Conte-moi la francophonie : Fiche pédagogique
Thanks to the Modern Languages Blog at LTScotland for bringing this site to my attention. I've been looking for something like this for quite some time, ever since a Scottish CILT outreach in Elgin last year in fact.
As language teachers we try to teach the skill of listening in almost every lesson, and this usually take the form of some kind of exercise with students trying to answer questions in one shape or form. It is rare that we actually get a chance to allow kids to listen to something in the target language simply for the pleasure of it...my apologies to those colleagues to whom this generalisation does not apply.
The tales on this website come from 4 francophone countries, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and Haiti and they include stories about why horses don't speak, and how the lion became king. As is traditional in most African tales animals play a huge role. The objectives of this site are not only to preserve in a modern format the oral tradition of story telling prevalent in ancient African societies, but also to aid the development of language skills through the stories.
The site provides written transcripts of the tale in French along with high quality recordings in French, and for some tales in a tribal language, eg Bambara or Seereer. Thus exposing students not only to stories from around the world in French but also in the languages in which they were originally told. What better way to allow kids an insight into the culture of countries which some may never even have heard of.
Each tale also comes with a "fiche pédagogique" to help teachers use this resource in class. On first view these lesson plans are aimed more at French lessons in francophone countries rather than modern language lessons here in the UK, but I am sure the ideas could be adapted. However what is wrong with simply allowing students to listen to these tales, and with the judicious help of some vocabulary items, try to understand them and talk about them afterwards. This would expose pupils to more French and not only the french French of text book resources, but also the French of francophone Africa (and Haiti) which has an entirely different rhythm and timbre.
With exams on the horizon I've been trying to encourage my fourth years to simply listen to as much French as possible, without necessarily doing any related exercises, mainly to get their ear a-tuned. With this wonderful thing called the web there are so many opportunities: widgets enabling you to listen to 20+ French speaking radio stations, podcasts galore, web tv including TV5, all can be used to enhance listening skills.
Photo credit: The Earth is Listening, by elmada
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