Kiffe Kiffe Demain

I know it's not now generally considered that reading a novel is appropriate at AS but the more I look at the AQA syllabus the more I think that reading appropriate parts of Kiffe Kiffe Demain (maybe there are other equally good texts) would complement the topic side of things very well.
I have produced a wide range of resources to accompany the book on the A level French resources site and the matching up exercise with this spec I am going to do as soon as possible.

I think reading or hearing journalistic language is one thing but that reading a third party's experiences in a literary way adds a lot to the mix.  By using one text such as this for relating a range of topics to makes for building up empathy. 16/17 years olds are not noted for having loads of opinions so using a character such as Doria in Kiffe Kiffe Demain gives a focus.

The locus in Kiffe Kiffe Demain is around a differing culture with Doria's background being Islam.  It is also about poverty.    Many of our students particularly those studying languages will not have much experience of either of these phenomena so the results could be interesting.

Quatre bouquins de finis

I've finally finished all the exercises for each of the four books I decided to take on to provide A level French resources for teachers who would prefer to do literature.  I believe that it is only by really getting stuck into a book students get fully immersed in the language.  When I was a students in the early seventies the teacher simply went through every word with the class and we scrabble down the vocab as we went-the idea of the guides I've produced is that the full vocabulary will help the student work through at his/her own pace without having to have a massive dictionary. The four books done so far are L'Etranger, Les petits enfants du siècle, Kiffe Kiffe Demain and La neige en deuil.

The summaries of the book are in simple language and the vocab for this is given too.  The twist in the tale is that only the infinitive of verbs is given so students have to check out all the different types of verb form.

Other exercises are:-

Character guide with full range of adjectives appropriate to each book's main characters with translation exercises
The A factor exercises in context of the relevant book, practising the present participle, passive and subjunctive
Direct and indirect speech
The tensinator a multi-tense exercise putting each tense in context
ThemesRus, an exercise requiring that quotations be classified into categories
An exposé preparation guide
An essay planning tool with sample
A sample essay based on the plan

So everything need to get the best out of students is there.   The resources can be used either in AS or A2 as there is plenty of language practice of the basic concepts.   Just contact Steve at www.alevelfrench.com  for more information about subscribing.

Direct Nice newspaper with downloadable pdf

The recent trip to Nice was punctuated with several newspaper reading sessions our favourite cafe on the Cour Saleya. The new (or new to me) Direct Nice paper is a bit like metro but smaller and apart from nice short articles on Nice related and national themes it also has some meatier ones from the bigger papers. It was perfect for reading between gulping coffee and people watching.  Go to the Direct Nice site-you can also get the Direct papers for many other towns.

Lo and behold there is the pdf version which can be downloaded. These go right back to February 2009. I don't know how much longer this is going to last but it might be worth a look for some good meaty comprehension material. I guess for those lucky enough to have an ipad it would be nicely readable on there.

I don't doubt that there will some be frequent references to this in my A level French resources site. 

Resources galore from Nice

A beautiful week in Nice in a flat overlooking the harbour with plenty of balcony time has reminded me of all the things I love about the country after staycationing last year.  Having now got back into creating resources for alevelfrench.com of course I was on the hunt for good stuff to recommend or convert and picked up some good dvds particularly.    Number one was a TV series I hadn't heard of and which I hope is going to be good Un Village Français Series One and Two.   It cost me 35 euros from Carrefour-although it's 4 dvds and 10 programmes I think. It also has some pedagogical stuff on it too on a number of areas.

Second very interesting film is Home a birds eye view of the history of our world which brings current environmental issues into perspective.  It's absolutely beautiful down to the use of language and a high level (literally!) scientific overview.  I think many students would get a lot out of this especially if they haven't been watching all the BBC scientific epics.

The third video is a four part series "Musulmans en France" taking the long view of Muslim influence in the country.    Unfortunately there isn't a trailer for this online.

Solutions locales pour un désordre global

Well I've been looking for a film that will really deliver the goods linking globalisation and the way we produce our food-in French of course and the new film by Coline Serrault fits that gap perfectly.  I heard an interview about it on Europe Un's excellent environmental podcast and have included a link to it in the VLE in a page on environmental issues on the A level resources site.   A wide range of people from across the globe talk about how the move away from a local/regional approach to farming and the food market has led to enormous problems for small food producers and for the fertile land on which our food depends.  So I'm looking forward to this film coming out on DVD.  In the meantime the site has some pretty good extracts from the film as well as enough background text to get a topic going.

View the youtube.com extracts and other related ones to get a flavour of the site. 

Solutions locales pour un désordre global - Bande-annonce

New Environmental issues with literature and film focus

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

Four literary texts sorted

Well, now I'm course for getting four literary texts completed and what a labour of love that has been.  On the alevelfrench.com site there will shortly be courses for the following literature resources based on a similar approach to the film guides.  The four texts I have done are

L'étranger by Camus
Kiffe Kiffe Demain by Faiza Guène
Les Petits Enfants du Siècle by Christiane Rochefort
La neige en deuil by Henri Troyat

Remember the pass guides they do for English texts  well there's never really been anything to tackle the language side of things-or not that I've seen so here goes, in my pass guides for the texts you get:-

• Complete French - English vocabulary running to some 25/30 pages in three columns
• Complete summary of the text with gap fill for verbs and vocab to give the basic vocab of the summary
• Multi-tense exercise to help students identify all tenses of same verb in context of the book
• Direct speech matching exercise and reported speech activity
• Character adjective list and translation exercises
• The A factor contextualized exercises using passive, subjunctive and present participle
• ThemezRus exercise where students link quotations to themes
• Guide to planning exposé -the Tracbuster
• Essay planning tool and worked exemplar essay

OK it's very corny but the exercises are meaty, serious and designed so that teachers can give students materials which  make them feel confident with the literary texts.   There is still plenty of room for teacher creativity;  questions can be written in French according to level of abilty. Creative writing where students adopt roles of various characters and empathize with different view points...the sky's the limit.

I'm interested in developing other titles and would be interested to hear what people would like.  Just get my email from the A level resources site   And don't forget you can buy the film guides from there too.