Topic:  Phones

Unit Rationale

Phones are a part of daily life, whether French or American.  Understanding phone usage offers cultural insights and comparisons.  It is also important to know how to use a phone in France.  To these ends, students will learn phone vocabulary, the format of a French phone number, key phrases that they will typically hear in a French phone conversation, and how to use a French calling card.  They will also compare and contrast their phone habits with their French counterparts.  Putting new information into practice, students will converse with each other and with native French speakers.  They will also evaluate French phone companies, investigate phone etiquette issues, and determine the affect of phones on their own lives.

Essential Questions:

• How do you evaluate options?  What are features you would look for in a phone if you moved to France?  What features could you live without?
• What is good phone etiquette?  How do phones affect our lives, both positively and negatively?

Students will be able to...

• conduct a French telephone conversation (with American and French peers)
• list steps to use a French calling card
• compare and contrast French teens’ phone usage with their own habits

Students will know...

• the imperative mood
• telephone vocabulary
• format of French phone number
• the names of French phone companies
• French texting abbreviations
• French phone habits, compared to US

Students will already need to know...

• verbs:  -er, avoir, être
• numbers:  up to 99
• how to form questions

ACTFL Standards

• Communication
  • Standard 1.1:  Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions.
  • Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on

a variety of topics.

• Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.
• Cultures
  • Standard 2.2:  Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between

the products and perspectives of the culture studied.

• Connections
  • Standard 3.1:  Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language.
• Comparisons
  • Standard 4.2:  Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.
• Communities
  • Standard 5.1:  Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting.

Subtopics/Objectives

• Basics of using French phones
  • Label parts of a telephone in French
  • Tell someone how to use a French calling card
  • Recognize and use common phone phrases by simulating a phone conversation
  • Apply phone phrases in authentic application with native French speakers
• Phone companies
  • Identify major French phone companies
  • Interpret a chart comparing cell phone service providers
  • Choose a French cell phone service provider based on knowledge of their services
• Uses of phones
  • Interpret a graph showing multimedia usage of cell phones by age group in France
  • Conduct a survey to determine how Americans use their cell phones
• Texting
  • Recognize and use French texting abbreviations in a mock text conversation
• Phone etiquette
  • Brainstorm polite and impolite usage of cell phones
  • Role play scenes depicting good and bad cell phone etiquette
• Evaluation of phones
  • Rank features of cell phones that are important to them
  • Analyze cell phones and how they affect their lives, positively and negatively

Activities

• Orange advertisement:  students will examine the text and pictures of an Orange advertisement, describing it, comparing and contrasting it to American cell phone ads, and discussing hands-free headsets and whether it should be legal to drive while talking on a cell phone
• Phone part bingo:  students will receive a bingo card that displays various parts of a telephone; they will identify each part when it is called out by placing a marker on the appropriate picture
• Calling card directions:  students will use the imperative mood to direct a friend how to use a French calling card
• Mixxer:  the class will go to a computer lab; students will create accounts on Mixxer (http://www.language-exchanges.org/), where they will find a language partner in a French-speaking country.  Before speaking with their partner, students will create goals for themselves.  Using Skype, students will then call their language partner, conversing half the time in French, half in English.  Afterwards, students will do a self-assessment, determining how well they met their goals.
• Survey project:  After looking at a graph that shows multimedia usage of cell phones by age group in France, students will conduct their own survey to create a similar graph for Americans.  In class, they will survey three of their peers, asking questions and receiving answers in French.  Out of class, they will ask the same questions to three people between the ages of 25 and 39, and three people 40 years old or older, in English.  Once they have their raw data, as a class students will pool their figures and create a graph that compares American multimedia usage to the French.
• Texting abbreviations:  Have students as a class brainstorm abbreviations they use in texting.  Have them make guesses at what the French might say for each phrase.  Present them with what is actually used, then have students “text” each other in French by writing down a text that uses some of the abbreviations, exchanging it with a partner, and then having them write back.
• Phone etiquette:  Make a list of polite and impolite phone usage on the board.  When is it appropriate to text or talk on your cell phone, and when is it inappropriate?  In groups of three or four, have students create two scenarios, one in which phone usage is appropriate, and one in which it is not.  Have students take notes on each other’s skits and then write about whether they agree with their classmates’ assessments of appropriate and inappropriate phone usage.  For example, do they agree with group #1 that “X” is appropriate and “Y” is not?  Finally, have them analyze cell phones—what benefits do they bring, and what disadvantages do they have?

Assessments

Formative

• Daily observation of students’ progress during above activities
• Student self-assessment after Skype conversation

Summative

• Phone part quiz:  students will match images of phone parts to the French vocabulary word
• Imperative form quiz:  students will explain the formula for determining the imperative form, explain when it is used, and write out steps using the imperative to instruct a stranger how to use a calling card
• Phone conversation:  students will receive various scenarios to portray via phone conversations (ex:  call to talk to a friend, but s/he is not there, so must leave a message with his or her parent); perform for the class.  Give the students in the audience sheets that contain new vocabulary; they must circle words that they hear in each conversation.  Assessment will be based on a rubric.
• Cell phone service provider comparison:  By examining a chart that compares services of various French cell phone service providers, have students choose a company and state their reasons for their choice in a written paragraph.  Assessment will be based on a rubric.
• Conversation at a phone store:  students will role-play conversations between a customer and a salesperson in which the customer asks for a phone that has certain features.  Have students in the audience write down which features each group prefers.  Assessment will be based on a rubric.