16 Instructor’s Guide Unit 1

Introduction

This is the first content unit of the Atelier RÉEL. It’s thematic is identity, asking learners to deepen their ability to express who they are. At the same time as it spirals back through prior learning, the unit moves forward by presenting more sophisticated cultural concepts that necessitate more sophisticated language forms and a deeper understanding of how the French language works and why. For example, the use of non-binary pronouns has potentially life threatening cultural implications, or the categories of words that are masculine or feminine in French (like metals, trees, or specific endings like –ette) are fundamental to the language functionning. A list of the most commonly used verbs is presented so that learners can start to automatize their recall and formation. Since they are focussing on the first person singular and plural, students should end up solidifying their grasp and use of what are basically the one or two stems of most verbs (the je and nous forms).

Background knowledge

Coming out of the Novice level of French, learners should, at a minimum, be able to say their names (je m’appelle); spell their names out with the French alphabet; tell their age (avoir x ans); give at least 20 adjectives that describe them with proper agreements; list things that they own with the correct possessive pronouns (mon, ma, mes); describe their families and friends; discuss their majors and their courses; express their favorite activities, seasons, and holidays. At the novice level, learners are engaging with French at the word level (v. the sentence level of intermediate proficiency or paragraph level of the advanced range) and are mostly able to engage with sympathetic speakers and listeners who use familiar language on common topics. Novice learners tend to be able to repeat high frequency words and phrases but may still confuse avoir with aller, use je suis instead of j’ai for some idioms, and may have learned tenses other than the present but are not adept at recognizing, discriminating, forming, or manipulating past and future expressions, and certainly not conditionals, composite verb tenses (plus-que-parfait, passé antérieur, etc.), and only, possibly, in the rarest and most familiar of instances, use a subjunctive correctly (il faut que tu viennes !).

Unit introduction and first chapter

The entrée en matière of Unit 1 addresses gender (Simone de Beauvoir) and introduces the question, “Qui suis-je ?”  It ends with a recent song that problematizes French identity.  In the first chapter, then, the focus is on identity with the first interpretive work arising from a viewing of a TV show about Trevor Noah’s response to the French Ambassador in 2018, where he questions the notion of Frenchness with regard to the “African” soccer team. The polemic between him and the French Ambassador spurred a great deal of controversy as well as French interest in Noah’s personal history, growing up “a crime” in apartheid era South Africa. So why focus on a South African transplant to the USA in a French course? Part of the answer lies in current debates in language education circles about translanguaging and multilingual literacies and multimodalities. Yet, the primary reason is because young adults tend to like his show and his politics: his approach to politics and media resonates with global youth in a highly inclusive way. The significant French response to the murder of George Floyd in 2019 shows how the issues raised by Noah have become all the more salient for intercultural comparison and debate beyond USA borders. That the issue in this sketch arose around the World Cup attracts students who like sports and who may be less attracted to social justice and political matters. Finally, as a renowned late night figure, he appeals to learners who trend toward media events and celebrity. So the answer is, because the topic was chosen by students for students as something engaging in the 2020s. The Noah text and exercises can easily be swapped out for other topical issues. Such is the beauty of OER etextbooks!

Échafaudages

This chapter called Échafaudages is mainly a support to scaffold student negotiation of meaning and generation of personalized expression.  Much of what it contains are simply reminders of general grammatical knowledge and forms.  As student work through their research on authentic texts, their curations and their TalkAbroad (or other virtual exchange), I focus on the language they need to express their ideas. Curations, in particular, allow me to oversee common errors in each particular group and thereby tailor instruction to each, varied group of learners.

