French Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening - CLAIRE

French Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening Activity: RENCONTREZ CLAIRE

The personal description of the personnage in this activity can either be used a speaking or writing prompt. Reading and listening comprehension included.

Sometimes it’s difficult to come up with good ideas for creative story-telling or imaginative writing. Very often, we’re so focused on producing correct grammar that we forget how much fun it can be to tell stories! If you’ve been looking for creative prompts to get the ball rolling for your upper-intermediate level students, I know you’ll have fun with this resource. It includes a story to listen to and read along, then students can complete listening comprehension and 1st conditional SI CLAUSE activities.

Here’s what you need to know about CLAIRE:

• c’est une femme de 29 ans
• elle a récemment quitté son fiancé
• elle a un chien nommé Félix
• elle travaille comme coiffeuse
• elle habite dans un village de 500 habitants
• elle a une nouvelle petite voiture

INCLUDED:

Detailed background information about CLAIRE
Si clause writing activity - 1st conditional - Futur simple + present tense
Story about Arielle based on her background information - Approximately 500 words
MP4 audio recording - Listen to the story read aloud
Listening comprehension cloze activity

STUDENT INSTRUCTIONS:

STEP 1: Read the personal details about CLAIRE, an interesting personnage.

STEP 2: Once you know CLAIRE’S background, complete the si clause prompts provided. They all begin in the futur simple, and you should finish them in the present tense. This step will help you build up to writing a story!

STEP 3: Listen to a story about CLAIRE. Don’t read the text yet. Just listen, and see how much you can understand.

STEP 4: Complete the cloze activity to test your listening comprehension before you read the actual text. Fill in 20 blanks with words you hear in the MP4 recording. A word bank is provided.

STEP 5: Check your work as you read the full text for the first time. Take some time to read the English translation provided to compare sentence structure. Be sure to note new vocabulary words and expressions.

STEP 6: It’s time to try your hand at creative writing in French! The story you listened to will give you an idea of what kind of story you can write, but be sure to use your imagination! The background information and the si clauses you wrote will give you something to work with. The more you read and write in French, the better your understanding of sentence structure will be. You’ll also be amazed at how much vocabulary you will learn! Use as many verb tenses, pronouns, and other grammatical structures as possible in your story.