Our French Immersion weekend in Montville in November 2019

We just had a wonderful weekend immersion in Montville staying at Montville Mountain Lodge . We arrived on the Friday afternoon and we enjoyed some wine and cheese. We enjoyed some delicious cheeses from Maleny Food and Co. with the beautiful view of the Lake Baroon dam. The students got to meet and speak French from the time they arrived while enjoying some ice breaker games and French singing. We woke up to breakfast with coffee, fruits and croissants from Crust and Co . The morning was filled with different conversation games such as charades and small short plays. We enjoyed a great lunch at Relais Bressan,a French restaurant in Flaxton, where even the waiter spoke to us in French. We returned for an afternoon of French conversation and activities including a champagne lesson with some tastings. The evening was filled with laughter and more French singing. This weekend was a great opportunity to speak French and meet new friends in a fun atmosphere.

Les mots de vocabulaire au restaurant

A short audio with French vocabulary

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Bon Appétit Monsieur Lapin and some of my top favourite blogs

This book called Bon appetit Monsieur Lapin written by Claude Boujon ,1985 and published by l’école des loisirs has been a popular book to read along activities to do with my young students. So I decided to put together a serie of different blogs that have produced and shared activites relating to that album. The blogs are not in order of preferences but written as a list of resources for students and French teachers.

1. A nice blog La maternelle de Laurène blog has some great activities to download.

2. A great blog by Zaubette is quite good with some good exercises and colourful activities to print out.

3. La classe de Ludivine is very informative and has many document to download for free

4. Dessine-moi une histoire. is a mine of great resources for French teachers and many activities to read and to explore and so many albums to discover.

5. Materalbumfree has lots of links and files relating to the book bon appetit monsieur lapin.

6. Le stylodevero has so many great documents to exploit vocabulary and reading comprehension

7. L ‘école des crevettes has many ideas to exploit this album and creating art projects.

This is not an exhaustive list and feel free to comment and suggest other blogs to add to this list.

Learn French with online games - Food vocabulary

Learning French can be fun and when playing online games . These games will help you to learn vocabulary about food related topics. Many of my students play interactive online games during on our online lessons and enjoy memorising words and playing games as they learn. I made a short version of a game and hopefully you will find these games useful.

A fun and easy way to learn French online

Learning French online is a great way to engage students.

The TES website has a platform called Blendspace where you can create lessons or learn about different topics. I love using Blendspace to create lessons to share with my students. This is a fun and engaging way for them to learn and participate in the lessons. This is an easy way for teachers to create lessons and save time. I have created so many lessons including games , word documents and audio to practice listening using this platform just by adding resources such as Youtube or from TES resources.

My 30 Favourite Free sites to learn French Online

I often get asked in my lessons where could I find a good site to learn French? There are plenty on the internet and it becomes a real mine field trying to find the right one. These are my suggested sites and have been posted in a random order.

My top picks are

1. TV 5 monde has different levels from beginners to advanced.This site also has videos with transcriptions and some grammar exercises. This is well worth a visit because it has so much content for French learners.

2. Francolab and Francolab junior are two Canadian sites run by the TV5 version in French Canadian language. You will listen to stories and songs and there are exercises to complete. A good way to practise listening in French.

3. Digital dialect is a great site for children and adults alike. I often suggest children’s sites to my students to practice their French.This one has plenty of games, some grammar exercises , vocabulary, pronunciation and many more games for beginners.

4. Language gym was founded by Gianfranco Conti who has lots of expertise in foreign language teaching.This is a free interactive website which provides online learning grammar and vocabulary exercises. I strongly recommend looking at this site.

5. Langageonline is great site to practice French listening.You will find some exercises to complete and many games and songs. There are loads of French resources for teachers and students.This site has been created by the Department of Education in Victoria in Australia and is very interactive and engaging for beginners students.

6 Le point du fle is an exhaustive resource site for teachers and students with grammar and vocabulary for all levels.

7. language guide has grammar exercises as well as text audio with a transcription. The text has words hidden in English to help you work out the translation.

8. Reverso site specialises in online translation aids such as online dictionaries. It gives you several translations of the same word in different phrases and context.

