One difficult aspect of teaching grammar is the disjointed impression given by a series of grammar lessons: when going over the difference between the gerond and the infinitive, for example, we tend to give students a long series of sample sentences showing when one form is used rather than the other. When talking about...Read more »
It was in a graduate course on advanced French grammar topics that I had an ahha! moment: one of the most simple and easy exercises to create to improve writing is to closely study and reword sentences that students have already written. There is no better way to tailor a writing workshop to the...Read more »
Because of its striking cinematographic effects (black and white film, dramatic close-ups, soundtrack…) and engaging storyline, Patrice Leconte’s La fille sur le pont (1999) offers a rich source of material to analyse in an assignment on writing a compte rendu critique. We are watching the film in class, in parts, as I try to...Read more »
Raymond Queneau’s Exercices de Style (1947) is a useful and engaging text to use in an intermediate language or writing classes. Students at both levels seem to enjoy delving into Queneau’s project – that is, to tell the same story in 99 different ways. It is an example of “contrainte littéraire” – the technique of...Read more »
Le Cadavre exquis is a surrealist game the group invented in the 1920s. To play, one person writes a word or sentence on a piece of paper and then folds the paper to hide his contribution and then passes it to the next player. He does the same, then passes the paper, and so...Read more »
Need a quick activity idea to get students speaking to each other? Bonus if the activity is a quick review of some grammatical terms? Enter Mad Libs, that fill-in-the-blanks game that most students will be familiar with from their childhood. Mad Libs has seen a recent comeback among adults and I’ve even spotted them...Read more »
What student of 19th-century literature doesn’t remember the striking portrayal of the young Charles Bovary that begins Flaubert’s 1857 novel? The opening passage – which depicts the child as an awkward “nouveau” joining a class of students younger than him – is particularly illustrative of Flaubert’s specific realist endeavor to portray meaning through description....Read more »
