Listening with Radio France Internationale: Des mots d'enfant pour parler d'autisme

This page authored by Laura Franklin,Northern Virginia Community College, based on an original activity by Radio France Internationale, Fiches Pedagogiques
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This material was originally developed through Merlot
as part of its collaboration with the SERC Pedagogic Service.

Initial Publication Date: August 27, 2010

Summary

In this listening exercise, students in intermediate-level French will work in pairs on comprehension exercises related to a recording of a young girl describing life with her autistic younger brother. The short audiotext is accompanied by self-correcting multiple choice questions designed to check listening comprehension. Students will listen to the audiotext and come to consensus on the correct answers to the comprehension questions. This listening activity will be followed by a whole class discussion of the effect of autism on family members.

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Learning Goals

  • Students will practice listening to authentic texts in French and answering questions about them.
  • Students will get used to listening to the voices of small children in French.
  • Students will learn French vocabulary related to conditions such as autism.
  • Students will collaborate with classmates to develop strategies for effective listening to short audiotexts in French.

Context for Use

This listening activity is perfect for a lab setting, because of its brevity and online text support. Class size should be proportionate to the number of workstations and microphones available. This activity would be most appropriate in a chapter on health issues and in lessons on the family.

Description and Teaching Materials

The listening segment and accompanying exercises are available in MERLOT World Languages .Once in the RFI website, the exact exercise can be found under Fiches pedagogiques and the title "Des mots d'enfant pour parler d'autisme."

An Assessment rubric (Excel 20kB Aug26 10) is also available for download.

Teaching Notes and Tips

  1. The instructor should pre-teach basic vocabulary about autism in French.
  2. In the computer lab, students should be allowed to listen to the short audio segment several times.
  3. In pairs, the students should work on the comprehension questions until they answer them all correctly.
  4. After completing the listening assignment, the class can have a discussion about autism and the information provided by the child in the audiotext.
  5. The instructor can also engage the students in a discussion about the strategies that they employed for listening.

Assessment

This brief cooperative learning activity contains its own formative assessment on the RFI website. The instructor can develop his/her own discussion rubric for the culminating activity.

An example assessment rubric (Excel 20kB Aug26 10) is also available for download.

References and Resources

This is the material detail for Radio France Internationale . The featured listening activity is in the Fiches Pedagogiques section.