The Alliance Française of Toulouse, France has mounted a variety of engaging simulations and communicative activities for learners of French as a foreign language on the web. The simulations, which have been classroom-tested, include such topics as: Creating Your Own Business, Writing a Weather Report, Making a Publicity Brochure, Writing and Delivering a TV News Broadcast and others. Learners are given detailed instructions on the performance of each task and are directed to external links to complete the activities.
Type of Material:
Simulations, communicative activities
Recommended Uses:
Group work and/or independent study
Identify Major Learning Goals:
Learners will increase cultural awareness while practicing the French language.
Target Student Population:
Second semester French classes and above
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Proficiency in French at the second semester level
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The AF Toulouse scenarios are classroom-tested and ready for use. The broad topics covered in the scenarios are detailed and the external links are well-chosen. Faculty will find the topics easy to adapt to their curricula given the commonality of such themes as travel, weather, wine and cheese, starting a business and interviewing an artist. Directions are clear and the expectations for completion of the tasks are all set out in detail. The authors have created a replicable format for the creation of language scenarios.
Concerns:
Exercises that rely upon the stabiltiy of external links are always somewhat risky. However the general design of the activities is flexible enough for the substitution of new links if the present ones should become broken.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The activities on this site are engaging and will make learners use their L2 skills. To be successful in the group projects, they will have to read and digest real-world information and then cooperate with one another to construct a project to share with classmates. In short, they will speak, read, and write the target language to reach their goals.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The site is very easy to use both for faculty and for the learner. It is clear that many more activities can be added to this fine collection. It is very generous of the Alliance Française to make this collection available to French teachers worldwide via the web.
Concerns:
There are broken links that need to be replaced by functional ones.
Creative Commons:
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