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Aural anagrams and jumbled sentences

Just to share a couple of language activities which worked well with my classes and which need nil preparation (always a good thing).

Aural anagrams

A simple plenary or starter activity to develop eye for detail and spelling. This works for all levels as long as the class can spell in French.

You just spell out words or phrases, mixing up the letters as you do so, as if you are spelling an anagram. The pupils may guess the word at any time and you can do the activity as a team game. You can penalise those who make random guesses too soon by taking off points from their team.

Aural jumbled sentences

Not dissimilar to the above, but this time you operate at the whole word level. I did this today with my Year 7 class who are learning the verb aller with prepositions and places about town

e.g.  Le cinéma est en face de la gare.
       Nous sommes derrière le musée près de la piscine.

You read out the words in the wrong order and the first to guess the whole sentence gets a point. I like this activity because it gets pupils to think at the syntactic level, making links between subjects, verbs and prepositions.

Pupils seem to like puzzle-like games of this sort and, although they do not resemble genuine communication, they do serve a useful linguistic purpose.

*****************

My A2 class made me laugh today. We are practising for the oral exam during which they'll be talking about the films of Claude Berri, including Jean de Florette and Manon des sources. They were wondering about how they might impress the visiting examiner and get an advantage. One suggested taking out a harmonica and playing the familiar theme tune, another suggested dressing as a hunchback, but my favourite was the normally very reserved young lady who thought it would be an idea to go in with a goat in tow.

Favourite line from Manon des sources - Ugolin: C'est pas moi qui pleure, c'est mes yeux.

I do like my A-level classes.

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