Language Matters: Discussing Landmarks
Before they start work on this unit, students will have just completed a more general unit on locations within a city, starting with a general sense of these places and then applying them to locally relevant cities. 4 They will have used prepositional phrases to make relational comparisons between landmarks within their own cities, such as supermarkets, parks, museums, and schools, and they will have given and followed directions between points on a map. In this unit, which is really the next component of that unit, students will identify landmarks they learn about within Paris and describe them (a skill practiced in the unit that occurred just before the local locations one, as they described their homes and rooms within those homes). Introducing the sites they explore in Paris will be the basis of communication activities among students. At first, the tasks will focus on one location at a time; later, students can introduce several locations at once, explaining to each other how the locations are related on a map and perhaps asking fellow students to follow directions on a map in order to get from one location to another. You may want to introduce Metro maps and relevant vocabulary in order to facilitate "travel" between distant locations.
Unit vocabulary will largely depend on what you have taught previously. The following is a basic selection of unit-specific vocabulary and grammar concepts:
Talking About Landmarks
- Voilà ... (Name of Location). Here is....
- Il/elle est dans le X ième arrondissement. It is in the X st/rd/th arrondissement/quarter/district.
- Il/elle est (adjective) et (adjective). It is (adjective) and (adjective).
- Il/elle est près de (a location) et loin de (another location). It is near to (a location) and far from (another location).
- C'est un/une... (building type) ... (adjective). It is a (adjective) (building type).
- Adjective agreement and placement
- Use of Il/Elle est vs. C'est.
Coming and Going, Near Past and Near Future
- Aller à + location— to go to a location
- Venir de + location — to come from a location
- Aller + verb infinitive— to be going to do something (Near future/ Futur proche)
- Venir de + verb infinitive — to have just done something (Near past / PassÉ proche)
- À + Definite Article / De + Definite Article
Present-Tense Verbs — What I am Doing There
- Regular –ER verbs – first person singular
- Exception — ER verbs – first person singular
- (Perhaps third person plural forms of verbs)
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