Si vous parlez du Québec... avec les Intermediate Mids-Advanced proficiency

Cet article ne va pas durer longtemps, car je suis prof. T'sais, les profs, des fois ça parle trop, et en plus, c'est jeudi matin et j'ai pas le temps de jaser: J'ai cours.  Mais, voici une vidéo et une fiche pour piquer la curiosité des élèves (sinon le prof!).

Il suffit de chercher La Charte de la langue française ou bien La Loi 101 pour savoir que le français n'a pas toujours été la star du Québec. Tout comme j'ai posé la question à mes élèves, je vais te la poser: Pourquoi légiférer une loi superflue?  Ils en avaient besoin...  Pendant plus de 200 ans les Québécois vivaient sous un régime anglophone.  C'est pourquoi aujourd'hui les Québécois tendent vers les calques au lieu d'anglicismes, et c'est pourquoi la langue française occupe une telle place dans leurs vies.

A mon avis, ce court métrage, qui parodie les action des Allemands envers les Juifs, et. al., montre un point de vue assez extrême que je trouve intéressant pour entamer la discussion des sentiments éprouvés par un peuple qui risque de perdre leur langue (et donc culture).  Ci-dessous tu trouveras aussi les questions de la fiche que j'utilise.  Je t'ai promis de la concision... Euhhh... De toute façon, bon apprentissage!

1.     Décris la femme avec le chien.  A ton opinion, pourquoi est-elle comme ça?

2.     Qu’est-ce que la femme demande au chien de faire?

3.     Qu’est-ce que les hommes font?

4.    Comment est la musique?  Quand tu entends la musique, à quoi est-ce que tu penses?  (Je pense à….)

5.     Selon (according to) l’annonceur, qu’est-ce qu’on ne pourra plus (what will we not be able) faire au Québec?

6.     On fait référence à quelle époque (era) dans l’histoire du monde?

7.     Le film commence où et en quelle année?

8.     Qui sont les hommes en bleu?

9.     Qui sont les hommes en uniforme?

10. Qu’est-ce qu’ils font faire (make do) aux hommes en bleu?

11. Quelle est la mission du Commandant?

12. Pourquoi est-ce qu’il haït (déteste) les Anglais?

13. Qui est le Fourreur? Son nom est une référence à qui?

14. Qui est Brad Johnson?

15. Où est-ce que les prisonniers sont emmenés (emmener) (taken/ brought)?

16. Qu’est-ce qui y reignent (what rules there)?

17. Qu’est-ce que les prisonniers mangent?

18. Qu’est-ce qu’ils veulent?

19. Comment est-ce qu’ils torturent les prisonniers?

20. Qu’est-ce que Brad a oublié?

21. Les prisonniers décident de ________________________________.

22. Où vont-ils?

23. Qui est la femme à la fin du film?

Vocabulaire important:

Ecris tous les mots en caractères gras (bold print) ici:

A Toi! 
Parle avec un partenaire ou écris un article dans ton blogue sur Blogger.com.

• Quelle est ta réaction à ce court métrage (short film)? 
• Pourquoi penses-tu que le réalisateur (director) a tourné le film?
• Est-ce que tu peux penser à une situation aux Etats-Unis où on pourrait (could) faire un film comme celui-ci?  Laquelle?
• A ton opinion, est-ce que les films sont efficace (effective) pour changer une situation? 

Listening in less than ideal conditions: a game for the car

I used to hate to drive.  When I worked as the language center director for the Alliance Francaise, I lived very close to work, so I biked as much as I could.  I finally got a car in 2007, and when I did, I did not like it one bit!  In Milwaukee, however, it is a necessary for most of us, as getting to work when your job is far away is quite difficult with public transportation.  About the same time as I acquired a car, I also bought a smart phone and discovered the magic of radio apps and online radio in French, Hebrew and other languages I was learning or taught.  The apps were not perfect but it was amazing how accessible authentic input had become since when I was in high school.

In 2009, I began to teach at University School of Milwaukee, where I work today, and the commute was considerably longer than my former place of employment.  I began to put my smart phone on a certain radio station in French and put it in the visor of my car so I could listen to the news and other programs to get myself ready and "into the language", a sort of immersion experience in the car. Unfortunately, my car did not have blue tooth and so it could be difficult to hear and parse the syllables when the cars were zooming around me or sirens were blaring, or even the wind blew through the rolled-up windows.  After a few weeks of this, though I began to use this challenge to my advantage.

It occurred to me that in the classroom, I always try to make sure that the conditions are ideal so students can understand any aural input that I might throw at them, but in the real world, this is almost never the case. Think about when we watch TV or movies or when we are trying to understand an announcement in the train station or in public; even when we listen to a song often we cannot quite understand the lyrics because the instrumentals are maybe up a tad to high.  This all points to the fact that we need to allow for opportunities to develop listening skills with background noise.  It is interesting to think about the implications for the classroom.

For now, though, I content myself with playing a game in the car: I turn the radio down as much as possible and try to see how much I understand (this may be in the target language or in my native language).  What you realize is that if you have had sufficient input and have heard certain words enough, you can understand them by their phonetic contours and/ or by the words that surround them. Often words occur un partner with other words (idiomatic expressions, cultural references, etc.) Take, for example, the expression "rubs me the wrong way": if you understand "_______ me the wrong way" and you have understood the topic, then you probably can infer "rubs".  This is very interesting to do in the target language, for it may not only gauge your aural comprehension, but your grasp of pragmatics and socio-cultural information in the target language.  These concepts are what truly demonstrate mastery of a language.

So, why not give it a try and see how you do?  What else are you going to do on that commute?  At least I have found a way to like driving!

Activity for authentic writing task: Will you skype with us?

