When students are at the novice level of language learning and are pre-literate in the language, authentic documents can be out of reach. How to still bring in culture? First, I am careful in selecting the resource. I rely heavily on pictures, songs and videos as well as articles written for French children or for language learners. Then, I use a few specific techniques to support student learning of language and culture.

The activities incorporated in the six example sets of lessons below illustrate using simplified French to build student vocabulary to the end of increasing proficiency in the language while communicating cultural information. The scaffolding is the vocabulary that they are taught in this way to offer support for understanding the resource. For some of these, teachers employ “teacher talk”, which is simplified spontaneous speech ad-libbed by the teacher, to reach students. For others, students use their visual literacy skills to glean culture in pictures and videos. Videos can be stopped to give time for teachers to ask questions. Or, articles can be rewritten to a lower level and key terms can be highlighted. Sentence starters are a good support for first-time language students to comment on what they have read or seen. Finally, reflecting on what a learner has observed in their native language is a way to solidify understanding.

Remember, most of the resources you will see are French— only one per set is about another culture. Please note: look in the speaker’s notes of the slides for links and activities.