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FOREIGN LANGUAGES
&
THE LITERARY IN THE EVERYDAY
open lessons for
L2 literacy

Lessons > Perspective Play

Examples: point of view, characterization, mood, evaluation, judgment

Un portrait chinois

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Lesson Title: Un portrait chinois [ A Chinese Portrait ]
Lesson Author: Joanna Luks
Instructional Language: English
Level of Activities: College / 1. year
Text Title: The Proust and Pivot personality questionnaires
Text Language: French
FLLITE Form: LLDQ, Perspective Play

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Text

Text Title: The Proust and Pivot personality questionnaires
Text Language: French
Text Author: Proust, Marcel / Pivot, Bernard
Genre: Portraits and Biographies
Topic: n/a

Lesson

Lesson Title: Un portrait chinois [ A Chinese Portrait ]
Instructional Language: English
Lesson Author: Joanna Luks
Level of Activities: College / 1. year
Pedagogical Practices: n/a
Grammar Focus: n/a
Main Objectives:
Cultural Knowledge & Mindset
Reading: The use of Chinese portraits in 19th century English popular culture and 20th century American and French television media. / Examining question forms and content that reveal tastes and aspirations.
Language Use & Strategies
Reading: Utilizing decoding strategies for reading comprehension. / Assessing personality based on evidence found in answers to questions.
Writing: Using noun phrases/clauses as information questions and a variety of noun forms as answers. / Linking ideas with punctuation.
Visualization: Selecting an image for symbolic representation.
FLLITE Form: LLDQ, Perspective Play

Respect et verité

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Lesson Title: Respect et verité [ Respect and Truth ]
Lesson Author: Joanna Luks
Instructional Language: English
Level of Activities: College / 1. year
Text Title: Three self-portraits
Text Language: French
FLLITE Form: LLDQ, Perspective Play

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Text

Text Title: Three self-portraits
Text Language: French
Text Author: High school students in France and Poland
Genre: Portraits and Biographies / Descriptions
Topic: n/a

Lesson

Lesson Title: Respect et verité [ Respect and Truth ]
Instructional Language: English
Lesson Author: Joanna Luks
Level of Activities: College / 1. year
Pedagogical Practices: n/a
Grammar Focus: n/a
Main Objectives:
Cultural Knowledge & Mindset
Reading: Background information on the Enlightenment values of self respect and honesty.
Language Use & Strategies
Reading: Identifying emotionally charged words and sentence structures for balancing honesty with self-respect.
Writing: Applying softening techniques for describing someone with respectful accuracy. / Controlling length by avoiding repeated words and redundant information.
Visualization: Including a photograph of the portrayed subject for verifying accuracy of description.
FLLITE Form: LLDQ, Perspective Play

Taking Inventory

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Lesson Title: Taking Inventory
Lesson Author: Chelsea Steinert / Chantelle Warner
Instructional Language: German / English
Level of Activities: College / 1. year, 2. year / Novice
Text Title: Inventur
Text Language: German
FLLITE Form: Genre Play, Perspective Play

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Text

Text Title: Inventur
Text Language: German
Text Author: Günter Eich
Genre: Poetry
Topic: Talents and Interests

Lesson

Lesson Title: Taking Inventory
Instructional Language: German / English
Lesson Author: Chelsea Steinert / Chantelle Warner
Level of Activities: College / 1. year, 2. year / Novice
Pedagogical Practices: Reading / Writing / Viewing
Grammar Focus: Predicative adjectives / Relational verbs
Main Objectives:

Students learn words for personal vocabulary, while reflecting on how the relative importance of these items changes in particular personal or historical moments; the featured example is the poem “Inventur” by Günter Eich

Texts, Genres & Practices
  • Reading and responding to the poem “Inventur” by Günter Eich – written when he was a prisoner of war during WWII – , which takes the form of a personal inventory
  • Writing a personal poem on the model of Eich’s “Inventur”
Cultural Knowledge & Mindset
  • Analyzing the ways in which a list of possessions reflects aspects of a person and his/her priorities in a given cultural/historical moment.
  • Conceptualizing understatement and the unsaid as meaningful – especially in particular genres
  • expressing personal values attached to objects and comparing those values with those of others
Language Use & Strategies
  • poems as play with other genres
  • expressing and analyzing possessions and relations to personal objects
FLLITE Form: Genre Play, Perspective Play

Kleider machen Leute

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Lesson Title: Kleider machen Leute [ Clothes Make People ]
Lesson Author: Chantelle Warner
Instructional Language: German / English
Level of Activities: College / 1. year / Novice
Text Title: Hilfe! Ich bin ein Junge film poster, synopsis and trailer
Text Language: German
FLLITE Form: Perspective Play

