Hobbies And Interests
Word Games
Teachers can create simple word games for beginning French learners. A word search will help students learn to look for Gallic letter combinations and words in a larger context, while crossword puzzles help students with vocabulary. If crossword clues are also in French, the game will help students learn French words in French context, thereby helping students contextualize and think in the language. Word scramble, in which teachers give students a scrambled spelling of a common French word and ask them to untangle the letters, also helps build vocabulary.
Online Games
Online sources such as Digital Dialects and the BBC Language School have a host of French computer games for beginners. Digital Dialects offers unit-specific vocabulary and grammar games on numbers, animals, common phrases, verbs in various states of conjugation, time and date and plenty more. The BBC focuses on elementary and middle school students, with games such as "Where do you live?," "How Old Are You?," and "What's This?" The games are ideal for students to work on individually at home or in groups in the classroom.
Murder Mystery
French online language resource Polar FLE has detailed, printable instructions for a grammar game for beginners that involves the investigation of a murder. Instructors can also create personalized games based on a favorite mystery book, involving members of the class. The game is straightforward: a woman has been murdered. A handful of simple sentences, with appropriate vocabulary, describe the crime and students receive a list of suspects. In simple French sentences, or even with individual words, students put together clues and interrogate the suspects. Students present their findings in a short paragraph or two and solve the crime.