Gender issues return in this second chapter where it elaborates on pronouns and then grammatical gendering of pronouns, nouns, and adjectives. Comparatives and superlatives are somewhat reviewed. I tend to delve more deeply into variants in classwork. The last échafaudage addresses verbs, listing the 50 most commonly used in French, an overview of the verbal system with its three major groupings ( 1st, 2nd, 3rd conjugations), and urging students to seek automaticity in their usage in conversations. Although not specifically targeted in previous chapter, #MeToo and #Balancetonporc are both germane as social and cultural phenomena and may arise in the introductory chapter about Simone de Beauvoir. Questions of transgender identity, too, are germane. After each section, there are either links to exercises, embedded H5P self-correcting quizzes, or both. How instructors gather formative and summative grades depends on their particular institutional parameters and personal instructional style. It may be possible to capture H5P work if the Atelier is embedded into one’s LMS. I have not tried this yet with Canvas, so I just don’t know yet. I have all the student process work set up in Google Classroom because it facilitates student-student interaction and allows process writing and peer editing.

Linked to this chapter is another chapter (Module spécial sur la chanson « Je veux » de Zaz) which contains a student produced module. It may or may not be relevant to your course and can easily be included or ignored. The module is based on Zaz’s song, “Je veux.”  It is all about values and value systems with lots of moi and je peppered throughout.  This module, built around the song, addresses identity-related vocabulary (values), grammatical concepts, and pronunciation, especially French syllabification by rhythmic groups and the /wa/ sound. It also looks at where disjunctive pronouns arise in French sentences. This modular insert may be added after this sentence : “Ce qui suit pourvoit des leçons sur les pronoms, surtout la première personne, par le biais d’une curation d’un cours récent de FREN 202. Le module qui la soutient vise les pronoms disjoints ( moi, toi, etc. ) et la prononciation du son /wa/ et la syllabation française.  Amusez-vous-en bien !” Deleting the wording and the link to the module will eliminate access to the whole module with its explanations and H5P exercises. There is more than enough to do in this unit such that this additional work is not necessary.

Curation

The first curation revolves around biography and autobiography. We’ve asked students to search the francophone web for native speakers of French whom the learners either admire, whose careers they find intriguing,  or whom they would like to emulate for some personal reason (politics, ecological stance, fame, etc.). Occasionally, they seek out Anglophones who have become fluent in French like Serena Williams or Jodi Foster. Since students are googling people of interest to them, they tend to do a good job. If I haven’t already invited the VCU Humanities librarian to the course during Unit 0, I ask them to share effective internet searching techniques with us. Here are the three Kaltura videos that that they created especially for our French 202 course, but which serve all our French language learners: Searching basics , VCU Libraries Search & Databases , and Finding News. Obviously, the VCU bent on these pertains to our holdings, but much of what is shown applies to most college and university libraries today, so they may be relevant. The Google Classroom documents for finding a topic and doing preliminary research and writing site summaries is here.

Question Formulation Technique

Often, I start curation heuristics using the question formulation technique (technique de formulation de questions TFQ) in French. As explained in the previous Instructors Guide, the TFQ  is an excellent way to stimulate student thinking and questioning. Much of what novice to intermediate level learners need to communicate in a new language is to be able to ask effective questions. The technique hones their skills not just for language acquisition of forms and strategies, but their cultural explorations and general learning literacy and autonomy. Here is the Google Doc of one I have used in French 202. There is no specific chapter for the TFQ for this unit.

Talk Abroad

TalkAbroad 1 is the first interpersonal exchange. Again, it can be using a paid service like TalkAbroad or after setting up a telecollaboration as I’ve done in the past with the Mali English Practice Club or with a Belgian business school. Talk Abroad, like other paid online tutoring services, has many activities already set up and can save time for instructors. The point of this first exchange, in line with the unit thematic, is presenting oneself in target language. The book materials and the materials in Talk Abroad all emphasize the kind of language production students will engage in their first exchange. Each exchange is followed by a reflection. My student RAs and I created this Google doc for their reflections after each Talk Abroad session.

Jeter le pont 1→2

Moving from Unit 1 to Unit 2–from all about “me” to all about “you and me” interacting–this bridging exercise asks learners to create an elevator pitch where they “sell” themselves to another person. After their Unit 1 work, learners should have lots of vocabulary and phrases au bout des lèvres to meet and greet with the intent of establishing a beneficial rapport with someone new, whether a potential employer, a grad advisor, a new business partner, or simply a class teammate. The bridge also points to a wonderful Canadian site to amorcer la conversation, replete with tips on etiquette and inclusivity practices.