Coucou,
here is your weekly dose of French comprehensible and compelling input to acquire the language naturally.
My boys including my 11 years old love to hear a good story before going to bed. In fact, they need their bedtime story, it is part of the daily routine and even if they have heard the same story for the hundredth time, they still love to hear it again. In her thoughtful blog post The Power of Storytelling , Claire explains that: “Storytelling literally connects us to our humanity because the ideas, thoughts and emotions shared through storytelling creates a physical connection through the insular, the region of the brain responsible for emotion, between a storyteller and listener.”
A teenager’s story
I find that teenagers are intriguing little characters and having taught them French and Spanish for over 15 years, I got to observe them. Needless to say, they are a great source of inspiration for my stories!
A few months ago, I told a story about a typical weekend for a teenager called Julien and in this story, you will hear about a typical teenager’s evening!
you will acquire:
Il est fatigué = he is tired
Il ne veut rien faire = he doesn’t want to do anything
Il/elle dit = s/he says
tu dois = you have to / you must
il dort comme un bébé = he sleeps like a baby
Do you watch TV a lot or do you go to bed early? Make sure to leave a comment below this post or on Youtube.
A parallel story
When we create stories with my French learners, I also like to give them parallel stories to read at their pace on their own. Parallel readings include all the language found in the story during our language sessions, but in a new context with unknown details.
The story above is in fact based on Martin Lapworth’s funny story Bob est fatigué who posts many resources connected to TaskMagic (a software which allows you to create different exercises based on a text or a list of vocabulary).
You can download the story along with many reading exercises (matching up, dominoes, filling the gaps…) to practice your comprehension and memorize the vocabulary on the TaskMagic blog.
L’art de la table à la française
In the story, Robert has to set up the table ( mettre la table) and I was so sad to read that one third of the French no longer eat at a table but prefer to eat in a sofa watching television! You can read the full article in Le Parisien here.
It is quite sad because we, the French, like to take out time to eat properly seating at a table and enjoying a starter, main course, cheese, salad and a dessert (of course!). It can sometimes take a few hours to have lunch with families and friends and it is part of our culture. This article goes through all the règles du savoir-vivre and how to behave in case you get invited by French people! I learned from this article that you should not say ” Bon appétit” before starting to eat, which I didn’t know!
C’est fini pour aujourd’hui ! I hope you enjoyed your dose of French input. See you next week for more stories!
Happy French acquisition!
A bientôt !
P.S. Got friends, family, colleagues or clients who want to become fluent in French? Share this with them, they’ll thank you for it 🙂