Harriet J. Bauman
The fourth objective is based on the five objectives of foreign language teaching, which are: oral, in which the students speak the language with close to native pronunciation; aural, in which the students hear the language spoken most of the time; reading, where they can read aloud as well as silently selections in the foreign language;, writing, in which the students become proficient at writing the foreign language; and comprehension, oral and written, of the foreign language. To achieve these objectives within this unit, there are some specific activities that can be used. Oral-aural work might take the form of reading aloud. Students could ask and answer questions about the reading assignments. They also could prepare a radio broadcast on tape of a summary of the material being read. They could prepare and present a dialogue based on the reading. A debate could be presented about the possible alternatives facing a character in the reading selection.
The writing objective might be achieved in various ways, from the simplest to the most complex kinds of exercises. The students should be taught how to paraphrase what is being read. They could answer the following questions in a paragraph: who? what? where? when? why? how? They could transform the plot, changing the nouns and adjectives but keeping the sentence structure.
The students could read a selection filled with details. While they are reading they could keep a list of the sequence of details in order to answer questions at a later time. They could keep this list in a chart like:.
Tom was a very studious person. It was 10:00 p.m. and he was still studying for an important test he had the next day.
WHO? WHAT? WHEN?
|
WHERE? WHY?
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HOW?
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Tom
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studying 10:00
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?
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test
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?
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Another way of getting the students to write would be to take pictures from magazines, for example, and have them write captions using complete sentences. They also could match pictures and sentences.
The teacher might present the students with descriptive paragraphs about characters in their reading selection. The students could write some descriptive paragraphs themselves focusing on characters or landscape or action.
The students could write their own mystery stories either by themselves or in collaboration with classmates. This might be a culminating activity.
To attain the reading objective, the reading selections should be interesting and exciting. Jean Valjean’s escape through the sewers of Paris in
Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo is a good example of writing which gets the reader involved immediately.
As the students move through this unit, their comprehension of written and oral French should improve dramatically. Their need to communicate with each other about what they are reading will encourage them to express themselves more clearly and accurately. Playing games such as Clue in which they must speak French in order to discover who did it, with what, and where will help their fluency, as well as their comprehension.