Reading fiction improves empathy

An article in today's Guardian newspaper reports research claiming to prove that reading a novel improves empathy.  Go to Guardian article   How does this differ from watching a film?    We are outside the goldfish bowl looking in when we watch a film.   When we read a novel we are or become the  person in the novel which maybe explains why intellectual men often cite L'étranger  (http://www.letranger.co.uk/) as the novel that influenced them most (or the stranger/outsider) and women quote Jane Eyre. 

In Kiffe Kiffe Demain (http://www.kiffekiffedemain.co.uk/ ) we join Doria in going from darkness to light in a Bildungsroman with a difference.   We share her cynicism for life in France before gradually coming to realize that actually it is doing its best to make life better for people.

In Bonjour Tristesse (http://www.bonjourtristesse.co.uk/)  we initially side with the narrator but gradually begin to recoil in horror from what she is doing to the people around her, with the dénouement leaving a nasty taste in our mouths.

In un sac de billes (http://www.unsacdebilles.co.uk/) we are the grown up parent looking back to our childhood and going back over the dangers and excitement of the second world war quickly losing our innocence.    Narrating from the perspective of many years distance with an adults wisdom demonstrates a different kind of empathy.   We are empathizing with the adult empathizing with the child he once was.  

Which ever book if it is good we immerse ourselves in the character and hence in the culture, looking outwards from the goldfish bowl.   However good a film maker is achieving empathy is never easy although Truffaut and some others have had a jolly good try.

Literary tours via Streetview

Reading is essentially a journey inside the head of the narrator, primarily.   This is where, to my mind, a novel scores over the film.   However where curiosity is aroused about the novel after a while you start to wonder what that patchily described environment is like particuarly in the case of a foreign book where you may not have visited the country.   So for instance in the case of Kiffe Kiffe demain (see resources under www.kiffekiffedemain.co.uk ) you can easily visit Livry-Gargan the town in which the novel takes place.   Just go to www.google.co.uk/maps and type in the town name.  Pull the little orange man on the zoom tool onto a blue lined street to go into Streetview mode.

Similarly for Un sac de billes (www.unsacdebilles.co.uk ) you can visit the bridge in Aire sur Adour or the various places in Nice or Menton ... an excellent way of going from the internal to external exploration.

Entre les murs

Entre les murs by François Bégaudeau is the French collège in a multicultural setting through the eyes of the teacher and related in a first person, stream of consciousness style.     Punctuated with disgruntled Dico's request to change form tutor (prof principal) and the vagaries of the staffroom photocopier the book, I hesitate to call it a novel, takes us through the school year with brevet blanc, conseil de classe, ramadan, African football cup, options choices for moving onto either bac général or bac pro all coming up for discussion.   I guess the real subject underlying the whole book is the battered and bruised French language which the teacher who teaches French is trying to get across to a disparate bunch of learners some of whom like Ming recently arrived from China are very intelligent but not going to make it soon enough.    The narrator's efforts to maintain distance from the kids themselves is valiantly upheld with his blanket refusal to be tutoyed although his own language to them sometimes appears to invite it.  Would he get a satisfactory in an English inspection-I don't think so.

I think selected parts of the book would be very useful to study particularly regarding options choices and maybe use of language.   It's an interesting way maybe also of looking at the difference between the spoken and the written language with the attitude towards verlan being covered well.    The accompanying film shows the whole situation with similar veracity.

I guess those people studying Kiffe Kiffe demain (see French A level resources at www.kiffekiffedemain.co.uk ) and even Les petits enfants du siècle (www.alevelfrench.com/home) at A2 and also during the éducation topic at AS would get a lot out of selected extracts of the the book.   Has anyone tried it?

Les émeutes

There has been much talk about poverty and poor parenting being the cause of the riots in London and other cities in the UK but how often do we truly get to find out what it feels like to be on the receiving end of grinding poverty and parenting which takes place in an environment of low paid degrading work.  Faïza Guène's low key but compelling Kiffe Kiffe Demain (see alevelfrench.com resources at www.kiffekiffedemain.com ) really rubs in our face the humiliation that those on the receiving end of state handouts and charity feel.   Guène reserves a particular contempt for those who give to charity so that they can really rub this in the faces of the recipients.    Doria, Guène's heroine lets her adolescence run its course and she finally comes to see that love will help her face most of life's battles and that actually, although humiliating, the welfare state's assistance was very helpful particularly to her mother.

The feminine side of the banlieue issues is a welcome contrast with the more aggressive masculine side seen through films such as La haine.

French literature titles

Recent events such as the riots in the UK only last week make one realize the importance of literature with concepts like the notion of responsability for crime or  evil deeds being the central point of say L'étranger or Bonjour Tristesse.  In L'étranger (see French language resources on www.l'etranger.co.uk ) Camus constructs a character who is inexorably drawn towards an action he has no wish to commit for which in his own eyes he is not responsible and does not feel particularly linked to.  In society's eyes of course it's a different matter with the prosecution making the value judgements about Meursault's background and acquaintances which a more traditional society will always make.   This has been only too evident in the aftermath of the riots.

