Many people have asked to find out more about the Social Issues related literature approach, to the extent that I have decided to create A level French resources which bring together the environment in its broadest sense in literature with the environment part of the A level specifications. For the moment I have selected "La Neige en Deuil" the novel by Henri Troyat and "Home" the recent film starring Isabelle Huppert. Whilst the first doesn't deal with the environment as we see it as an issue today it offers a perspective of what many people would see as French culture at its most raw, the peasant life style in an authentic regional environment, namely the Alps.
The novel centres around one mans struggle to retain his life style inherited across the ages from the ravages of a brother who wants to join the rural exodus (exode rural) a painful process which was endured in France over the 19th and 20th centuries. We see a tiny village which has few links to the outside world, lives pretty much sustainably looking at outside developments pretty much suspiciously. Food is still produced and stored in the traditional way despite electricity just having come to the area from the power station in the valley. So "La Neige en Deuil" gives us a tantalizing point de départ from which to examine the way we live now, rich in colour and in insights.
Home, involves a family living right next to a partially completed motorway which ends up being completed so the film emphasizes the way in which environmental change occurs in a very much more concentrated way than La Neige en Deuil. It therefore offers an interesting contrast both in tone and emphasis.
As with other content for A level French my emphasis is on helping the less confident to average student to access A level French resources which help build up knowledge of language within the context of the literary or cinematic work. By bringing together the literary and the non-literary in the "VLE on a page" approach I want students to be able to see the big picture of what they are trying to learn. This should make it easier to explain to them what they're endeavouring to achieve which should improve take up and in most cases final results.
Home Trailer
The novel centres around one mans struggle to retain his life style inherited across the ages from the ravages of a brother who wants to join the rural exodus (exode rural) a painful process which was endured in France over the 19th and 20th centuries. We see a tiny village which has few links to the outside world, lives pretty much sustainably looking at outside developments pretty much suspiciously. Food is still produced and stored in the traditional way despite electricity just having come to the area from the power station in the valley. So "La Neige en Deuil" gives us a tantalizing point de départ from which to examine the way we live now, rich in colour and in insights.
Home, involves a family living right next to a partially completed motorway which ends up being completed so the film emphasizes the way in which environmental change occurs in a very much more concentrated way than La Neige en Deuil. It therefore offers an interesting contrast both in tone and emphasis.
As with other content for A level French my emphasis is on helping the less confident to average student to access A level French resources which help build up knowledge of language within the context of the literary or cinematic work. By bringing together the literary and the non-literary in the "VLE on a page" approach I want students to be able to see the big picture of what they are trying to learn. This should make it easier to explain to them what they're endeavouring to achieve which should improve take up and in most cases final results.
Home Trailer
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