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Guide > Core: The Modules > Analyzing questionnaire 2

ANALYZING QUESTIONNAIRE 2: SENTENCE COMPLETIONS

ASSIGNMENT BEFORE CLASS

Once the answers to questionnaire 2 are posted on the Web, tell your students to:

• select two of the sentences on the list and for each of those words:
• look up in a dictionary the words, expressions or references they don't understand.
• print those answers
• classify the responses by categories (they need to define what those are)
• see what categories are more prevalent in one culture versus the other.
• write their observations and bring them to class.

Give them sufficient time.

FOLLOW-UP CLASS ACTIVITY

1. Work on references and vocabulary. Can also be done at the end of class.

Ask students to write on the board words, expressions or proper nouns they have encountered and elucidated, then ask them to clarify them for students. Elaborate if necessary. If students have not been able to find the meaning, either tell them or ask them to send a query on the forum later.

Ask students to find 1 or 2 other partners who have worked on the same sentence and share their findings: what did they observe? Students can focus on the observations they wrote down. If you have enough boards in your class, you might want to have your students work on the blackboard instead of in their chairs. After students have worked together on one sentence for a while, ask them to work on another sentence: they will automatically change partners.

Ask students to now group themselves with other students (3 or 4 per group) who have worked on a different sentence (any sentence) and share their observations. In one group, there will be, for instance, one student who has worked on "un enfant bien elevé", another on "un bon voisin", another one on "mes plus grandes craintes". Students share with each other what they have observed about one of their sentences and the others, at the end, will say whether they saw correlations or similarities across these different sentences (ex: emphasis, perhaps, on the notion of "politeness" on the French side and the importance of affect on the American side).

Ask groups to share their observations with the rest of the class. If students have worked on the board, you might have the whole class draw arrows connecting certain words and/or concepts which seem to appear often.

Encourage students to make connections with what they might have observed while working on the first questionnaire. Do they see some correlations? Contradictions? Have students share their findings.

At the end of the class, tell students to post observations on the forums. These can be based on their individual observations as well as on group or class observations.

2. Systematic work on language. The following example is based upon the Fall 99 answers to the sentence "un bon voisin/a good neighbor".

Vocabulary

Ask students to say aloud words they don't understand (ex: "dépanner") and see if another student can provide the answer (either a translation or an explanation in French, depending on the level of your students and/or your own wishes). Have the whole class provide other contexts for that word (qui peut-on dépanner? dans quelles circonstances? etc...)

Ask students to try and provide the French translation of: to help; to ask; to smile, etc..; the equivalent of : "to watch over" : garder..? s'occuper de..? surveiller..? Ask: 'que peut-on demander &agrav; des voisins de "garder", de "surveiller", de "s'occuper"? etc...

Grammar.

Verbs (one possibility among others). You can ask students - in groups - to:

• make a list of all the verbs and provide the infinitive form
• organize the verbs by type of endings: verbs ending in --er (dépanner; discuter; garder; proposer, prêter etc..); verbs ending in -- ir (prévenir; accueillir);
• ask them if they are regular or irregular verbs (if students have their dictionary in class, have them check) - choose some verbs and have students conjugate (in one or several tenses). ex: dire; permettre; rendre, pouvoir, savoir, etc...
• pick out pronominal verbs (ex: "se rendre"; "s'entendre"
• If there are spelling or grammar mistakes made by the French, tell them to look for them (ex: de bonne relations)