The selfishness of young individuals, interested in their own short term sensual needs, also much mentioned as a result of the riots is central to Bonjour Tristesse (see French language resources at www.bonjourtristesse.co.uk ).  Cécile despite admiring her mentor and her father's future wife comes up with an elaborate scheme which culminates in a sequence of events which results in a dramatic and undesired conclusion-this goes back to the early 1950's.    Despite the apocalytic statements about society we can at least say that literature helps us to get inside the mind of 3rd parties so we can consider actions, causes and consequences.   The fact that we are going inside the protagonists' heads is an additional benefit-something cinema can only match very weakly-so despite some of these titles being half a century old the universality of literature holds good.

Get along to www.alevelfrench.com to find out more about the literature titles on offer and the new A*ttitudes AS level course.  

Revisions to alevelfrench.com

Some fantastic comments on the resources on www.alevelfrench.com which have been very motivating.  The materials for literature www.unsacdebilles.co.uk particularly were described by a teacher as the best he had seen in forty years of teaching.  Another described www.letranger.co.uk materials as being the best she had seen in thirty years of teaching literature-so we must be headed in the right direction.  Not wishing to stand on our laurels we decided to set ourselves the target of completing the following extras for a phase 2:-

• full markschemes
• reading/teacher guide
• questions in French
• Taskmagic exercises

This is now largely complete as we speak on the 6th July 2011 so teachers wishing to teach the eight literature titles can head off for a good holiday knowing that they have a body of materials they can use on their return to school.

We are always looking for extra materials to motivate our students and Un sac de billes has now had a bande dessinée (the second) written based on it; the first volume of two is now ready and available from the French amazon or from www.alevelfrench.com

Interesting to see that the French Culturthèque has just featured No et Moi and Kiffe Kiffe Demain on its site although not much is said.

Well the big event this week is undoubtedly the Language World Conference at Imperial College London where I shall be speaking about A*ttitudes the new AS level course.   I don't yet know how many people will be attending but hope to get some valuable feedback to take the product forward.

A*ttitudes now released to an unsuspecting world

The A*ttitudes AS level French course is now out there.  1 931 schools will have received letters invited them to use the trial username and password to log in to the Voyages, Vacances et tourisme sample unit.  The resources can be used within the moodle VLE, downloaded and used as normal word files or the VLE version of the course can be downloaded and put into Fronter, uniservity etc.   First sale came on the first day of release, paraxodically to Australia and for 7 units which was a good start to the launch.   If other heads of department are like I used to be it might be a year of looking, checking out, coming back to it before I would take the plunge.  Meanwhile we'll just keep on improving the content and getting nearer to what the generality of people, students and teachers, want.

Un Sac  de Billes is becoming the clear leader in the most popular texts stakes;  I would say it is beginning to overtake L'étranger resources as the most popular.  I think my message about No et Moi is getting out and strangely outside the UK it is picking up quicker than here.   Bonjour Tristesse as I have said before, outwardly is an appealing book to study but I think people lose their confidence with it - there have been lots of sales of resources in the last month or two indicating that teachers suddenly become desperate that the students haven't "got it". 

Un village français the TV series on FR3 about an occupied village-actually a small town-is now in its third series so I'm looking forward to watching the DVD of that when it becomes available.  I guess it would be too long to watch the whole series for students but for teachers wishing to immerse themselves in the period it's got most of the moral dilemmas you might wish to learn about to back up you knowledge for Le silence de la mer or Un Sac de billes.

I received an interesting question from a user of the alevelfrench.com resources the other day, asking whether Kiffe Kiffe Demain and No et Moi made a good tandem of books to study.  I guess they do as Kiffe Kiffe Demain relates to the immigrant experience and the self help way of life experience by the typical Maghrébin family and how this blends in with the welfare state-against this we have the well off culturally rather isolated middle family of Lou in No et Moi where there is an equal amount of suffering alongside the failings of the state to help people like No-the young female SDF.   So really a nicely balanced experience reading the two I would say.

A*ttitudes AS level French

Well the A*ttitudes AS French course will soon be hitting the schools in the shape of a flyer and trial login so that teachers can see for themselves the benefits of the resources.   We based our ideas on the general lack of knowledge of French culture of young anglosaxons  so the Profil section takes the learner through the context of the topic (there are 12 topics).  This section also requires the student to put the verbs in which is good for reinforcing mainly the present tense.   The listothèque is a very simple idea designed to give the students some ideas in a number of areas of the topic-this can be used for discussion and language development.  What is clever though is the way we have then taken all the vocab and used it to practice reading practice and grammatical manipulation.    I think reuse self evidently is the key to students taking in the language and emerging more fluent.