9. Miam is a French Canadian site that provides educational games about food and eating healthy for children and recipes and some interactive games for children along some recipes. Miam means “yum” in French which is quite a suitable name for that site.

10. The French experiment is a site for children with free grammar and vocabulary lessons. This site has some well known children’s stories translated in French.

11. Je parle quebecois is a great site that has some cultural articles . You will find many funny videos to teach Quebecois french accent and language and some expressions typically French Canadian. Well worth a look!

12. Phonetique is a site that provides many audio exercises such as alphabet or word in French that enable you to replay the audio and listen to the pronunciation.

13. Podcast francais facile a site with audio and transcript from learning how to order in a cafe in French or asking for directions or simply learning some grammar exercises or reading text.

14.Learn French with Alexa has a series of videos to learn French. Alexa has created several videos on Youtube which are bilingual French and English where she explains the rules in a very funny, interesting and easy way to understand for beginners students.I always suggest her videos to my students.

15. French today is run by Camille Chevalier and has so many blogs on cultural topics, places to visit, grammar and conjugation exercises, many bilingual audio articles. This is a very comprehensive site about French learning and the grammar rules are explained with lots of examples and easy way to learn French.

16. La chanson en cours de FLE a site created by Carmen Vera Pérez with plenty of songs adapted to different levels but mainly intermediate and above.The songs are very useful to learn verbs conjugation and vocabulary.

17. French games and interactive website for children and quite easy to navigate.

18. Hello world is such a great interactive site for children with load of resources and different themes and providing audio games and vocabulary lessons and a lot more.

19. Tex’s French grammar is a very well designed grammar site with lots of easy explanation about grammar rules.

20. NewsinslowFrench a site where you can finally listen to the news at a slower pace. You might need to subscribe to have access to the whole site.

21. Lawless French is another Free site with load of content, grammar, vocabulary, audio exercises.

22. RFISavoir offers a series of bilingual broadcast on different topics and current affair news.

23. Thoughtco has thousand of resources for students and teachers of second languages.

24. Canadian parents for French Prince Edward Island. This site offer resources to parents as well as for students and has several resources sites for learning French such as a video site called illustrated.

25. Baby bilingual blogspot has plenty of resources to help parents raising bilingual children.

26. Lyrics training is a site for music lovers. If you like listening to French music and learn songs this site has a an online karaoke exercises where you get to fill out the missing words of the songs.Lots of choices of songs. Great for students or teachers of French.

27. Comme une francaise videos founded by Geraldine provide some interesting free and engaging videos about French language and culture.

28. Quizizz as the name says the site offers quizzes to create or that you can use. You do need to signup to use their site.

29. Francais avec Pierre videos. This site offers many free videos which are very entertaining and easy to listen to.

30. Bonjour de France offers lots of resources to learn French online from vocabulary ,grammar and comprehension exercises for teachers and students.

Some Free Apps such as Duolingo or Mosalingua are great for daily French practice. Some of those apps don’t really explain the rules but they can be useful to learn vocabulary and listening to some phrases in French.

“One language sets you in a corridor for life .Two languages open every door along the way
Franck Smith”

Some origins of the ANZACS

Le jour du souvenir en Australie est en Avril. Remembrance day in Australia is in April. 

L'Ode of Anzac For the Fallen

Ils ne vieilliront pas comme nous qui sommes restés.L'âge ne les atteindra pas ni le poids des années. A l'heure du crépuscule et à l'heure de l'aube. Nous nous souviendons d'eux . Nous nous souviendrons d'eux.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning .We will remember them.We will remember them.

History of ANZAC and some symbols

ANZAC day in Australia takes place in April to remember the soldiers of Australia and New Zealand who fought during war (remembrance day). The most well known symbol is the poppy. For the British the poppy is the flower of remembrance since the twenties. During the great war the poppies were the first plants to grow back again on this devastated land. The soldiers have said that before the war the flowers were white but after growing on the ground soaked with the soldiers 's blood the flowers became red. Many British texts mention the poppies on the battle fields and the most well know poem which might be at the origin of the poppy used as flower of remembrance is called "In The Flanders Fields".

