Classroom videos of graduate students teaching different types of activities in Français interactif.
There are many techniques that can be used to teach vocabulary. The approach in Français interactif gives students word level practice before requiring them to negotiate meaning of richly contextualized samples of vocabulary.
Please download the template for Préparation du vocabulaire from Chapter 2 under the Liste de vocabulaire. This sequence of exercises, a "first pass" is primarily a decontextualized treatment of the vocabulary, as it requires learners to study and manipulate words in isolation. They practice pronunciation, identify cognates and word families, and relate words to create associations.
Students end with Chassez l'intrus (Find the word which doesn't belong), an activity which requires them to make connections across words, thereby contextualizing the individual lexical items.
Students do these exercises as homework at the beginning of each chapter. This video demonstrates a typical classroom followup. Please note that this is Chapter 2 of first-semester French.
University of Texas graduate student instructor: Jason Brazeal
This video demonstrates what we refer to as a 'Signature Activity.' Watch and see how this instructor successfullly shows students how to participate in this activity. This is Exercice 8 in Chapter 2 of first-semester French, the first time students have encountered this type of speaking activity.
For more information please consult "Foreign Language Teaching Methods" http://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/ This online methods course
focuses on best practices for foreign language instruction at the
high-school and college levels. The website feature video footage from
an actual methods course held at the University of Texas at Austin, and
contains interactive, media-rich modules by twelve different faculty
members, including Français interactif developers Carl Blyth and Nancy Guilloteau.
University of Texas graduate student instructor: Charles Mignot