Teaching French to Leaving Cert

rose23

Hi all..and hopefully some fellow French teachers..

I have secured a teaching post for this September and have been told I will have upto Leaving Cert. I am a NQT this year, and although I have some teaching experience I never had a Leaving Cert class.

What is the best way to prepare students for the written section where they have to write a short essay on certain topics?

I understand plenty of practice, sample answers, advice etc is necessary but what way do other French teachers generally teach this. Provide students with vocabulary on a topic and get them to form their own answer?
Any advice or hints about teaching Leaving Cert students a language in general would be greatly appreciated as I am a bit anxious about this!

savvyav

Hey,

I had a LC French class this year and I found the easiest thing to do was to structure my week by certain topics eg Monday was grammar day, Tues was reading comps, Wed was oral work, Thurs was listening and Fri was exam papers. At least that way they were doing a bit of everything every week so everything stayed fresh in their heads.
As for the writing section, I gave them some vocab on a certain topic and then got them to do sample answers which I corrected. I also tried to pick reading comps that matched the weeks topic to increase the amount of vocab. I know some teachers give vocab tests but quite frankly I don't bother- they'll learn it if they want to do well! I found the best way to begin the vocab section is to do a spider chart on the board (eg alcoholism) and then get them to say the words associated with it (eg liver disease, injuries, violence), which I would write in French. Helps them with pronounciation as well!
Main thing is keep up the oral work and get that sodding document done early!
Bonne chance

rose23

Thanks for that advice savvyav.. I can see how that structure to the week would cover a bit of everything and be very consistent!

Its a big responsibility having Leaving Certs..maybe im just feeling this as I am a NQT and a bit nervous about it all.

How did you work the oral work.. did you do group/pair work/get them to prepare answers??

savvyav

I was NQT as well so I feel your pain!
I was lucky as I only had 9 in my class, so I did a few mins of vocab then got them into pairs to practise while I took one person at a time for a quick chat. Obviously this only works with small classes, so I guess with bigger classes just get them to work in pairs while you wander around and supervise? I hate doing oral stuff as its hard to get them to sound natural while they speak- they tend to just parrot stuff! Plus there's always a weird phrase to be translated

freire

Hi,

After you've taught, revised, re-taught, tested and re-revised basic phrases used to structure an argument, you need to provide plenty of authentic texts. Pre-teach key vocab. Do this by topic, weekly.

They need to settle in with the idea that they can make sense of, and write about, a random article without understanding much more than 30 percent of it.

Newspapers, magazines, online articles etc. It also grabs the attention much more than the textbook. Makes it real as they say.

Also for aural and oral work there are a great deal of podcasts out there. I like France Info, Radio France, France Culture. Current topics and news of the day, which students are familiar with, but in French.

seachto7

I'm not a teacher, but speak French and like to brush up on it. One thing I used to do was print off online interviews in French with musicians I liked, or topics I was interested in.
As they were online magazines, they tended to be brief enough, but not too short. I found these really good for vocab...

rose23

Yeah Im thinking authentic materials are a great resource alright and Im sure I will be using them in the classroom this year. Did you just google this and find them or did you go onto a certain website??