Les Virelangues (Tongue Twisters)
Earlier this year I spent some time with my fourth and fifth graders going over the basics of French pronunciation. Nothing too complicated, just the essential accent marks (this accent dance was a winner!), vowel pronunciation, and particularities of sounds that don't exist in English. My goal is for them to be able to read written French even if they don't know the meaning or haven't seen the words before.
As a culminating project, I had them work on French tongue twisters and create posters to show the meanings of the virelangues for performance in an all-school assembly. Although we ran out of time for the second piece, it was a fun way for them to get their mouths around the trickier sounds and made for a cute wall display:
I used this site to select the virelangues, and was able to find some really great ones that were easy to differentiate. Here are the ones I used:
Zazie causait avec sa cousine
en cousant.
Zazie was chatting with her cousin
while sewing.
Trois tortues trottaient sur un trottoir très étroit.
Three turtles trotted along a very
straight sidewalk.
Un gros porc dort
au bord du beau port du Bordeaux.
A big pig sleeps beside the lovely
port of Bordeaux.
Dans la tente ta tante t’attend !
Your aunt is waiting for you in the
tent!
As-tu vu le tutu de tulle de Lili d'Honolulu?
Have you seen Honolulu Lily’s tulle
tutu?
Sachez, mon cher Sasha, que Natasha n'attacha pas son
chat !
Know, my dear Sasha, that Natasha
didn’t tie up her cat!
.JPG)
0 comments