subject: How Stories Help the French Classroom Setting [print this page] Getting people to learn requires getting them engaged. Instead of boring them, a good teacher makes their lessons interesting and fun. This sometimes requires doing old things in new ways. Where French language instruction is concerned, listening to materials that are almost exclusively in French is becoming more popular. Students listen and learn French because they become engaged with characters in plays and learn songs that help them to memorize important words and phrases very quickly.
The reason that students learn French fast from these sorts of materials is that learning the language has an immediate reward to it. Normally, the materials used to teach language simply expect more and more memorization. There is little opportunity to actually use your new language skills. When listening to a story, students are challenged to understand what's going on. Because their minds are focused on the story, they're able to do a lot more work toward understanding the language. As the plot becomes clearer to them, they feel a sense of accomplishment for having been able to understand what's being said, and the sense of accomplishment is entirely justified.
In some cases, these materials will also introduce songs in the French classroom. Music makes it easier to remember the words that make up the song. The melody and the words become essentially one thing in the minds of those who hear the songs and, by recalling the music, most students can easily recall the words that made up the song. This makes music one of the most important of all language instruction materials. Unfortunately, many classroom materials don't make use of music at all, which could feasibly make it much easier for the students to succeed in their journey toward becoming fluent.
Materials that encourage you to listen and learn French also take a lot of pressure off of students. Entertaining stories are entertaining stories in any language. Students get lost in trying to understand what's going on and may not even notice how rapidly they're learning. The fact that students hear words used in different tenses, for different reasons and by people in different states of mind also prepares students to actually use French in their everyday life. These types of materials are increasingly popular with those who are learning French on their own, as they're more entertaining and rewarding activities than rote material to do on one's own.
How Stories Help the French Classroom Setting
By: Dr. Dennis Dunham
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