French Chicken Licken

[sophieannac]

I loved the Chicken licken story but it contains a few gramatical mistakes, eg: "il etait une fois, une noisette qui etait tombee sur Chicken Licken" "il faut que je le dise au roi" "et c'etait la fin..."

[LisaD]

Can you provide a link to the flipchart so we can see who submitted it?

Lisa

[sophieannac]

Here's the link
http://www.prometheanplanet.com/uk/server/show/ConResource.9149

[Liam OMarah]

Thanks Sophie.

I will look into the flipchart and have one of my French colleagues inspect it.

Merci beaucoup pour votre assistance!

[invinoveritas]

Sophieannac makes two important points.

Flipcharts must be factually correct. Recently, I used in a lesson an Activote flp from the fabulous Resources that are available on the Planet. The style was completely different from mine, and the pupils enjoyed the lovely images etc. Luckily, though, I had done my research beforehand, and had amended two pages where the ‘correct’ answer was simply wrong – I double-checked several sources (and my subject knowledge is secure!).

But critics must be sure of their facts too! Grammatical errors might be oversights or typos – we’re all very busy in teaching – but the critic must offer the correct alternative.

“Once upon a time, a nut fell upon Chicken Licken.” That’s a finite action in the past, so the passé composé (perfect) tense is needed – il était une fois, une noisette est tombée sur CL. ‘qui tombait’ is a continuous action, which the falling nut clearly isn’t.

In fact, a whole variety of tenses appear in the flp, but perhaps that’s how French is taught in the US. In the UK, pupils learn the present, the prefect, the future, and then the imperfect. There are strict rules in narrative French as to which tenses are used when.

The written text ‘il faut que je le dise au roi’ is correct, but the spoken narrative needs to be amended, certainly. There’s nothing wrong with the final page, except for the redundant accent over the ‘i’ of ‘C’était’.

I am a native French speaker, btw.