Authentic links for AS French

Here is the AS version. Lots of authentic links.

Enjoy.

Television

From collectifciem.org: La télé pour les bébés: un danger pour leur santé

From nouvelles.umontreal.ca: La violence à la télé peut influer sur le comportement de l'enfant.

From ladepeche.fr: Violence et pornographie: la télé devra revoir sa copie

From e-sante.fr: Obésité, enfant et télévision: Pourquoi le télévision fait grossir ?


Advertising


Blogdefred's arguments for and against advertising

An article entitled Les jeunes et la publicité

From zakiworld.com Les avantages et les inconvénients de la publicité

An article on the advantages and disadvantages of billboard advertising


New technology

From ac-creteil.fr: advantages and disadvantages of the internet

From marocagrag.com: advantages ad disadvantages of mobile phones

From doctissimo.fr: le téléphone portable, est-il dangereux pour la santé ? (Quite old, but still relevant)

A collection of articles about mobile phones from protection-ondes.com

From rmc.fr: des élèves accros à leur téléphone portable

From journal des femmes: Protéger ses enfants des réseaux sociaux


Cinema


From utile.fr: Regarder un film au cinéma: avantages et inconvénients

http://www.cinema-francais.fr/ lots of information about all aspects of French cinema


Music


http://www.ados.fr/ the one stop French youth culture site. Music, film, cinema, TV, "celebrities"

French Radio London - a French music station based in London (I blogged about it here)


Fashion and image


Article from adoskuat.com Les jeunes et la mode

Everything you wanted to know about les piercings from teemix

From dermagazine.fr Les tatouages: Quels risques ?

From marhba.com Pourquoi suivre la mode ? Forum with opinions from real Frenchies


Sport and exercise

Pourquoi l'exercice est essentielle à la santé ? from the Canadaian government.

12 bonnes raisons de faire de l'exercice from coupdepouce.com

An article on "le zorbing"

A parkour website warning of the dangers of the sport

From e-santé: Sports extrêmes, pourquoi ?

Avantages des sports d'équipes from wellness-matters.net

From doctissimo.fr lots of links on individual sports


Health and Well-being

From doctissimo.fr lots of links on alcohol, binge drinking, eating disorders, smoking and drugs.

Le sida en France

A Swiss site all about la toxicomanie

toxicomanie.org a French site with practical advice


Holidays


Avantages des voyages organisés from coupdepouce

les vacances augmentent le réchauffement climatique article from actualites-news-environnement.com

Quiz from ados.fr: Quel genre de vacances est fait pour toi ?


Families, friends and relationships


Les avantages du mariage and Pourquoi se marier ? from canalvie.com in Canada

avantages et inconvénients du mariage from bebe-bebe.com

From radio-canada.ca Pourquoi l'union libre plutôt que le mariage ?

From teemix 30 bonnes raison d'être célibataire (Funny and very tongue in cheek article)

From madmoizelle.com: Un(e) vrai(e) ami(e) c'est quoi ?

Authentic links for A2 French - updated

I teach AQA French at A level and like to use (and share) authentic materials in my teaching.

I made a list of authentic resources on my blog a few years ago and noticed recently that some of the links no longer existed.

So here is a new list:


Alternative energy


Pour et contre l'éolien

Friends of the earth's French site: Energies et nucléaires and Les éoliens...pour ou contre ?

Développement durable: L'énergie éolienne: pour ou contre ?

Pour et contre la voiture électrique from Le Figaro



Nuclear energy

Nucléaire non merci's site: La nucléaire pour ou contre ?


Doctissimo's environnement forum: Comments from the general public about everything environmental

Suite101's article on nuclear power: Aprés l'accident au Japon: pour ou contre le nucléaire en France

Greenpeace's France site: Nucléaire






Comment protéger la planète

Loads from science citoyen on greenhouse, effect, global warming and our responsabilities.

Effet de serre et Changement climatique (from the French government)

Lots of information about recycling from somergie

A video from the BBC Learning Zone about recycling in Dakar

Les arguments en faveur du recyclage et du tri from recyclage de déchets



Poverty and unemployment


From inegalites.fr http://www.inegalites.fr/spip.php?article270 an article about poverty in France

Article on homelessness in France from vedura.fr http://www.vedura.fr/social/logement/sans-domicile-fixe

An article from le monde about homeless people and mental illness

La pauvrete dans le monde an article from inegalites.fr

An article Pauvreté solutions



Genetically modified organisms

Pour et contre les OGM from espace sciences

Peser le pour et le contre des OGM from http://www.fao.org

From jeuneafrique.com: Pour ou contre les OGM ?



Crime and punishment


From le courrier, La prison: pour qui, pourquoi ?

Les alternatives à la prison from alternatives-economique.fr

La peine de mort dans le monde from peindemort.org

From les dossiers du net: Arguments pour et contre la peine de mort

Amnesty International's French website

La criminalité chez les jeunes from jeunessecs.com






Immigration and Racism


Forumfr.com: L'immigration, pour ou contre ? Thoughts of genuine French people.

From franceinter.fr: L'immigration est-elle un problème ?

An article from claudereichman.com: La France, a-t-elle encore besoin d'immigrés ?


sos-racisme has a lot of information, facts and figures

Articles about wearing the burqa from Le Monde, and Le Figaro.

News item from donnetonavis.fr: Trois femmes saoudiennes interdires d'entrées en France



Well, that should save you a few hours of planning. If you find anything you think I should add to this list please leave a comment. Thanks.

Graham Davies - an inspiration.

