Throughout the past two years, many of us have been teaching language courses remotely, either synchronously or asynchronously. Even as many institutions move back to hybrid and in-person courses, there are many useful tools we can incorporate from online learning! One quarantine class activity that I particularly enjoy is creating […]
Teaching through the Arts
11 posts
While I’ve always loved introducing a few choice poems to my 101 and 102 students, I’ve been relying more and more heavily on video content. Sara Kippur’s recent article in the PMLA journal provided an excellent reminder to incorporate French literature in language classes, even at the beginner level. Kippur’s […]
The French writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922), best known for his novel In Searh of Lost Time, discovered an English game called “Confessions” as a teenager. His answers written as “Marcel Proust by himself” where discovered after his death. The set of questions and answers Proust wrote gave birth to what […]
Specialized Vocabulary: The Job Interview I wanted to have an activity for intermediate- lower advanced students related to “La vie au bureau”- worklife. Learning about work life is challenging yet essential for students without work experience at a professional level, since most of them are considering an internship at an […]
For many of us, our kitchen tables have become our offices. A variation on the typical “classroom objects” lesson, this activity takes advantage of the work-from-home situation to encourage students to identify objects found around them. The task combines article practice, object vocabulary and the phrase “il y a” with […]
This activity is ready to implement in any language and best for novice mid to novice high. In this activity, students view photographer Peter Menzel’s photo series “Hungry Planet,” which documents what families around the world eat in a week. Students then describe what they see in the photos, namely […]
This post presents a lesson designed for an Undergraduate Elective Course entitled “Focus on French Grammar”. Building on an exhibition held at the Musée du Quai Branly in 2018-2019, this content-based activity was tailored to help students practice the use of adjectives in French. As students learn about French colonial […]
Pedagogy Scholarship has emphasized that storytelling is effective in L2 learning because it is fun, engaging and highly memorable. Storytelling has been praised for raising learners’ interest in listening to stories, as well as in speaking, writing and reading about them (Claudio Rezende Lucarevschi, The role of storytelling in language learning, 2016). […]
This is a 20-minute interactive winning game in which: Students team up; They observe a set of artworks on Slides; They hypothesize the origin of each artwork among 4 options. (I usually give 20 to 30 seconds for each artwork.) We check their answers together. (Slides in French) Each group that gave […]
This is a 30-minute activity in which: Each student chooses a portrait image they like (My set here); In groups of 2, they describe their characters’ appearance; Finally, they present their artwork(s) to their classmates. Depending on the level of proficiency, the instructor may ask them to explain what they found arresting […]
This is a 20-minute interactive winning game in which: Students team up; They observe a set of artworks on Slides; They hypothesize the date of each artwork among 4 options. (I usually give 20 to 30 seconds for each artwork.) We check their answers together. Each group that gave the right answer […]