A couple of months ago in my French II class, I was going to give an oral performance evaluation and, like always, was trying to decide what I would have the students do while they were waiting to take the assessment.  Even though we don't concentrate on writing in the first semester of French II, I like to ask them to do a little from time to time.  So, I thought this was as good a time as any to come up with a short writing task about the theme for the unit- family.

I decided simultaneously that it would be nice if they knew more Francophone celebrities (me, too, for that matter!) and so I started searching for them on line.  As I found more and more lists of famous francophone-born actors, singers, artists, writers and others, I imagined what it would be like if we could get them to skype with us.  From this, the assignment was born.

I had each student choose a slip of paper from a bag.  The paper had two names of two different celebrities: one to look up and the other as an identity.  The student had to look up the one they were writing to and find out why they are famous; then, they had to look up info on that celebrity's family.  Once they did this, they had to write an email introducing themselves to the celebrity, telling them what they knew about the celebrity's family and presenting information on their own families, making sure to note if they had anything in common (I see you have an older sister; I also have a sister, but she's younger).  at the end of the email, they had to ask the celebrity to skype with our class.

After writing the email, they had to send it to a partner in the class (whose identity is the celebrity they researched).  The partner then had to respond to the email as the celebrity, first thanking them for the email and then saying whether they would skype with the class or not.

I had them copy me on these emails so I could use them as writing samples.  I plan on having them work on these emails second semester and actually sending them to the real celebrities to see if we can get one of them to skype with us.  The rubric I used to grade them was adapted from the Jefferson County proficiency rubrics.

The can-do statements for this are many, but these are the most important for my purposes:

• I can research a person and learn about their family.
• I can begin and end an email in the appropriate way.
• I can type basic information about myself and my family in an email.
• I can compare my family with another family.
• I can ask someone to do something for me.

Teachers need to practice, too

Being a foreign language teacher is difficult.  At first glance, these words appear simplistic and obvious.  Every person who works has a job that is challenging, and we are all willing to admit that.  The challenge facing a foreign language teacher is that no matter how difficult the job is – keeping the students interested, finding good authentic materials, teaching more preps than we can handle or dealing with a feeling that we are not relevant-maintaining the skills to do the job is the real mountain.

All foreign language teachers, even the native speakers, struggle with their own language facility in the classroom, especially in the U.S, where it is difficult to find authentic interactions in the languages we teach. While we expect that students will come in to the class with a less than perfect mastery of the spoken language, we are often don’t think about the teacher. Teachers are frequently burdened by prepping lessons for the upcoming week, balancing administrative and extra-curricular activities, correcting at home and inventing ways to make a program relevant for fear of losing it; not to mention having a life outside of work! All of this time spent takes away from a critical need: proficiency in the language.  

It is often a wish that our children take a language to develop fluency, a term all too over used.  How many times have we heard a parent exclaim, “ Oh, you know, my son is fluent in French!”,truly believing that this is the case, when in fact, it is clearly not true?  Too many times to count.  Of course, this does not mean that the child has no competency in the language.  Is it possible that one reason (among many!) that the input is not sufficient for the learner to fully function in the language, since many times the teacher is not able to continue with his/her development?The loss of teacher language skills is a problem that is not easily solved, and not one we hear much about; I have done limited research and even contacted Susan Colville-Hall, whose 1995 article dealt with this issue; she has not written anything on the subject since then.In my mind it is of paramount importance that we non-native speakers pay attention to our own development as continuing language learners, and that native speakers maintain theirs. There are ways to slow down the attrition, both of current target culture norms, as well as that of the language itself. 

One skill that can suffer without sufficient practice is reception.  The more authentic language we listen to as teachers, the more ideas we get for ways to help our students, and the more we grow.  Likewise, the more authentic documents we read the more we know about the target culture and the more our vocabulary increases.  More importantly, the more we listen to authentic sources of language, the more we are able to understand the cultures that speak the languages we teach; cultures are deep and radio and other sources can teach us the layers of knowledge and conventions and norms these cultures embody.    To this end, I have made a pledge that every day when I commute to school, I listen to the same radio station (France Culture); I always listen to the same show because it is on at the same time every day.  From this daily experience, I have not only gotten to know a radio personality, but I have listened to an embedded reporter as she accompanied Syrian refugees on their journey to safety, I have met a janitor that cleaned the offices at the radio station for 20 years and heard her sing (she was a minor sensation in her native Tunisia), and many other stories that allow me as a learner and teacher to deepen profoundly my knowledge and to feel CONFIDENT as I guide my students on their journeys.  The human interest stories, the scientific terminology, the places that exist that I have encountered are all now a part of my teaching.  This can be you, too!  I alternate France Culture with Energie (a Quebec station), as well as Senegalese and other stations; I listen on the Bluetooth in my car. As non-native speakers we should not get too comfortable with one dialect, for in my opinion it shows favoritism and does not allow for us to truly delve into the many cultures that speak the target language, but who never get any airplay, if you get my drift.

Maybe you'd like to try this?  Let me know how it goes.  I guarantee that if you do it every day- even for 10 minutes- you will be amazed at how fluently you comprehend and will be glad of the things you learn!

Welcome

Welcome to the blog whose mission it is to provoke thought and to push the limits in the language teaching world and beyond.  How many of you have often thought that we teach Christmas in the language class only to neglect Hanukkah or Eid?  How many of you have realized at some point that the pictorial representations of culture in the countries that speak the language you teach only give students one idea of socio-economic class or skin color?  Have any of you ever thought about the role that dialects play in your classroom?  If you are interested in these questions, this is the place for you! There will be activities and thoughts posted on here from time to time; it is my hope that they will serve to create dialogue and to stir others to act and teach to push the limits of the language learner and teacher.