French story and poem: un amour qui finit mal !

My French students are now learning the passé composé in class and I am looking for ways to help them acquire this new tense without doing the traditional grammar approach.

The first text which came to my mind was Le déjeuner du matin which is actually a poem widely taught in French classes because the language is quite simple and repetitive.

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French culture: celebrating la Chandeleur !

Candlemas is around the corner and I have prepared some fun activities to do in the French class to celebrate this special event. In fact as the activities are mainly centered around crepes and how to make them, you could also use them to celebrate Mardi Gras (which is on the 9th of February this year) or if you are teaching a topic on food.

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acquisition33 activities5 bundle1 celebrate4 celebration5 communicative7 comprehensible41 Cooking17 cultural5 culture22 Education8 food13 French20 grammar6 infinitive1 input39 logic1 logical2 numeracy1 passé-composé2 past5 perfect tense2 recipe12 song10 storytelling28 teacherspayteachers11 TPRS34 tradition1

Personalized questions in French: l'étoile du jour.

https://goo.gl/photos/QtQ95BFaxjMXP18X8

This morning, I was reading the Active learner blog post about "Café y conversación" and it inspired me to share about an authentic conversation I had last week with my French students. As mentioned in the post: "When we have authentic conversation about topics that students want to talk about,

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acquire28 acquisition33 answers8 authentic1 beginner10 Blogging2 compelling10 comprehensible41 comprehension31 conditional2 Education8 French20 if clauses1 IGCSE12 oral11 output10 personalized13 PQA5 practice17 questions19 repetition11 repetitive5 speaking37

Reading activity for French learners (beginner level).

Yeah!!! I am back to blogging! I had a very good excuse though for not posting for such a while: I had my fourth boy on the 24th of September. His name is Antoine and he is a lovely baby boy doing well :-)

Whilst recovering from the birth and taking care of my precious little boy,

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Communicative activity for French learners (beginner level).

As well as teaching online private English lessons to Spanish students, I help some French students at beginner level. As you may already know, I am a big fan of Martina Bex and I decided to use her storytelling unit for French 1: Dit.

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activity13 adjective1 beginner10 cognates3 communicative7 comprehensible41 dit1 Education8 endings1 French20 game8 grammar6 guidelines2 ideas7 input39 instructions3 intermediate5 key structures7 Martina Bex10 oral11 repetition11 speaking37 story asking9 storytelling28 TPRS34 unit3

Reflection on Comprehensible Input

I haven't updated my blog for a while now, and as I am taking a break due to my fourth baby coming at the end of September, I wanted to reflect on my last school year. I was teaching Spanish from grade 6 to 12 and I decided to turn to comprehensible input and TPRS since I was never fully satisfied with the traditional way to teach languages.

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6th graders2 acquisition33 comments1 comprehensible41 Education8 encourage2 feedback3 fluency15 fluent12 grade 108 grade 74 grade 85 grade 98 IGCSE12 input39 inspire4 languages5 listening29 Martina Bex10 middle school3 motivate7 motivation6 personalized13 reading36 review4 song10 Spanish27 story asking9 storytelling28 TPRS34

How to use a mini story in a Spanish beginner class

I have become a fan of TPRS because I do believe it is the most efficient way so far to help students develop both fluency and accuracy in Spanish. However, I am new to the techniques and although I read the Big Green Book: Fluency through TPR Storytelling,

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