Students often struggle with using French-English / English-French dictionaries. I will speak for myself and say that because it seems fairly intuitive, I sometimes forget that students need to be explicitly taught how to use them, and that they likely haven't ever used them before. Just because a student may have used an English dictionary does not mean that the usage of our dictionaries is understood.
So students will need to be taught about how French-English dictionaries work, including that they are split into two section, one for looking up French words to find the English, and the other for finding French words for what we want to say in English. I recommend passing out sticky flags for students to mark where the English-French section begins. Teach students the abbreviations that are used in your dictionary related to nouns and verbs, (that a little italicized
n
denotes a noun, an
m
indicates a noun that is masculine, an
f,
feminine, and a
v
denotes a verb.) Introduce the concept of multiple meanings and usages of a word, and that the first entry is not always the one we need. Model the process, with examples. Although this will likely be a consistently troubling concept for students, just keep at it. They need it!
Sidenote: For more help gathering class-wide vocabulary, consider using authentic French websites. You can do a search on google.fr (for France, or .ca for Canada, etc.) for theme categories to find useful informational sites. For example, when studying foods you can use a French nutritional website that lists calories in foods as a source of vocabulary, and students can explore the vocabulary options there in a new way.
Dictionary Skills and Writing Anaphoristic Poetry
As a means of establishing identity and ownership of this process, I suggest having students create a "My name is" poem. Using
Je m'appelle
to begin a succession of lines, students can include their name, but also other nouns and even verbs that they like or that they feel represent themselves. This can be the motivation behind using the dictionary and practicing those skills. I wouldn't add adjectives to the poem just yet, as that raises the whole masculine/feminine noun-adjective agreement issue; also, the poem will be more powerful without adjectives, as adjectives are the logical way to describe oneself, and we want to go outside of that proverbial box here. You can set requirements for the poem, including number of lines, noun/verb pattern (ie: alternate nouns and verbs, or something more complex like: end lines 1-6 with a noun, 7-8 with a verb, 9- your choice, and 10 with your name), rhyme scheme (as differentiation option for students looking for a greater challenge).