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Text

Text Title: Hilfe! Ich bin ein Junge film poster, synopsis and trailer
Text Language: German
Text Author: n/a
Genre: Advertisements and Personal ads / TV and Film
Topic: Clothing / School and University

Lesson

Lesson Title: Kleider machen Leute [ Clothes Make People ]
Instructional Language: German / English
Lesson Author: Chantelle Warner
Level of Activities: College / 1. year / Novice
Pedagogical Practices: Reading / Speaking / Viewing
Grammar Focus: Separable prefix verbs / Temporal adverbs
Main Objectives:

In working with an advertising poster, a written synopsis, and a trailer for a popular German family film, students describe the clothing and daily activities of the two main figures and consider the relationship between these aspects of everyday life and identity, especially gender identity, and how these are played with in these texts that represent the movie.

Texts, Genres & Practices
  • Viewing and responding to paratext – i.e. a poster, a synopsis, and and a film clip – for a family film with a formulaic/familiar plot line (switched identity).
  • Writing a poster for an imagined film in which another aspect of identity is switched and Describing other students’ posters.
Cultural Knowledge & Mindset
  • Identifying and discussing the ways in which clothing and daily routines index aspects of identity, such as gender. Analyzing the realization of these aspects in films and their marketing.
  • Comparing formulaic plot lines in German and American films—in this case, the identity swap—and interpreting the potential morals or messages of those films.
  • Expressing and comparing cultural expressions of identity.
Language Use & Strategies
  • Symbolic play (juxtapositions)
  • Cultural play (gender norms, formulaic plots)
FLLITE Form: Perspective Play

Das Modalverbengedicht

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Lesson Title: Das Modalverbengedicht [ The modal verbs poem ]
Lesson Author: Trez Norwood and Chantelle Warner
Instructional Language: German / English
Level of Activities: College / 1. year / Novice
Text Title: Modalverben-Gedicht
Text Language: German
FLLITE Form: Grammar Play, Perspective Play

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Text

Text Title: Modalverben-Gedicht
Text Language: German
Text Author: Unknown
Genre: Poetry
Topic: Wants, Needs, and Obligations

Lesson

Lesson Title: Das Modalverbengedicht [ The modal verbs poem ]
Instructional Language: German / English
Lesson Author: Trez Norwood and Chantelle Warner
Level of Activities: College / 1. year / Novice
Pedagogical Practices: Reading / Writing / Speaking
Grammar Focus: modal verbs / subordinate clauses (with wenn)
Main Objectives:

In this lesson, learners work with the poem “Wenn ich nur darf…” in order to explore the range of meanings that modal verbs can convey and the ways in which modality can express a particular point of view.

Texts, Genres & Practices
  • Viewing and responding to a poem that plays with the meaning of modal verbs.
  • Writing a version of the model verb poem based on their own wants, needs, and obligations.
Cultural Knowledge & Mindset
  • Discussing the relationship between wants and obligations in everyday life.
Language Use & Strategies
  • Grammar Play (model verbs)
  • Perspective play (modality and the expression of point of view)
FLLITE Form: Grammar Play, Perspective Play

#ExplainAFilmPlotBadly

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Lesson Title: #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly
Lesson Author: Matthew Sherman
Instructional Language: German
Level of Activities: College / 3. year, 4. year / Intermediate, Advanced
Text Title: ExplainAFilmPlotBadly hashtag
Text Language: German/English
FLLITE Form: Culture Play, Genre Play, Perspective Play

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Text

Text Title: ExplainAFilmPlotBadly hashtag
Text Language: German/English
Text Author: Social media users
Genre: Social Media
Topic: Literature, Music, Art

Lesson

Lesson Title: #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly
Instructional Language: German
Lesson Author: Matthew Sherman
Level of Activities: College / 3. year, 4. year / Intermediate, Advanced
Pedagogical Practices: Reading / Writing
Grammar Focus: Subordinate Clauses and Complex Sentences in Expository/Explanatory Prose
Main Objectives:
  • Enhance comprehension of genre as describing forms of expository prose
  • Enhancing awareness of the role of the audience in reading and writing
  • Fostering use of complex sentences as necessary to expository prose; focus on subordinate conjunction difficulties and subordinate clause word order (particular problems in German acquisition; adaptable to other languages, like which conjunctions use subjunctive in Spanish)
Texts, Genres & Practices
  • analyzing, and categorizing tweeted plot blurbs
  • distinguishing blurbs, summaries, and synopses
  • Identifying “bad” versus “good” one-sentence film summaries, in both English and German.
  • Explain how “accuracy” in genre depends on genre convention
  • identify formulae and conventional short forms
Cultural Knowledge & Mindset
  • How to read and understand bias / perspective in summarizing vis-à-vis audience
  • How to correlate content to audience (horizon of expectation)
  • publication sources for blurbs: the hashtags: #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly and https://twitter.com/shiny1jux/status/941299435870609408?lang=en sources for summaries: imdb.com and https://www.amazon.de/)
  • cultural positions of film viewers (and possible cross-cultural comparisons)
Language Use & Strategies
  • markers for point of view and audience in expository prose
  • Identifying and contrasting formal and grammatical elements of long and short-form plot summaries (especially subordinate clauses, use of sentence fragments) = awareness of formulae within and register of genre
  • Correlation of “accuracy” in plot replication with genre conventions, in both lexical choice and grammar
FLLITE Form: Culture Play, Genre Play, Perspective Play

“Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch” – eine deutsche Kurzgeschichte

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Lesson Title: “Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch” – eine deutsche Kurzgeschichte
Lesson Author: Sina Colditz
Instructional Language: German / English
Level of Activities: High school, College / 1. year, 2. year / Novice, Intermediate
Text Title: Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch
Text Language: German
FLLITE Form: Grammar Play, Perspective Play

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Text

Text Title: Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch
Text Language: German
Text Author: Peter Bichsel
Genre: Narratives
Topic: Living Arrangements

Lesson

Lesson Title: “Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch” – eine deutsche Kurzgeschichte
Instructional Language: German / English
Lesson Author: Sina Colditz
Level of Activities: High school, College / 1. year, 2. year / Novice, Intermediate
Pedagogical Practices: Reading / Writing / Speaking / Listening
Grammar Focus: Nouns, Case
Main Objectives:

“Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch” is a favorite of German language textbooks. This lesson, designed for beginning to intermediate learners, pushes learners to reflect on the disconnect of grammatical accuracy and meaning, and to think about language as a sociocultural system. Peter Bichel’s short story.

Texts, Genres & Practices
  • Reading and listening to a German short story.
  • Writing a creative end to the story.
Cultural Knowledge & Mindset
  • Reflecting on language as a shared system of meanings – not simply a set of grammatical rules – and on how communication mediates our relationships with things and people in our world.
Language Use & Strategies
  • The text engages in word play in that the meaning of words is denaturalized to humorous effects. This word play leads to perspective play, because it reveals that words only gain meaning through a shared sense of what they mean; awareness of parts of speech (e.g. verbs, nouns).
FLLITE Form: Grammar Play, Perspective Play

Un journal intime

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Lesson Title: Un journal intime [ A Personal Journal ]
Lesson Author: Jim Law
Instructional Language: French / English
Level of Activities: College / 1. year / Novice
Text Title: Journal d’une étudiante
Text Language: French
FLLITE Form: Culture Play, Narrative Play, Perspective Play, Word Play

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Text

Text Title: Journal d’une étudiante
Text Language: French
Text Author: Anonymous
Genre: Personal Blogs and Journals
Topic: Family, Friendships, and Relationships / School and University

Lesson

Lesson Title: Un journal intime [ A Personal Journal ]
Instructional Language: French / English
Lesson Author: Jim Law
Level of Activities: College / 1. year / Novice
Pedagogical Practices: Reading / Writing / Cultural Understanding
Grammar Focus: Past tense
Main Objectives:

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
FLLITE Form: Culture Play, Narrative Play, Perspective Play, Word Play

Rat de ville ou rat des champs ?

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Lesson Title: Rat de ville ou rat des champs ? [ Town Mouse or Country Mouse? ]
Lesson Author: David Barny
Instructional Language: French / English
Level of Activities: College / 2. year / Intermediate
Text Title: Nouillorc
Text Language: French
FLLITE Form: Culture Play, Genre Play, Perspective Play, Sound Play, Visual Play, Word Play

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Text

Text Title: Nouillorc
Text Language: French
Text Author: Olivier Amsellem, Sébastien Pierre, Sylvain Thirache, Alexander Kalchev
Genre: Advertisements and Personal ads / Image
Topic: Travel and Vacation

Lesson

Lesson Title: Rat de ville ou rat des champs ? [ Town Mouse or Country Mouse? ]
Instructional Language: French / English
Lesson Author: David Barny
Level of Activities: College / 2. year / Intermediate
Pedagogical Practices: Reading / Writing / Speaking / Listening
Grammar Focus: Negation
Main Objectives:

This lesson is designed around one of the posters for an ad campaign by the French National Railway Company SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français). This ad plays on the sounds of the French language and the imagery of the French countryside by comparing it humorously to the sounds of English and the expected imagery of global metropolises. Through humor, this artifact leads the learners to wonder about the relationship between urban and rural cultures/perspectives in France? Does this type of power relationship exist between their native urban and rural cultures? Does it surface in specific cultural practices?

