ANIMAUX DANGEREUX

Niveau : B1

There are some animals living right around us that we should definitely be afraid of. They are horrible creatures. They spin webs, spread viruses, sting, kill people, i.e. do a lot of things that we don't really like that much. This week's post is about this group of animals. HERE you'll find a whole lesson on this topic. As you can see, I tried to write mostly lexically-oriented activities, but there's some grammar there too.
I've aslo made the LIST of some most interesting collocations from this lesson.
This time I have a few questions to my readers too.
I would like to know a few things about your own teaching.
Questions :
Is this particular topic new to you? Does it seem unusual? Have you ever taught lessons on animals like these?
If you did, what teaching resources did you use?
What level was your ss on?
Was your teaching lexically-oriented in any way?
Of course, as before, feel free to leave your comments below.

MOYENS DE TRANSPORT

Niveau : A2 - B1

By train, by bus or on foot - we all go somewhere every day. And the French are no exeption here. They take the bus, get stuck in traffic, spend hours trying to get back home, can't find a parking spot, their bikes get stolen, their trains are delayed and their flights are cancelled. Which means that we have to teach our students how to describe these actions. They have to know what collocations they can produce and what kind of language they can use. HERE are a few exercises that you should have them do to make their lives easier.
 The answers are HERE.

Niveau : B1- B2

We all know that the way language is used in novels (French as well as English ones) is not the way everybody speaks it. But in what way is it different? And how can I, as a teacher, help my students get to grips with this language when they are finally ready to read sth more difficult than graded readers? I think a good if not the best way of dealing with the problem would be by teaching them how to use their intuition, their ability to make an educated guess based on context. I'll write more about it later.
The other way would be by having them learn some typical expressions from novels.
For example, when writers try to avoid repetition in the action parts of their books, they often use words that they think are fancier. These words might be quite less colloquial and not as expected as everyday words there, but the replacement (synonym) is still easy to predict.
For ex., instead of saying "il entra dans la chambre", you can expect them to say: "il pénétra dans la chambre". "Pénétrer" here has the same exact meaning as "entrer" and is used only to make the text less boring. There's no additional meaning in "pénétrer".
There are also a lot of speech verbs. Or expressions with bodyparts. Or verbs of motion.
I tried to make a list of these expressions and HERE is the result of my work. You'll also find a few exercises for your students there. Please feel free to comment. if you think that I missed sth or that sth sould be crossed off the list.
The answers.
NB These exercises are for intermediate and advanced students (levels B1-B2).

MOUVEMENTS DU CORPS

Niveau : B1 - B2

How do they shrug there in French? More on shrugging, shaking and brushing HERE.

Explaining what collocations (otherwise known as "combinaisons de mots" in French) are can turn out to be rather tricky sometimes. So instead of using many words, give your students a few good examples of collocations and the way we use them in speech. THESE TWO EXERCISES provide some useful examples as well as push your students to think a little bit more on the subject. After they finished doing the exercises, you might probably need to say a few words on the importance of learning collocations, on their extreme usefulness not only for fluency but also for accuracy etc. But it will be much easier for them to understand the concept when they already have sth to look at.

MORE ON VERBS DIRE - PARLER - RACONTER

If you're a French teacher, you can use the activities in my previous post as a part of a whole lesson on the "dire - parler - raconter" lexical group.
If you teach in Russian, there are also some good quality activities in the Manuel de français by Popova and Kazakova that can be used for this purpose as well.

or in the Le français.ru series of books (by Alexandrovskaja and others).

I don't know if there are any other interesting activities on this subject in any other french or english textbooks, but I do hope some books have them. So please feel free to share if you know some.

DIRE, PARLER ET RACONTER

Niveau : A1 - A2

Les verbes dire, parler et raconter ne sont pas faciles à maîtriser.
VOICI quelques activités lexicales sur ces trois verbes que vous pouvez utiliser en classe pour aider vos élèves à mieux saisir leur particularités combinatoires.
 Les activités sont conçues pour les élèves de niveaux A2 - B1.

In this post you'll find a few lexical activities and execises on these three verbs. The keys are inside.

NB: these exercises are for elementary and pre-intermediate students (levels A1 - A2).