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Listening activities on frenchteacher.net

(Updated 8th September) When I did my recent Surveymonkey survey of frenchteacher.net users, a number of subscribers said they would like to see listening activities on the site. I had been thinking about this for a while too and I have now begun to incorporate listening resources, mainly at A-level to begin with, but with a few for GCSE too.

Finding the right material online takes care, because you need source material which is interesting, spoken clearly at a reasonable pace and, preferably, which works well with exam board topics. I cannot embed copyright material, so my worksheets link to external video sites which the teacher could play "from the front" or which students could access themselves at home, in the ICT room or on a tablet. Some worksheets incorporate oral activities (pré-écoute) and other linguistic tasks.

If I were using them I would present them from the front as part of a teaching sequence. They could also make excellent listening revision material, which students often request.

Students must not be given the login to frenchteacher.net, so it's simply a case of printing off a sheet to hand out. Copy and paste the URL into your classroom computer to either present the video or let students copy it down into their own browser. Easy-peasy.

I have divided the listening tasks into "easier" and "harder", reflecting the difference between AS level and A2 level in the English and welsh exam system. Very competent GCSE (intermediate) groups could handle the easier material.

Exercise types vary, depending on the source. So far I have used true/false/not mentioned, questions in English and French and find the French.

Topics covered so far:

GCSE

Health - making vegetable soup; health/sport - hiking; a Strasbourg restaurant; family - a mum describing her daughters; holidays - favourite holidays

A-level

Easier: Tattoos, holidays (past and future), internet saftey, e-cigarettes, legalising c...bis, describing a film, speed dating, an extract from the film Etre et avoir, a song by Orelsan, national stereotypes, describing a film and talking about sport.

Harder : Humanoid robots, democracy, genetic modification, animal rights, villes nouvelles, carbon capture and storage, fracking, assisted dying, animal rights, new towns, forensic pathology, Erasmus, various songs (Cabrel, Pagny), restos du coeur, and alternative energy sources.

There will be plenty more to come.

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