L'Etranger-how to teach it?

Teachers of the students I'm tutoring who are covering L'Etranger are using a variety of techniques ranging from the "let them get on and read it in class" and fill in a few themes on a worksheet and "bombard them with lots of different exercises on language".   When we read literature in the early seventies, the teacher simply went through the book with us and it was translated word for word despite the fact that translations of some of the more popular texts such as L'Etranger or La Porte Etroite by Gide existed.   This was a particularly sterile business as previous students had often already annotated the text and then of course we had to write about the texts not in French but in English.   This is why I guess it's hard to compare standards from one generation to the next with such differing approaches being taken.  

I'm thinking that ebooks would be really good to use as they can easily be annotated-if it were possible to make the teacher version accessible to students.  Surely some way of doing this could be found.   Then students could read without notes and then with-or maybe first version would be tagged up for vocab.

I'm kind of wondering about doing a visual guide to L'Etranger or exercises which encourage students to think of the book visually.  One of the most interesting things about the book is the amount of lines Camus writes in relation to particular topics.  He spends practically a chapter on Salamano and the scabby dog something he finds "intéressant", where as poor old mum only merits a couple of sentences.   His student career from which he cannot be very far from also only merits a line.  I guess maybe that's the point.   L'étranger, the person, is the anti-person.    Most novels of the 20th century would have made something of the relationship with Marie but of course it's an anti-romance.  It's a one sided romance for which only we can guess how Marie Cardona feels. 

How to make something of all this visually?   Keep your eye on www.alevelfrench.com resources to see what I come up with! 

Grammar and range of language

With the students I'm tutoring I'm preparing them in the subjunctive, the passive and the present participle to help improve their range of language.  To this end I'm doing a set of PowerPoints (groan) taking the student right through what the concepts mean, how to form them and then when and where to use them.   The difference is I'm putting in a page each for the main topics for AS with three or four examples on each.   The idea of this is to put in something reasonably controversial which can lead to to discussion where active/indicative sentences can be contrasted with the examples.  At the moment they are a bit powerpointy but I'm hoping to add graphics to give visual learners a  better lead in and to make it more attractive.  So like all A level French resources at www.alevelfrench.com these tools are work in progress.  There is a sample PowerPoint on the passive to kick off with.    For each of the films of the WJEC syllabus I've produced an A factor worksheet with each of the subjunctive, passive and present participle represented.   I'm now thinking of all the other things that would benefit too...pronouns, si clauses...it goes on and on!

Working out whether examples of grammatical structures in practice are correct or not

I'm currently working on grammar guides to accompany the WJEC A level exercises I'm doing for www.alevelfrench.com.  One of the most frustrating things for me was getting everything checked out to make sure the sentence sounded alright to a native speaker.  We all know that there is quite a lot of disagreement among them so it is rare that you ever feel 100% "correct".    With google (and presumably) other such search engines now offering such an immense corpus of material putting sample sentences into it to check their accuracy is now reasonably safe, judging from my experience.  

I was doing some exercises on the use of the passive for my new Alf a mots grammar exercises and wasn't sure of the right constructing for letting off fireworks for le 14 juillet topic.   This was quickly revealed as were some other useful passive constructions.  Very useful.

My first example comes from an explanation of the passive I tend to use in English.   "Oh, I see the washing up hasn't been done yet!"   An indirect accusation where the agent is not explicitly mentioned.   I put in "la vaisselle est faite" and "la vaisselle a été faite" thinking that that problems sounds very stiff and unusual in French.  On googling the La vaisselle a été faite several examples came up from French product review sites  particuarly with "La vaisselle n'a pas été faite" from people complaining about the antics of their dishwasher.  So presumably you can say it!

Increasingly I guess more or less anything you would want to say or write will be searchable which doesn't really give authority about whether it's a "desirable" thing to put in writing-it just legitimises to the extent that "some French people/say or write it".

If you want to use these dodgily legitimised A level French resources just click here.

Entre les mur -French schools

It's arrived!  I've just received a copy of Entre les murs to watch and am looking forward to seeing the classroom dynamics.  I went into a couple of French classes in ...er 1973.. and the teachers were just teaching a small number of kids sitting at the front which I found a bit shocking.   We tend to be very critical of our own system and obviously schools are all different.  Our exchange school in the Paris suburbs which I visited in 1999 was very interesting;  food-cordon bleu for all, toilets- well 1 toilet for the whole staff with no toilet seat. What's that about?  

Here's the trailer for Entre les murs

Entre les murs - La classe - Trailer

The Talk Project

Getting students talking spontaneously about things they want to discuss is a key aim of the language teacher and one that in KS3 and KS4 often is overlooked.   Janeen Leith who ran the Talk Project has just made an interesting contribution on the TES MFL forum with 12 points to encourage student autonomy.   http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/356414.aspx?PageIndex=2

Many people find that sixth formers are short of things to say.  This is the point of the WJEC A level film exercises on www.alevelfrench.com.    In order to talk about a film it has to be watched very carefully to glean the little details which add up to a big message.  In a film like Le Dernier Métro there are several themes going on at the same time with say the hatred of the Germans.   The mother making her child wash his hair contaminated by a German soldier, the same boy reciting the unflattering nicknames of the Germans...all these contribute to the ambiance of the film. 

The bigger things are more obvious such as the Anti-semitism and are almost constant. For the student to capture and articulate all of these www.alevelfrench.com offers very detailed summaries of the film to give the student a good head start in really knowing the film to the level required-then there is a very good chance that the type of "spontaneous" conversation we want can be achieved.

Text to speech convertor

The apple text to speech convertor was pretty good even a few years ago.  This new text to speech convertor which will work in many common languages including French produces a very good accent which you can hardly tell from a natural voice apart from liaison issues.  This is one of the French A level resources I shall be recommending very strongly to my tutees in future so that they can move forward with their pronunciation even when I'm not there.  Simply copy some digital text in-it could be from word or from a news report online and paste into the editable box.  Select your language, choose your speed and click Say it and you're off.  The pronunciation sounds a bit like a high class newsreader. 

This deserves a place alongside the other tools I am featuring on www.alevelfrench.com and which I am sure will make learning the language more appealing to those people who like a technological approach.   Amusez-vous bien avec Text to Speech.

L'étranger Camus

Well it's arrived.  I ordered the CDs of Albert Camus reading his own L'étranger and I've heard the first part.  When I studied the book at A level as a 17 year old I had no idea such a thing was available and now it is 35 years later.  Not being an actor maybe he's not the most fantastic reader-no Steven Fry-but the authenticity is giving me a real tremor of excitement.    I also search out Camus and found him on the www.ina.fr site.   I am certainly going to do some resources for www.alevelfrench.com but am not yet sure in what format.   I still can't decide what to make of L'étranger although I can confess to some bizarre behaviour when revising for the exams when I was doing A levels.

I used to get a psychology mag and it was when contextual memory was being talked about perhaps for the first time.   That's to say that if you were under a tree wearing a straw hat when you learned something-the next time you were there you would be in a better position to remember the same facts.

I reread the whole of L'étranger in a hot bath which I had to keep topping up to simulate the effect of the heat issue.  I didn't try to get the dazzling light side of things going.   Just one of my little pecadilloes.     I sat in the middle of a field to revise my Wilfred Owen war poetry.  I guess I'd better stop there!