No-prep fun French listening activity

Want a fun no-prep French listening activity to get students up and moving during la rentrée? We need to get students back to speaking and listening in French, but that’s a huge challenge after a few months at home, right? Students love this activity, because the movement and social connections make it so engaging!

During la rentrée (and all throughout the year) 4 corners is my favorite French listening activity! You can use it as a structured activity in your lesson plans, but it’s also a great way to practice listening comprehension with any set of vocabulary, anytime you have a few extra minutes!

HOW TO DO THIS FRENCH LISTENING ACTIVITY:

Put a sign in each corner of your room with 4 different sayings. For beginners, I use “J’adore, J’aime, Je n’aime pas, Je déteste.” I laminate them and keep them up all year, because we use them ALL the time, but you can just stick them on the walls where you’ve got space.

Bonus? They are really helpful for exposing your newest French students to basic French expressions they’ll use all through the year. It’s a French listening activity you can do over and I’ve and all you do is change up the listening prompts to match your unit!

Next, you will call out words or statements that students are learning or reviewing, and you’ll have them move to the corner that applies to how they feel. For example, you can call out a French vocabulary word from your French food unit such as “les tomates.” Students would go to the corner of the room that tells how they feel (like, don’t like, etc). For me, it’s DEFINITELY je déteste! 😉

If students need more practice with the vocabulary, you can always hold up word wall cards so they’ll hear the words, see the image, and see the written word. Visuals are the perfect way to support any French listening activity!

After all students have chosen a corner, you can randomly call on students or ask for volunteers to use a complete sentence to tell how they feel about the topic. You can follow it up by asking them to explain their answers or tell something they like instead.

So, for me, I’d say “Je déteste les tomates, mais j’adore les carottes.”

FOR INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED FRENCH STUDENTS:

For intermediate and advanced students, I use cards like these shown below. This French listening activity becomes a starting point for more in-depth discussions. You can extend the learning easily and it becomes a speaking activity, too!

I used something like during a classroom observation, and my administrator loved it so much that he asked to come back and record it the next time I did something like this so he could share with others!

With more advanced students, I do this with debatable topics, and it’s often something that I have pulled from a novel we are studying. Some examples that you could use just about any time might be:

• Students should be allowed to use phones at school.
• Students should be required to wear uniforms.
• The book is better than the movie. (I’ll always read the book!)

Then, I have them discuss the ideas once they get to their corners. From there, you can have them debate with the other corners. You can use any particular theme you might be working on it class, but you don’t have to stick to a particular set of vocabulary if you don’t want to.

Extend the learning by having each student choose one topic that they felt strongly about. As a follow-up assignment, you can do a ten-minute journal entry or have the students write a paragraph as homework where they explain their stance and explaining why they felt that way.

GET THIS FRENCH LISTENING ACTIVITY!

Want these posters and ideas for extending the learning for your beginners as well as your intermediate and advanced French students? Grab them below!