Project Archive: Beginning French

OER Project Directory Intermediate French
1

This is a snapshot of project information archived on 2 September 2022. Please contact the project team for most recent updates.

Beginning French

Subject: Language

Book Language: French

Audience: University of Houston undergraduate students

Created date: July 11, 2022

Updated date: August 17, 2022

Target Release Date: 2023-01-01

License:

  • No Rights Reserved

Needs:

  • Proofreaders
  • Editors

Description:

Our goal: to create a textbook that is fun, fluid and could be adjusted at any time for any context. The activities and projects will be constantly revised to incorporate new cultural material and to align our methods with most current SLA research. We are hoping to boost the interest in French for our students, not only because the textbook will be mostly free, but also because the materials will be authentic, current and fun, and the activities will encourage the students to interact with others and solve problems using their acquired competencies.

Improvisations, the title for the series, originated in our vision to encourage the students to “improvise”, which in our context means to dare speaking in French spontaneously as much as possible. Our objective is to create a supporting environment for the students to be able to do that. The last activity in every chapter is called

Improvisation

and it forces the students to use their competencies, resources, their classmates help etc., to solve a problem or to complete a task. These activities are structured in such a way that students have to think on their feet and react to unexpected changes in a situation they are dealing with.

Most important goal is to empower the students to communicate in French, and to develop their confidence in doing so. Several years after completing this course, students will be able to communicate at a basic level of French with confidence and intercultural awareness. They would be able to complete basic tasks in a francophone environment, such as ask for directions, order food in a restaurant, ask for information in a tourist office, tell about themselves, etc. As the title of the book suggests, our main goal is to develop the ability of our students to think on their feet and to be able to get around the communicative barriers by negotiating the meaning, even when their knowledge and skills are limited.

Another important goal for us is to develop in our students’ awareness that the francophone world is large and diverse, which means that there is a variety of accents and cultural practices that are unique to each francophone environment. We would expose our students to a variety of accents, through various audio and video recordings, we would also include cultural materials (pictures, texts, media, artifacts) that represent various francophone countries. Several years after completing this course, students will be able to appreciate the diversity of the francophone world and recall some major cultural differences between various francophone countries.

Short Description:

Improvisations-1 is the first French textbook in the Improvisations series. The series covers four semesters of French at the University of Houston. The first book corresponds to the first semester, which is Elementary French, for complete beginners. This textbook aims to develop in students with no background in French the skills of effective and culturally sensitive communication in French, within the limits of five very basic topics. This textbook contains five units. Each unit introduces the students to thematic vocabulary, several elementary grammar points and cultural facts and products. The students will have ample opportunity to practise active vocabulary, grammar and culture in interactive activities which emulate real-life situations. Our goal: create a textbook that is fun, fluid and could be adjusted at any time for any context. The activities and projects will be constantly revised to incorporate new cultural material and allign our methods with most current SLA research.

Outline

Preliminary Unit: Let me introduce myself

Functions and communicative goals:

  1. introduce oneself

  2. introduce others

  3. to spell names

  4. to greet others

  5. to leave

  6. to thank

Phonetics:

  1. the alphabet

  2. diacritics

  3. basic reading rules

Grammar:

  1. Characters in Tex’s grammar

  2. Genders

Vocabulary:

  1. greeting phrases

  2. subjects at school

  3. politeness formulas

Culture:

  1. faire la bise

  2. tu vs. vous

Song:

Comment tu t’appelles ?

Chapter 1: School life

Functions and communicative goals:

  1. say the date, the day, the time

  2. describe the classroom (using il y a , voici, c’est / ce sont)

  3. understand basic classroom requests ( ouvrez vos livres, écoutez)

Chapter 2: Me and my family

Functions and communicative goals:

  1. answer and ask personal questions ( name, age, profession, nationality, residence, etc;)

  2. fill out la fiche d’identité

  3. talk about oneself, about one’s family and nationality

Chapter 3: My leasure time

Functions and communicative goals:

  1. talk about weather, seasons, geography

  2. talk about hobbies and activities

Chapter 4: Me and my friends

Functions and communicative goals:

  1. describe people (looks and personality)

  2. talk about routine activities

Chapter 5: My nutritional habits

Functions and Communicative goals:

  1. talk about food and meal

  2. order a meal in a restaurant

  3. talk about one’s nutritional preferences and habits

Resources

Participants