I'm currently experimenting with AS French Grammar and am using Camtasia to produce walk throughs to explain hopefully some key grammar points.  I've a long way to go-I think this one gets better as it goes on but I do have a very boring, monotonous voice so I think maybe I should just do the scripts!  AS level French grammar

It's good to see that the new pages I've put in to make it easier to find the literature materials are bearing fruit.   All the books are now showing up on either page 1 or 2 of a google search which has happened over the last month or so.  I'd not looked for a while.  So for http://www.letranger.co.uk/   that is really good as lots of the first search results relate to the French restaurant in London!   I'm also glad to see that http://www.unsacdebilles.co.uk/ is now right up there as there is a lot of material on the web on the book.  The one that seems to be a bit intransigent is http://www.bonjourtristesse.co.uk/   That book due to the universal nature of its title is proving really difficult to get up the search rankings-I suppose it will happen gradually.  

The lasting reputation of novels

Sebastian Faulks current programme on the novel and its heroes has caused an upsurge of annoyance with many people criticizing the list for being male centric-Marielle Frostrop was particularly vociferous in her criticism of the list as being one sided.   Well maybe its because the clientele for A level French is predominantly female, books by young women almost predominate set text lists-or at least there was no shortage of them.   This is reflected in the titles covered by the A level french.com site.  The offshoot www.bonjourtristesse.co.uk offers a full range of exercises to get encourage language practice alongside comprehension of the ideas and plot of the novel.  Françoise Sagan rushed off the novel in her summer holidays and was catapulted to fame as a result.   True to form there has been a recent biopic of her called Sagan...

Sagan le film

Doria in Kiffe Kiffe Demain is a character in a different mould.  While Cécile in Bonjour Tristesse can certainly not be labelled a hero, Doria is very much the downtrodden victim who almost heroically achieves a happy life despite the obstacles being put in her path.   A visit to www.kiffekiffedemain.co.uk will show you the range of exercises and resources available for that title too.   As mentioned last mentioned last month Faiza Guene's latest novel is also very much worth reading.

Un Sac de Billes and L'étranger

I was captivated by Un Sac de Billes the first time I read it, the more so because I had spent a lot of time in my student days in some of the places mentioned like Menton.  The fact that the book is written in a humorous way on a difficult subject is also a big plus.   I am therefore adding at section to the site on the book;  all resources will be on the domain www.unsacdebilles.co.uk   It has overtaken L'étranger now in terms of sales.  I guess for me the only negative is that it is now recognized that Joseph Joffo was helped in editing the book quite considerably;  one does wonder which bits were embellished and which weren't-quite a good task to get students to consider although of course there are no right or wrong answers.

I also thought getting a domain for L'Etranger would be a good thing to give it its own identity on the site.  So more information on L'étranger, go to www.letranger.co.uk   There is quite a bit of controversy at the moment because all Camus' work has been made available to download on a Canadian site-authors only have to have been dead for fifty years for work to go out of copyright there although of course it more here.  Gallimard are rightly very upset about this and personally as a writer myself I agree-it's not fair on publishers as with the music industry.  Authors of course don't have the potential for doing gigs in quite the same way, particularly when they're dead.

Lots more resources are being added to the A level French resources on the site including all the content for the new A*ttitudes course for AS.  Have a look!

Lucie Aubrac-Occupation

I got truly into the occupation in the 80/90s and became so obsessed that I tried to read and watch everything relevant. After a few years off I seem to have got back into the groove again and have become equally obsessed!  Lucie Aubrac about whom a fictional film was made wrote an excellent book La Résistance expliquée à mes petits-enfants which really hits home because that woman so hated being occupied by the Germans-it comes through.  



The book is a perfect backup for those studying Le Silence de la Mer or Un Sac de billes for which there are comprehensive language resources on www.alevelfrench.com/home     Here is a flavour of Lucie Aubrac, a feisty lady to say the least.

The book is made for younger kids but would not be in any way patronizing for A level students particularly with its use of the perfect and imperfect tenses which would help embed language for the average student.

Du Rêve pour les oufs

I enjoyed very much Kiffe Kiffe Demain with its whimsical humour and true to life background and was very pleased to see that Faïza Guène has come up with another novel Du Rêve pour les Oufs.   A good quick 150 page read it is a short period in the life of Alhème an Algerian girl living in the Paris area.   The mingling of verlan, Arab words and racy French makes for a breakneck rush through life for Maghrébins in France today.  The Alevelfrench.com resources on Kiffe Kiffe Demain have been very popular and I can see this book being partnered with the new one to provide a compelling cultural topic.  

Much more confident than Dora, Ahlème has problems landing a job;  she spends much of her time trying to keep her brother out of the hands of the law.   I guess in someways the situation is stereotyped but it does provide a more life affirming slant on immigrant life in France than the negativity of La Haine.    If any one thinks that Faïza Guène would make a good subject for cultural coverage I would be only too happy to cover her on alevelfrench.com.   Just visit the site to buy the new book Du Rève pour les Oufs.