Lego and German word order.

This is an idea I stole from Alex Bellars, who is incredibly cool and there aren't many teachers I've said that about!

Two years ago Alex wrote this blogpost about  how he uses lego blocks to help his students practise and understand the minefield that is German word order.

Today, I used this idea with some of my students who were not quite so confident as I would like.

They are studying the topic of school and I wanted them also to practise the perfect tense, too.

I gave them a pile of Duplo bricks, some whiteboard markers and this key:
Time phrases = Green blocks
Verbs (& pronouns) = Blue blocks
Nouns = Red blocks
Connectives  = Yellow blocks

This is what they came up with:

 

When they had got the basics right, I then shared out all the bricks and asked them to use them all to make a long sentence. There was an abundance of green blocks for some reason, so intensifiers and adjectives became "green words", too.

Then the students had to write a paragraph in German using their lego models as, well, models.  They really enjoyed themselves and learned something, too.

It doesn't get much better than that.

Chain Letters - another game show idea for MFL classes

Chain letters is another one of those television game shows which I've adapted into a writing or speaking exercise to get more able or experienced students thinking.

In the TV programme contestants won money by changing, adding or removing one letter at a time in a word to create a new word.

My classroom version involves no money at all but the idea is still the same.

Give the students a word in the target language and give them 5 minutes or so to create new words by changing, adding or removing letters. They have to make a list of as many words as they can in the allotted time. The winner is the person with the longest list of words.

The word must be a real, French word. The students can only change one letter at a time and they must change a different letter each time. 

For example:

A French lesson. 

The word is  POMME

Change the P to S - SOMME

Add a T - SOMMET

Change the S to a C - COMMET

Add an N before the T - COMMENT

 Add É at the end - COMMENTÉ

Change the T to a C - COMMENCÉ 

Change the N to an R - COMMERCÉ

and so on...

...it's another game I play when I can't sleep. 

You should try it, it really works.

Plus belle la vie - Terrible French soap but fantastic resource.

Plus belle la vie is one of my favourite French TV programmes.

#pblv, as all the cool kids are calling it, is a French soap set in Mistral, a fictional quartier of Marseille in the south of France.

The programme focuses on the daily lives and loves of the inhabitants of  Mistral and their shady, if not downright criminal, business practices.

In short, it's Eastenders, but with sunshine.

It is broadcast 5 evenings each week on France3 at 20:25 and each morning on TV5monde (in the UK it's Sky channel 717) and many episodes can be seen on youtube, too, so you've no excuse not to watch it.

If you're as obsessed as I am, you can follow the show on twitter and facebook, too

The main reason I'm recommending this is not so that you can spend hours watching a television programme which IMDB (rather generously) rates at 2.7/10 but I think the programme's website is a goldmine of material which could be used when studying the topics of family and describing people.

There is a comprehensive profile of each character giving their personalities, likes and dislikes.

Using this could introduce a cultural element to language learning and might be a fresh change from describing the Simpsons or the Family Guy cast when teaching this topic.

Activities you could do with this resource include:

• Create a family tree of characters in one family
• Describe a character and get a partner to guess which character you are talking about.
• Make a guess who type game using the characters' profile photos 
• Create a mindmap type activity saying how the characters are connected
• Use Pam hook's SOLO hexagons to do the above task, too
• Compare and contrast with characters in English language soaps.
• Add the challenge of getting students to write a "what will happen next" paragraph using the future tense.
• Say or write about which character you are most like.
• Who would you like to meet and give reasons why.
• Who would you not like to meet and give reasons why.
• Create a new family (or character) to join the cast. Describe them, give them a personality and a role within the PBLV community.

I'm sure you could think of many more.

Mot de passe - a word association game for students

This holiday I have discovered a brilliant French TV game show.

It's called Mot de passe.

Mot de passe is a word association game based on the American show, Million Dollar Password and is presented by Patrick Sabatier. It is broadcast daily on France2 at 18:45 and on TV5Monde at 11:00 local time. If you aren't lucky enough to be able to access these channels, there are full episodes here on youtube.

In the game contestants are paired with a "celebrity". One of them is given a "password" which their partner has to guess. They can only give one word clues and are not allowed to use foreign words, hyphenated words, or acronyms but are allowed to use antonyms.

So, for example, if the word to be guessed was "white" the contestant could say "black", or "colour", or "snow". The contestant guessing the "passwords" must guess before the next clue is given. The couple have 30 seconds to guess as many words as they can.

Here is my idea for using it in class:

Students work in pairs. One of them has a list of words e.g. places in a town.

This student will give one word clues to the word.

The partner will have to try to guess.

For example: if the word was "Boulangerie" the first clue might be "pain" or "croissant".

I'd give a minute for the students to do this and then let them change roles.

The winner would be the partner with most words guessed.

A fun way to get students speaking, thinking and using associated words, synonyms and antonyms.

Getting year 8 to speak French using cootie catchers.

I have a lovely (or should that be "lively"?) year 8 class.

They're the kind of class you really wouldn't want to teach last thing on a Friday.

Just for the record, I get them last thing on a Friday.

And Tuesday.

Getting them to speak is sometimes very difficult.

Getting them to stay in their seats is always difficult.

So today we made cootie catchers, fortune tellers, snapdragons, chatterboxes, etc

For the uninitiated they look like this:

We took a few minutes to make them and we made them with a French twist.

• On the outside we wrote 4 colours in French.
•  Then, in the middle section, we wrote the numbers from 1 to 8 in French.
• And on the inside we wrote 8 questions. We've been learning about school subjects so all of their questions started with "Tu aimes" and a school subject and the answer given had to include an adjective. For example: Tu aimes les maths ? J'aime les maths, c'est facile. 

These students love "kinaesthetic learning" so playing with their "cootie catchers" made them forget that they were actually doing some serious work. 

Ofsted would have loved it!

I fooled them into answering questions in full sentences and giving opinions.

I can't show you any examples of their work because they all wanted to take them home.

But, so you're not too disappointed, I made an animated gif of mine as I made it.

Enjoy!

PS. I blogged about making animated gifs here ages ago.

German word of the week

Following yesterday's Lexical gaps post I've gone one better and found an even more interesting resource.

This one comes from dw.de the German broadcaster.

It's called Word of the Week and is just exactly that, a new strange German word of which there is no translation into most languages.

Warning: these are not always very funny!

There is a word of the week archive, too, so if you're really bored or a German culture Vulture then this is the ideal place for you to go in a wet weekend with a steaming hot cup of Muckefuck and a freshly baked Weckmann.

Lexical gaps - or why I love the German language.

One of the best things about learning foreign languages is that there are always words and phrases which cannot be translated into English.

Ha! In your face Google Translate!!!

I blogged about this earlier this year in a post called, That's easy for you to say.

Imagine my joy today, then, when I found a couple of youtube clips specifically dedicated to German words and phrases for which there is no translation.

The first is this one from American writer, Robyn Schneider (I love her voice!):

and the second is from Toby's GermanChannel TL which contains some amazing German idiomatic phrases:



If you're a student of all things German I thoroughly recommend them.

So if a Honigkuchenpferd offers you a cup of Muckefuck, you'll be well within your rights to call him a Sitzpinkler with a Backpfeifengesicht.

Which is your favourite?

Enjoy.