Cartes Postales de TV5 Monde

Activity authored by Laura Franklin, Professor of French at Northern Virginia Community College, to be used in conjunction with the original website by TV5 Monde

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This material was originally developed through Merlot
as part of its collaboration with the SERC Pedagogic Service.

Summary

In this just-in-time activity, students will take a virtual tour of a Francophone city by visiting the TV5 Monde Cités du monde website and gathering information for a virtual postcard. Students will write five original sentences, each of which will describe one of the most unique attractions of the city. This activity will give the student an introduction to the city and the cultural riches of the Francophone world.

French | College Lower (13-14)

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Learning Goals

Students will gain cultural awareness by perusing a website about a French-speaking city.
Students will practice writing in French, by composing and sending an actual e-postcard.
Students will learn or review the vocabulary and expressions appropriate for the writing of postcards.

Context for Use

This exercise can be adapted to any educational level, class size, institution type, etc. It can be done in class, but perhaps would be most effective as a homework assignment that would encourage creativity and time on task.

This Cartes postales exercise has the individual students explore Francophone cities around the world through engagement with the TV5 Cities of the World website. They do this at home before arriving in class. The idea is to get them thinking about cross-cultural comparisons in advance of the lesson.

They will not only discover the city that is the subject of their own postcard, but they will also receive a virtual postcard from a classmate, hopefully from another Francophone city. When I review some of the postcards that I receive from them using my instructor's computer and the projector, they will get a more detailed tour of the Francophone world. I can use this to draw comparisons, point out contrasts and start our lesson for the day.

The postcard connects learning to a real world activity and exposes them to new vocabulary and cultural information in an engaging atmosphere.

Description and Teaching Materials

Students should access the TV5Monde site
On the right side of the page, the student should click a picture of one of the featured Francophone cities.
Instructions will be given to go to the city's "postcard" (le site de la ville).
Each "postcard" will have a link to a section called 24 Heures.
Students will experience audio, images, interviews and other texts that will become the subject matter of their postcard.
Students will write their postcards and actually send them to the instructor and at least one classmate.
The postcards will be graded for creativity, variety of attractions described and for accuracy.
A follow-up activity would be an in-class discussion of cities visited.
The instructor projects some of the postcards and the whole class discusses the content.

Teaching Notes and Tips

This exercise is extremely adaptable to different levels of French from the most basic to the most advanced. The media resources are of extremely high quality.
While this is an effective writing assignment, it would also be possible to have students do oral reports based on what they see in their virtual visits.
The walkthrough of a few exemplary post cards using instructor computer/projector will be an opportunity to set the tone on the content of the cards. The focus should be to whet the appetite for more study of the cities. Connections to the real-world use of postcards (sharing a lived experience in a new place) should be the emphasis.
Over-emphasis on correcting grammar should be avoided in the instructor walkthrough.