Additionally, students will reflect on advertising strategies in the target culture, while considering the different types of negation in French and their uses.

The final task is designed as a team effort. Student will script and design their own parody of a commercial promoting their college town by reinvesting the semiotic codes they noticed in the various documents under study.

This lesson can easily be implemented in most textbook-based curricula, as these typically include a thematic unit of tourism and traveling, although they rarely, if ever, discuss the issue of centralization and rural desertification.

Texts, Genres & Practices
  • Reading, watching, listening and interpreting the languaculture behind satirical texts (billboards, commercials, comedy sketches)
  • Reading and analyzing a short touristic text on Auvergne (blog)
  • Writing/Designing a script for a satirical commercial promoting a college town
  • Presenting (through promoting) a tourist destination
Cultural Knowledge & Perspectives
  • Analyze French examples of satirical discourse.
  • Conceive advertising as a satirical tool
  • Reflect on the on the part of humor that is culture specific.
  • Compare French advertising with equivalents in the learners’ native culture
  • Discover historical and cultural aspects of French demographics and geography
Language Use & Language Play
  • Word play / Sound play: Subversion of the French phonetic inventory to create rural metropolises.
  • Visual play: subversion of rural semiotics (reinterpreting the visual identity of the French countryside).
  • Culture play: subversion of the theme of rural exodus.
  • Genre play / Perspective play: subversion of the advertising genre by adopting a negative perspective.
  • Language Skills: viewing, reading, listening, writing, speaking, cultural understanding
FLLITE Form: Culture Play, Genre Play, Perspective Play, Sound Play, Visual Play, Word Play

Chante l’amour, chante !

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Lesson Title: Chante l’amour, chante ! [ Sing love, sing! ]
Lesson Author: Marylise Rilliard
Instructional Language: French / English
Level of Activities: High school, College / 1. year / Novice
Text Title: Carmen
Text Language: French
FLLITE Form: Culture Play, Genre Play, Grammar Play, Perspective Play, Sound Play

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Text

Text Title: Carmen
Text Language: French
Text Author: Stromae
Genre: Music and Music Videos
Topic: Family, Friendships, and Relationships / Media and Technology

Lesson

Lesson Title: Chante l’amour, chante ! [ Sing love, sing! ]
Instructional Language: French / English
Lesson Author: Marylise Rilliard
Level of Activities: High school, College / 1. year / Novice
Pedagogical Practices: Reading / Writing / Listening / Viewing / Cultural Understanding
Grammar Focus: Imperative
Main Objectives:

Students will listen to, and read the lyrics of, the song L’amour est un oiseau rebelle by Georges Bizet as an introduction to the theme “love/relationships”. Then, they will watch the video clip and analyze the lyrics of the song Carmen by Stromae, which is directly inspired by the previous song. Students will be able to analyze the effects of the use of lexical fields, borrowings, poetic devices, grammatical tools, music and visuals on a written text. They will make inferences about the intertextuality between the two texts. Students will be able to apply what they learned in their own tweets in the target language to defend a cause or denounce an issue they care about.

Texts, Genres & Practices
  • Reading songs as poetry and recognizing stylistic devices typical of the genre.
  • Analyzing how different elements of a song (sounds, visual, etc.) add meaning to/reinforce the meaning of the written text.
  • Reflecting on intertextuality and what it brings to a text.
  • Writing tweets to support a cause/denounce an issue. Being impactful in few words.
Cultural Knowledge & Perspectives
  • Connecting texts to social practices and question one’s own social (media) practices.
  • Reflecting on the cultural and social values behind the use of foreign words.
  • Reflecting on appropriate and relevant usage of borrowings.
  • Capitalizing on the affordances of social media practices.
Language Use & Language Play
  • Identifying lexical fields and poetic devices and reflecting on their effect.
  • Analyzing the use of tense and pronouns in a warning message.
  • Examining and reflecting on the use of borrowings in a text.
  • Exploring how grammar, lexicon, and sound can be combined to convey meaning effectively.
FLLITE Form: Culture Play, Genre Play, Grammar Play, Perspective Play, Sound Play

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  • Project
    ▼
    • Team
    • Editorial Board
    • Collaborators program
    • About the FLLITE Approach
    • Further Reading
  • Lessons
    ▼
    • Lessons by Language
    • Lessons by Language Play
  • Example Texts
  • How to Participate
  • Connect
  • Provide feedback

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