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How to Use Songs on Cassettes, CDs, and DVDs in an AP French Language Course
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by Eliane Kurbegov
Miami-Dade County Public Schools
Dade County, Florida
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| | Songs are wonderful tools to teach the skills necessary for students to be successful in the AP French Language course. They can be used to sharpen listening skills when the teacher plays songs without providing the lyrics or with partial text only. Additionally, the lyrics of a song often provide powerful reading comprehension material. Carefully selected songs also present an array of discussion and essay topics. Finally, songs can be used to introduce and expand upon a theme, enrich students' vocabulary, and review various points of grammar.
Songs on Cassettes or CDs
Songs can be purchased online in the form of cassettes or CDs from a number of stores in the United States and Canada. It is worth noting that some individual songs like "Vole" by Céline Dion are available at the nominal charge of one euro and fifty cents from
 www.fnac.com.
My investment in Jean-Jacques Goldman's CD En passant and in Céline Dion's cassette D'eux has been immensely worthwhile, as I have created and used many activities based on songs from those albums. I scanned the lyrics, which came with the songs, and printed the text in a student-friendly format with blank spaces to be filled while listening to the songs. I separated the song into stanzas, which I numbered for easy reference. For each song I wrote a questionnaire with comprehension, analysis, and synthesis questions. I also devised activities such as rewriting the song in a different time or context, creating a new title for it, or illustrating it.
Jean-Jaques Goldman
I routinely use Jean-Jacques Goldman's "On ira," "Le coureur," and "Nos mains" from the album En passant.
The song "On ira" allows students to interpret the numerous metaphors (e.g., les chercheurs d'or, les étoiles) and discuss freedom, independence, and evasion. I also ask students to rewrite the lyrics as if the story took place in the past instead of alluding to the future. This facilitates a review of imparfait, passé composé, and plus-que-parfait.
The song "Le coureur" allows me to prompt discussion on the topics of sports, commercial exploitation of athletes, immigration, cultural abandonment, and difficult life choices. I also use it to practice mapping out a "champ lexical," which facilitates establishing a context for main ideas in a listening or reading passage. The importance of vocabulary words like "alizés" and "pieds nus" is underlined. The effect of comparisons, similes, contrasts, alliterations, assonances, and rhythm is analyzed as it would be in any poem.
"Nos mains" allows us to explore the symbolism of various hand gestures, discuss aggressive behaviors, and appreciate the humanistic message in the lyrics. To target the various symbolic interpretations, I ask students to draw a picture of the main idea in each stanza. It is then easy to talk about the hand described as a fist in contrast with an open hand used in a caress. The last two lines in the song are:
Quand on ouvre comme un écrin
Quand on ouvre nos mains
This image never fails to produce beautiful pictures of a jewelry box containing a precious gift, thus conveying the message of an open hand as a precious gift to humanity.
The vocabulary students review or learn includes anatomical components of the hand, i.e., phalanges, tendons, and ongles, but also such useful verbs as plier, nouer, griffer, agresser, caresser, se déserrer, tendre, and relâcher.
Céline Dion
Another set of songs I use regularly consists of "Vole," "J'attendais," and "J'irai où tu iras" by Céline Dion.
I created a matching vocabulary exercise as a pre-listening activity for the song "Vole." As the song alludes to the soul of a departed loved one (Céline's niece who died at a young age), my students also read the poem "Souffles" by Birago Diop and discuss various beliefs concerning "l'au-dela" before they hear the song. When they listen to it, they are familiar with most of the vocabulary of the song from the matching exercise, as well as various expressions of spirituality. After listening to the song, we analyze the rhymes, tone, and stylistic devices in the text. I often ask students to paraphrase passages like the following:
Qu'ici rien ne te retienne
Que tes souffrances cessent
Using these two lines as a model (thus practicing the use of the subjunctive), students write a poem in which they express wishes for a loved one.
