French I: My Approach to this Course Matthew DeCoursey LIN 1014

The situation I am asked to teach French to Chinese students from different programmes. All speak English quite well already.

Implications for teaching Native speakers of Cantonese and Putonghua are certain to have trouble with conjugation and with the need for precision in noun and adjective endings. There is tremendous overlap in vocabulary between French and English, but the phonetics is very different. Students must learn to recognize words they know from English when spoken and written in French. Pronunciation is a problem for most students learning French. I have overestimated this for Chinese students in the past. Chinese students who speak English have a wide phonetic range. The issue is precision.

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Interest There is very little in the way of extrinsic interest. French is not important for professional life or everyday life in Hong Kong or on the mainland. Few will emigrate to French-speaking places. No French-speaking place is near. Intrinsic interest seems to have to do with the general appeal of the language and the culture: romance, food, wine; or with the general interest of learning a new language.

Implications for teaching Some textbooks stress things like booking a room at a hotel. For this situation, this is not the right idea. If and when students go to France, they can use their phrasebooks. The intrinsic interest from romance, etc., is potentially fragile: maybe they will get discouraged. Drama seems to have potential for intrinsic motivation. Elements of French culture are good, but at this level, must be explained in English.

The French language The overall structure of French is not complicated compared to German or Russian, but there are a lot of things that must be memorized (conjugations). Writing in French requires attention to singular/plural, masculine/feminine. Chinese students make mistakes on these things constantly in English, which is much less demanding in this way.

What will be time-consuming? Learning conjugations. Either I put a lot of emphasis on this, or I don’t expect students to learn it at all. I decided this was fundamental to French and needed learning. Memorizing genders of nouns. You have no place to put this information. I decided not to emphasize this, but only to make sure you understand the implications of this characteristic of the language (mostly use nouns with natural gender).

French and Chinese As far as I know, Chinese provides no habits that are helpful for learning French. If you know of any, please let me know. The existence of word endings that are not pronounced is directly opposite to Chinese, worse than the “s” endings in English. And most of you don’t get those right.

French and English If you learn to recognize cognates (words that are the same in the two languages), that is a huge resource for vocabulary. It is more important to obtain that in this course than to learn many words individually. The writing is often identical, or very close to identical (Eng responsible, Fr responsable). If students get a grip on the relation between phonetics and writing, they can recognize these things, even in speech.

Imagined communicative situation I imagine you in France, three or four years from now. You will have forgotten most of the specific things I taught you. You will have a phrasebook. I want you to be able to read sentences out of the phrasebook accurately enough to be understood. The phrasebook will remind you. You will start to recognize words on signs.

Conclusion: learn to read aloud, to write what you hear You need to learn how the phonetics relate to the writing. I will therefore ask you to read aloud with accurate pronunciation And to transcribe accurately what you hear (dictation). This will put you in the middle of French life more efficiently than anything else I can do.

Who am I and what can I offer? I speak French at a quasi-native level, because my parents sent me to French school at the age of six. Through most of my graduate education, I taught university courses in French language. My Ph.D. is in literature, and that might be relevant. I am a drama teacher, and teach a course called “Drama in the ESL Classroom.”

Drama for language learning What is drama? If you just use dialogues in class and have students read them out, that’s not drama. The dialogue needs to have a certain literary interest to it. It should make you imagine characters and how they relate to each other. When students do drama with dialogues, they must try to be expressive, at some level to play characters. Students generally enjoy this.

Writing and performing dialogues Students can use the resources I give them to write dialogues and then perform them. This makes it possible for students to use the resources of the French language for their own purposes, to do something that they find interesting or appealing. Performing these dialogues have the same benefits as, and perhaps more motivation than, performing my dialogues.

Improvisation Many drama exercises involve making up language on the spot. It is possible to do this at a fairly low level of language with restrictions on the shape of the exercise. I don’t think we’ve got to a place where we can do this yet. I hope to do this at least once in this course, though perhaps not in front of everybody.

Designing drama lessons in the language classroom Over the years, I have worked up a model for lesson planning involving three “process objectives”: – Aesthetics – Emotion – Imagination

The model

Aesthetics, emotion and imagination “Aesthetics” refers to the form of the dialogue or of the exercise. “Emotion” is the feeling aroused by the dialogue or the exercise. “Imagination” is what the student pictures. If the image is strong or interesting, it will be memorable. Making dialogues that work well requires a certain low level of artistry.

Dialogues for this course Dialogues are short, and the language available is very limited. This won’t be Shakespeare. I can make a certain simple picture, implying a character who is cold (« Je suis désolé. Je ne t’aime pas. ») a character who expects forgiveness too easily (« C’est vrai, mais je regrette beaucoup. ») a stubborn little girl who won’t look at an elephant. Pause to practise these expressions, these characters.

An unexpected success Dialogues are short, and the language available is very limited. This won’t be Shakespeare. I can make a certain simple picture, implying a character who is cold (« Je suis désolé. Je ne t’aime pas. ») a character who expects forgiveness too easily (« C’est vrai, mais je regrette beaucoup. ») a stubborn little girl who won’t look at an elephant. Pause to practise these expressions, these characters.

A constructivist view of learning « Constructivism » means that I understand learning as something you must construct for yourselves. You must build your own French language within, which another person who knows French can understand. That means we must pay attention to correctness, but also to imagination. You must build something using French, so that French will have meaning to you.

A sociocultural view of learning Learning happens most fundamentally not within a person but between people. Any learner can do certain things all alone. Any learner can do more in collaboration with another « more competent » person. Often, that’s me. I do speak French better than you. But each of you is in some way the most competent in the room. Collaboration is good for education. You do your studying outside of class. But in class, you should do some interacting.

Pause to learn some French « C’est bien beau, tout ça, mais qu’est-ce que ça donne? »

Conjugations It is in the nature of the French language that you must get conjugations more or less right. You must know that a few irregular verbs have forms that don’t look like the infinitive: Aller – Je vais. You must be able to recognize a verb based on any of a range of forms.

Memorization You have to memorize conjugations, but that’s not enough. You have to use them correctly. Then they will start to be natural. To really speak French, you need close to 100% in both.

Memorization and learning through drama I don’t think you can learn conjugations directly through drama, or it would be a very long process anyway. You must memorize first, then use. You must monitor your own writing and speaking to see whether it is right. This connection is important, and I can’t do it for you.