This afternoon I heard the sad news of the death of Graham Davies.

Although I never had the privilege of meeting Graham, we would be in touch regularly, mainly via Twitter, Facebook and the TES modern languages forum.

As well as MFL we would discuss the more important things in life: we both had a love of decent beer, most notably Hobgoblin and Old Speckled Hen, and classic cars, he owning a Mercedes and me, a Karmann Ghia.

My first contact with Graham was probably about 10 years ago when I started to use the TES MFL forum. He was always ready to offer advice and post links to articles, resources and webpages and it soon became obvious to me that he was the "go-to-guy" for a lot of things. If Graham didn't know, he always knew someone who did.

Graham, amazingly, happened to be in Berlin when the Wall came down in 1989 and he kindly sent me a link to the blog post he had written about his experiences which I shared with my A Level German students a few years ago. One of my colleagues is sharing Graham's Berlin post with the current Year 12 students this week.  

Graham's website is an Aladdin's Cave of ICT training materials for teaching MFL and contains everything you could possibly wish to know from using a word processor to creating your own website.

I'm also very grateful to Graham as I know for a fact that many of the visitors to this blog come from links posted by him.

Even though Graham was very ill, he was an amazingly positive person and I, and many others, am deeply saddened by his passing.

RIP Graham.

French Radio London - an A level French resource

My keener 6th form students often ask me what they can do to improve their listening skills. I usually point them in the direction of the video pages on linternaute.com, tv5monde, ados.fr and even Francophone news clips on youtube.

I've known about French Radio London for a while and sometimes listen whilst marking students' work or planning lessons. Although based in London, France's 6th largest city, it is available everywhere on DAB and on the internet.

I'd never really looked at FRL's website and when I did recently I found that it could be very useful. 

As well as a French music playlist there are "listen again" features and interviews with important French politicians, actors and musicians and also film reviews.

It's ideal for AS and A2 students and teachers who want to keep au courant with all things French.

Later this month there will also be a 60 minute French music podcast. I'm really looking forward to this. 

linternaute.com - Le magazine de l'internet

There are a number of websites dedicated to the teaching of modern languages and I have recommended many of them a number of times over the last few years.

Since I started teaching A level French again in 2009 there is one site which I keep returning to in order to find authentic links and resources.

That site is linternaute. I've posted links to it before but I feel it is so good that it deserves its own post.

It describes itself as "le magazine de l'internet" and it is exactly that.

There are articles about everything you could possibly want for teaching AS and A2 level French from "l'actualité" and "santé" to "les quiz" and "les loisirs" and everything in between.

There are sections on eating out, recipes, sports, film and music reviews, and health and lifestyle sections specifically for men and for women.

There is even a "linternautetv" section which has video clips of news items in French from all over the world.

The best feature, for teachers of French, is a very good search engine which I have used on numerous occasions.

If you are looking for current and authentic French resources you need look no further.

I can thoroughly recommend it.

Songify on Android.

Most people who have the misfortune to be acquainted with me know that I'm not a big fan of Apple products.

There's no particular reason for this, by the way. Just irrational dislike.

There was only one thing which could have swayed me into buying an i-pad and that was Songify. Now I don't need any Apple products because Songify is now available for android.

Woo. Hoo.

For those who don't know, Songify is a piece of software (I can't bring myself to say "app") which changes speech into song.

You record your voice saying anything you like and Songify converts it into song. It really is that simple. Once you're happy with your creation you can save it.

If you're not happy you can keep recording and try different "tunes" until you are.

Once you have saved your song, you can email it, or share it on one of those social networks.

It is a fantastic way to motivate students and, as it changes voices beyond recognition, would even allow the least talkative of students to get involved in speaking in the target language. It can be used to make up songs to help remember grammar points, vocabulary, or you could even use it as the soundtrack to those powerpoints some teachers are so fond of.

I first heard of this last year at the Teachmeet at Cramlington Learning Village where the inimitable Steve Bunce demonstrated how songify could be used by getting members of the audience to record themselves reading a script. .

In his presentation, Steve showed us this youtube clip "Reality hits you hard, bro"  and I was really impressed.

Here is the link to one I made earlier.

It really is jolly good fun.

Olympics resources

If you hadn't noticed, it will soon be time for the Olympic Games. This year they will be in London and various other locations dotted around the UK and so we will all be expected to do something "Olympicky" with our classes.

So here is a selection of links, in no particular order, to resources to help you bluff your way until the end of the school year.

1) MFL Sunderland's Olympics page. Loads of stuff here in French and Spanish created and collated by Clare Seccombe. I can't recommend it highly enough.

2) Madame Abrahams MFL Olympics Projects. A great page with lots of ideas and resources for creating MFL projects from Eleanor Abrahams.

3) Lancashire Grid For Learning has links to Olympics resources in French, German, Spanish and Italian.  

4) The TES website has a huge collection of Olympics resources in different languages.

5) Talkabout Primary MFL has a lot of resources and links for younger students. Although I will be using some of these with KS3 students.

6) The Links into Languages site has resources, ideas and examples of Olympic projects.

7) The blog Jennie n'est plus en France has a link to a list of French Olympics vocabulary and phrases.

8) The French-Linguistics.co.uk site has some vocabulary lists in French from the Beijing Olympics.

9) A good German resource from ilanguages.

10) The German Olympic Committee's website has a lot of information.

11) Kindernetz has a number of good activities in German relating to the Olympics.

12) The official London 2012 site also has resources in English, French and Spanish.

That should keep you going until the end of the year.

If you find any more sites please let me know and I'll add them to the list.