One pre-listening activity requires individual students to anticipate the theme of the song "J'attendais" based on its title (the imparfait tense is a good indicator). The different ideas are then shared. Another pre-reading exercise I devised for the song requires students to reconstruct a general interpretation of the song, which I wrote and separated into scrambled segments. After listening to the song, filling in the blanks in the partial text of the lyrics, and answering oral and written questions about the theme of the song (childhood-adolescence), students rewrite the song in the present tense, personalizing it by substituting what the singer was waiting for with what they are personally expecting from life.
The song "J'irai où tu iras" includes vocabulary that may be unknown to students, making it imperative to familiarize them with such expressions as "les clics et les clacs," "le tabernacle," and "l'escampette." I do this by presenting a list of words taken from the song with their definitions. I ask five or six groups of students to write sentences (usually three) with selected words. We share all the sentences orally and then play charades. After listening to the song and viewing the text, students work in groups to answer questions about metaphors like "Montre-moi tes Eden, montre-moi tes enfers" or the meaning of images like "On entend les cris de New York et les bateaux sur la Seine." For a postlistening activity students write an essay on the following topic: "Dans la chanson d'amour que vous avez écoutée, la chanteuse est prête à suivre son amant où qu'il aille. Vous basant sur un exemple précis de la littérature, parlez d'un couple où l'un ou l'autre a fait un grand sacrifice par amour de l'autre."
Songs and Video Clips
The Web site
www.frenchculture.org
will provide study guides for a great variety of contemporary French music videos especially selected and edited for use in the classroom. Lyrics for each song appear as subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Complete study guides can be downloaded. These provide artist profiles, vocabulary, lyrics, and links to other related Internet resources. These videos are available through TV5 and PBS stations but can also be obtained by contacting Adam Steg at aasteg@aol.com and mailing blank DVDs or CDs to the audiovisual department at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Louisiana. Some of the singers currently featured include Patricia Kaas, Francis Cabrel, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Véronique Sanson, Alain Souchon, Georges Brassens, and Johnny Halliday.
The following generic activities can make good use of these video clips:
- Recreating the sequence of events in the video after watching the clip one single time
- Anticipating how the clip could unfold based on listening to the song and looking at the text
- Brainstorming based on the title of the song before listening to the song and watching the clip
- Watching the clip without sound or subtitles and trying to imagine the lyrics
- Conducting simulations: interviewing the artist/songwriter/singer
- Writing a letter to the artist expressing an opinion on the clip
- Organizing a class project: based on a selected song, creating the scenario of a clip, using all students in the class as participants
I recently ordered the DVD Clips pour apprendre #7 from Cultural Services in Louisiana. It contained the Fredericks/Goldman/Jones video clip for "Né en 17 à Leidenstadt." I downloaded the study guide and the lyrics from
www.leplaisirdapprendre.com
as recommended on
www.espacefrancophone.org.
Since the first stanza of the song summarizes the theme of the song, I wrote it on the board and used it as a prompt for a pre-listening/pre-viewing discussion.
Si j'étais né en dix-sept à Leidenstadt
Sur les ruines d'un champ de bataille,
Aurais-je été meilleur ou pire que ces gens,
Si j'avais été allemand?
My students understood the reference to World War I; they shared knowledge of the events that led to the war and the impact of the war on European countries, especially France and Germany. I then gave them the remainder of the lyrics. I provided a list of vocabulary definitions as well as questions from the study guide. I then played the clip (sound and picture). Students first worked in groups of two brainstorming about some of the visual effects and how these effects enhanced the text. A whole class discussion ensued about "choosing sides" and patriotism. The concluding activity was an essay by each student on the suggested topic: " Si vous étiez chef d'état, quelles seraient vos sept premières priorités? Pourquoi?"
Eliane Kurbegov has been teaching for the last 23 years at the Miami-Dade Public School System, where she has taught all levels of French, including AP French Language and French Literature. National Board Certified and vice-president of the American Association of Teachers of French, she has authored numerous workshops at the local, state, and national levels and has served at the Reading in AP French for many years.
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