Marie Cambon - March to October 2009

Marie Cambon:
mariecambon@hotmail.com

I’ve worked in Projeto Dançarte since April. This project offers many activities for children as well as teenagers and adults – dance and drama classes, arts workshops, IT lab, regular school support classes, etc. While in there, I taught French. All of my students are there as volunteers too, so they aren’t many; but it’s even better like this!

I taught two adults in the mornings, one child and four teenagers during the afternoons, teaching both groups different content according to their specific needs.

With the adults we went through basic stuff (how to introduce yourself, the numbers, how to tell time, days of the week, months of the year, colors, etc) but also the most important verbs in the past present and future tenses. We also went for day-to-day scenarios like doing groceries, ingredients, words you’d use in a restaurant, asking your way around, etc. Of course, we also studied some French culture, including tourism in Paris.

With Stephanie, the only child coming regularly, we did more basic things kids enjoy learning: the alphabet, the colors, animals, birthdays, clothing items, etc. She also learned some things the adults were studied (like introducing yourself in French).

For teenagers I do something in between, trying themes that would interest them. It can be more basic like telling time or your nationality, but also adjectives to describe someone, clothing items. They learned the verb “être” (to be) and “avoir” (to have), being important auxiliary verbs. We were picking up the present tense, and studying some other themes (like touring in France, for example)

I used by the end of my program French newspapers in order to demonstrate good writing, improving written comprehension, while drilling them in order to improve oral comprehension.

Because I stayed in Brazil for 6 months I had time to teach what anybody starting on French should know. Therefore, volunteers to come can pick up from there, applying tests that could show more precisely what is left for them to learn.

I would recommend work on oral comprehension, especially using the computers as a learning tool. Besides, working on their grammar is essential, as is seems particularly difficult for Brazilians.

Anyways teaching a language is no easy task, as one must adapt the planned lessons to the students’ level; something that may seem simple for me can be confusing for them.

It takes some time to grasp a language, and I think 6 months were enough to prepare them for a trip to France!