ANZAC en Australie est en Avril pour se souvenir des soldats australiens et néo - zélandais qui ont combattus durant la guerre ( le jour du souvenir). Le symbole le plus célèbre est le coquelicot. Pour les Britanniques, le coquelicot est la fleur du souvenir depuis les années vingt. Au cours de la Grande Guerre , les coquelicots étaient les premières plantes à repousser sur le sol dévasté. Les soldats racontaient qu'avant la guerre ,ils fleurissaient blanc mais après avoir poussées sur le sol imprégné de sang ils sont devenus rouge vifs.

 Le slouch hat

It is the name of the famous hat with wide brim with the left side folded up. At first it was the right side of the hat that what folded which was allowing soldiers to look at the officer straight in the eyes when they were doing an inspection according to the military rules. But in 1903 it was the  left side of the hat  that was folded up to allow the soldier to wear his gun on his shoulder.

C'est le nom de ce célèbre chapeau mou avec ses larges bords dont le gauche est rabattu. A l'origine , c'est le bord droit qui était retourné vers le haut.Cela permettait aux soldats de regarder droit dans les yeux l'officier qui les passait en revue comme le voulait le règlemnt militaire. Mais en 1903 c'est le bord du côté gauche qui est relevé pour permettre au fusil d' être porté sur l'épaule.

Le  surnom( nick name) digger

The name of Digger was the nick name given to the Australians during the first world war. Since the 1900 century Australia was the place in the world where one would find gold and at the origin of the word digger meaning a  gold digger. By analogy this term described the Australians during the war  in the battle of the Somme in 1916 in Pozieres. Many of them might had been ex gold diggers used to dig holes and because of the war of the trenches they had to move tons of soil. 

Le nom Digger fut donné aux soldats australiens pendant la Première guerre mondiale. Depuis le 19 ième siècle. L' Australie était l'un des endroits du  monde où on trouvait de l'or et à l 'origine du mot"Digger" meaning gold digger. Par analogie, ce mot designa les soldats australiens pendant la  guerre durant la bataille de la Somme en 1916 dans le secteur de Pozieres. Beaucoup étaient peut être  d'anciens chercheurs d'or habitués à creuser des trous  et à cause de la guerre des tranchées  ont dû remuer des tonnes de terre. 

Lest we forget !Ne les oublions pas !

5 great tips to learn French in 2018

Learning French has been known to have several advantages.In the workforce knowing a second language opens the doors to work in different Francophone countries. Learning French develops an understanding of other cultures and helps you communicate while travelling. The learning of a language has been known to delay onset of dementia as it keeps your brain active and engaged. Learning French in small groups allows you socialise while learning a language.

“To have another language is to possess a second soul”

— Charlemagne

1.Listen more !

 Watch French films and television programs, You Tube clips, download free apps. Duolingo is a free app and a good resource to learn French. Practice writing some phrases in your own language and translate them to French.

2. Speak French with a French native speaker

Find opportunities to immerse yourself in French while travelling to French speaking country or talking with a French native speaker. There is also lots of conversation groups that you can join for small fees. The best thing is even if you are time poor there are a lot of opportunities to meet people either face to face or online to chat or do French lessons.

A man who knows two languages is worth two men.

3.  Positive Mindset about learning French

Forget about how you felt when you learnt French when you were young, if it was a bad experience or you had a bad French teacher. When learning French you need to be positive toward learning and not fear making mistakes or fearing being judged. You need to have a go at speaking and making the new French sounds. Speaking French involves having your mouth, lips, tongue working differently and you ears listening to new sounds. You do create a visual memory when you speak a new language. Vouloir c'est pouvoir!  Where there is will there is a way!

A different language is a different vision of life

4. Repetition Repetition and Repetition

Learning to speak French is about repetition. Repeat the word, write the word down, listen to the word and use it again in different situations and do the same with some phrases. 

The limits of my language are the limits of my world

5. Focus on listening to words in French

As a lot of my students tell me they can read and understand the written words or phrases in French as some words are spelled the same way as in English but the sound is very different!  For some expressions you can learn them by imagining the feeling! I mean if you are hot in French we say J'ai chaud! which translates as I have heat. Imagine being hot which is easy at the moment in Australia so practice to say J'ai chaud!.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.