Candide Voltaire

A teacher from Lincolnshire contacted me to ask whether I would be doing Candide by Voltaire in the series of book resources on www.alevelfrench.com.  This is very tempting-I read the book many moons ago and I decided to download it to read in the kindle app on my smartphone on holiday at the same time as downloading the free mp3s from the http://www.litteratureaudio.com/ site.  This site has lots of well known novels read by amateurs and recorded in mp3-lots of de Maupassant particularly.  A great place to get audio books.  The lady reading Candide is doing a pretty good job - I can keep listening anyway!

L'étranger is the A level resource which is proving the most popular with the school teachers-it must be attracting more interest than the rest of the books put together, excluding Un Sac de Billes.   A very difficult decision which book to choose-I must say I would probably prefer the latter-I just think it's a shame that students don't still have to do four.  I'm old-fashioned and a book worm and it would suit my website for this to be the case ;-).   

AS level materials

If you've not logged onto the AS resources site www.alevelfrench.com  then it's time to email Steve at alevelfrench@googlemail.com to take a look at the great listening materials which have just gone up onto the site.   These are ultimately going to become part of a podcast but not yet-at the moment they are up as mp3s with transcripts and with some cases with exercises.  Work and education are very interesting areas with lots of authentic material and particularly the career guidance can be useful to the students for their own research.   There are templates to download int the Teaching and Learning section based on all the exam boards so that you can set your own questions in the exam board format with no hassle.

AS level resources

I've been happily sitting here for the last couple of days putting together templates for each A level examination board's different skill areas so that it will be quick and easy to put together practice material for each skill area.  A level French resources for AS will be available from the middle of September on www.alevelfrench.com covering all skill areas.  The sample material will cover education and future careers and my collaboratrice and I are having great fun putting it together, learning many new skills along the way.   I have to say that from being a hater of using MS Word I am now really appreciating the things it does-it does seem to be a bit more user friendly than it used to be although I've realized that to get the configuration on a page I really want I do need to create tables which helps the layout stay together.  Any other way of doing it and I'm going to need to do a week's course I'm afraid.

I'm certainly glad I chose the Silence de la Mer to do resources based on a colleague's request.  There seems to be a lot of interest in it-I guess I hadn't seen it as a subtle love story the first time round so when you take the perspective on it it gets a whole lot more interesting.

I'm also glad I decided to do Le Blé en Herbe by Colette as the tension within it is so colourfully depicted despite the sometimes annoying omniscient narrator moralizing in the background.   

The reason I would be increasingly promoting the literary texts is that reading seems to be becoming more prominent than writing, particularly in the WJEC spec.   Without a background of developing deductive reading skills in a sustained way I would think a student may be disadvantaged.  It doesn't seem the same to me somehow to be reading around the life of film maker or whatever.   Then I am a confirmed book worm and am totally biased. 

The series on literature of the 20th century on BBC has been very interesting putting a range of the most popular authors into context.  It was good to see people like William Goulding of Lord of the Flies and Doris Lessing of the Golden Notebook in conversation.

Launch of A level French.com

Well it's been a long haul but www.alevelfrench.com is finally launching.  It will be a whimper more than a bang as the 575 letters gradually hit the French teachers' pigeon holes.   I originally thought two or three books would get done to go out to the market but with Natalie's help and encouragement this has climbed to eight which gives a wide choice.  Resources to enable the average student to tackle A level French are few and far between and I hope that the materials will help teachers give their classes activities which will build language capability at the same time as enjoying the novel.

With the decline in both A level and GCSE entries alevelfrench.com has the mission of trying to arrest the decline in the study of French.  If the site is successful we will move onto other languages which are in just as parlous a state.  The shame is that schools are letting very able kids get away with not studying a language; no wonder that French, German or Spanish young people are being hired above our own kids who are being deprived of the change of getting to a good standard in an MFL.

So whether the A level French resources on this site are going to make a difference or not will soon be decided.  Well if literature doesn't do it then maybe the AS materials will!

Colette-le blé en herbe

Well  how many people are going to be doing Le Blé en Herbe next year?  More I hope if they find the A level French literature resources on www.alevelfrench.com.   By watching a film we look at the target language culture; by reading the literature we literally go inside that culture, into the minds of the protagonists.

What is it like to venture into the mind of middle class teenagers in the 1920's?  Are they so very different to young people of today?  In my opinion the emotions of the young people with all their interpersonal uncertainties are very similar;  however the world around them is on the cusp of change-women are coming to realize that blokes are not the paragons their mothers make them out to be.  It's not full on 70's or 80's feminism but it's on the march.

So is the book worthy of study?  There's lots to discover in it for sure and the exercises in www.alevelfrench.com will help in this direction.  In some ways it's good that there is no film to ruin the book also!    French literature is one of the cultural wonders of the world and all A level students should be doing some in my opinion.   This book is as good a start as any.

Le Blé en Herbe

Well there are 7 titles on www.alevelfrench.com so I thought to balance things up I'd better add another book to make 8.  I chose Le Blé en Herbe as I did kind of commit myself to the Welsh board a while back.  I read this book ages ago but haven't ever done it with a class.  So yet another summer romance by a young writer.   Colette's life story is fascinating as is that of Françoise Sagan-either would make excellent studies for AQA.   Colette's life style makes your eyes water and apparently Le Blé was published as a serial and was a scandal.   Certainly from what I've read of Colette the sensuality of Le Blé is very strong for the 20's.   I've finished what is possibly one of the most useful parts for teachers, the vocab list, yet another 20 hours of hard work but haven' started the summary yet.  I love the role nature plays in the novel-I've never had to look up so many words for types of flower, fish and tree.   I'll report back soon-would I study the book?  Yes, I think so if I was study the author too.   So this should be on the site within the next fortnight then I'm concentrating on the AS level developments.

Le Silence de la Mer

I read Le Silence de la Mer getting on for twenty years ago and didn't particularly enjoy it.  I picked it up again recently as it's on the Welsh board spec and thought it would be a good one to do for the A level French resources website.  This time round I enjoyed the story, a quick, but interesting read and one maybe to read as extended poetry, or a prelude to a theatre play than a traditional novel.   There is a certain amount of repetition during at the end of each section and the cumulative effect of this is to make the reader feel like there is an unwelcome visitor standing in their room-you wish he would either sit down and shut up or clear off!    I doubted at first whether it would be possible to actually write a character guide or direct/indirect speech exercise but there was plenty of meat so the standard set of exercises I've been making available on the site are all now ready (just being proofed).  

On my first fairly superficial reading of the novel I hadn't cottoned on to the love story sub-text which on close inspection is obvious from very tiny nuances of behaviour.  Shame on me.   So 40 pages of densely packed political, behaviour and romantic interest to feast on all supported by the new resources on alevelfrench.com.    There are various film/TV versions of the book but personally I think students should battle through and appreciate the poetry of the novel before viewing a film which will distort their understanding.

This is a good example of how the film distorts the orginal.  In the book he is immensely tall, muscular and blond haired and the normal meeting place is in the fumoir infront of the log fire with the German bent over due to height.   There is none of this subtlety here.  Would I study the book with a class?    I think I would do this and something else like Un Sac de Billes if I was looking at the occupation period to give a broader perspective.

Le silence de la mer (2004) - 9/10