Lessons > Narrative Play

Students read excerpts from the anonymous diary of a Parisian high school student. They will be able to analyse the effect of anonymity and privacy on content, perspective, and grammatical form in the personal journal genre. They will also identify patterns in the structuring of quotidian narratives. Students will then be able to employ these narrative structures in their own journaling and reflect on their experience playing with this genre in the target language.

Texts, Genres & Practices

• Reading journal entries and recognizing layers of meaning
• Reflecting on the effect of audience design and privacy on genre
• Writing journal entries reflecting personal values and experiences

Cultural Knowledge & Perspectives

• Inferring authorial identity and social relationships from textual evidence
• Connecting texts to cultural systems and practices
• Reflecting on the experience of private writing from a bilingual perspective

Language Use & Language Play

• Identifying nonstandard language
• Analyzing the use of tense in narrative structure
• Examining the use of codeswitching and wordplay in informal registers
• Manipulating tense to structure narrative in writing
• Exploring nonstandard forms through private writing