Making sentence builders more communicative

Here is an example of an easy sentence builder from frenchteacher.net

Ce que mon ami(e) aime faire (What my friend likes to do)

regarder la télé (to watch TV)

aller en ville (to go into town)

aller au cinéma (to go to the le weekend (at the J’adore ça aussi (I

cinema) weekend) love that too)

jouer des jeux vidéo (to play

computer games)
le soir (in the evening) J’aime bien ça aussi (I
faire du sport (to do sport) like that too)
Mon ami(e)
chatter en ligne (to chat
…. aime quand il fait beau (when
online)
the weather’s nice) Ça ne m’intéresse
(My
jouer des jeux de société (to pas (That doesn’t
friend….
play board games) interest me)
likes….)
quand il fait mauvais
faire du vélo (to go out on
(when the weather’s bad)
his/her bike)

faire les courses (to go

shopping)

il/elle a regardé un bon film (he/she watched a

good film)
hier soir (last night)
il/elle a acheté des vêtements (he/she bought
clothes)
Par le weekend dernier (last
il/elle a joué au tennis (he/she played tennis)
exemple weekend)
(for il/elle a joué au Monopoly (he/she played
example) Monopoly)
samedi dernier (last Saturday)
il/elle a joué au foot (he/she played football)

il/elle a regardé une série sur Netflix (he/she

watched a series on Netflix)

Next, here is a typical teaching sequence, of the type we have suggested in Breaking the Sound
Barrier:

1. Read aloud some examples. Start with just the first row.
2. Do some choral repetition for pupils to get used to saying the sentences.
3. Get pupils in pairs to make up sentences (or do this as a whole class task with hands up or
down)
4. Then move to the next line and so on.
5. In the end get pupils to make up full descriptions using all three lines.
6. Then take away the displayed items and see what they can do from memory.
7. If the above needs support use the “aural gap-fill technique”, i.e. give them parts of each
sentence orally, then they complete.
8. With some classes you could invite them to make up their own additions in each slot – some
will ask about other destinations.
9. Do some call and response translation into French.
10. Play Mind Reader - where you think of a sentence which pupils must guess.
11. You may like the idea of pupils recording their mini talks at the end or for homework if you
give them a copy of the sentence frame.

What other elements (or alternative ones) could you add?

Exploiting the oral-situational way of doing things (question-answer and other interactions), you
could then ask:

Comment s'appelle ton ami(e)?

Il (elle) aime aller au cinéma?
Il préfère faire du sport ou aller en ville?
Il préfère faire du sport, aller en ville ou chatter en ligne?
Et toi, qu'est-ce que tu préfères faire - faire du sport ou aller en ville? Pourquoi?
Ton ami(e) aime faire du vélo?
Et ta mère?
Et toi, est-ce que tu aimes faire du vélo?
Alors, en général qu'est-ce que tu aimes et qu'est-ce que tu n'aimes pas faire?
etc

Using traditional QA technique allows for some personal questioning and more repetitions of the
target chunks. Crucially, it involves input and response in the TL, mirroring real life conversation
turn-taking, albeit in a contrived way. Then you can take it further. You could ask your questions, this
time getting students to write down their answers, still using the sentence builder (or a gapped
version of it) to help. Then how about a communicative guessing game, along the lines of Mind
Reader (mentioned above)?

Each student writes down five things they like to do, hiding them from their partner. Each partner
uses yes/no questions to guess what their partner likes to do. Activities could include new ones, not
on the sentence builder.

Est-ce que to aimes jouer au basket?

Est-ce que to aimes jouer des jeux en ligne? etc

You could take it further to add other communicative tasks, such as a more sophisticated
information gap activity. A good way to expand on the original sentence builder and these other
activities would be to concoct a comprehensible text based on the pastimes of a celebrity, or
perhaps a series of short texts where students must read and guess the name of the famous person,
or other person in the class, or teacher.