyed advantage.   Jo aludes to many of these children ending up as cannon fodder but of course we see in the book that with the level of care many are simply ending up as a burden on the state being carted off to the Arriérés or various other institutions.

The emotional deprivation caused by cynical parents having children simply to add to their list of material goods is one of the  main threads of the book and Jo's thirst for attention is satisfied by Nicolas her younger brother and Guido the romantic Italian with his inappropriate but welcomed advances.     Guido clearly feels guilty about his desire for Jo and it is probably no accident that he disappears off the scene.  We are left to make up our own minds about the effects of parental neglect on a young and vulnerable child.

The perspectives of  the increasingly quick urbanisation is cleverly done and we see childrens' natural playground being replaced by trees behind metal rails predating the huge shift in what we consider childhood to be about. There will be lots of A level french resources on the history of the suburbs for use with the AQA syllabus and to back up the content of the A2 topics.   Hopefully by the time I've finished these will all fit cunningly together!