French subscription cinema

1. Find out more about exercise types

See introductory video on home page for detailed walk-through of the exercise types   

Studying cinema as we have seen is a challenge as sometimes capturing the message of the film through the prism of a range of senses can seem out of reach especially when working in the target language.    The dolanguages resources below contain the following elements (not all necessarily all of them) to help you tackle.

Gapped summary with full vocabulary

The summaries capture the essential elements of the film at the level of detail required at the same time as requiring students to find the appropriate part of key verbs.   This provides a quick aide-mémoire of the film when required as well as boosting vocabulary relevant to the content.

Questions

Detailed questions covering the full film require detailed recall of the content and can be used orally and/or in writing.   

The missing storyboard

This is available for Au revoir les enfants, Les 400 coups and La haine and the drawings are designed to make students aware of the nature of key shots/scenes in the film which may illustrate key thematic/character points.

Character

The character profile tool gives a full range of appropriate adjectives to enable students to describe protagonists in a sophisticated manner.   Suggested sentence starts are given to encourage a high quality of language.

Motivation of characters

The motivation of characters tool is a sentence builder encouraging thinking skills.   Using a wide range of second verb infinitives students can weigh up why the protagonists act in a particular way in a sophisticated way.

Character arc tool

This tool enables students to capture the state of mind of the protagonists at the start of a film and track how various turning points and events affect their mentality, right through to the dénouement to evaluate whether a real change has been effected.

Contextualised grammar

The A factor exercises concentrate on encouraging students to vary the structures they use for writing the essay, including the present participle, the passive and the present subjunctive.    Exercises are given in context covering the full length of the film.

Multi-tense tool

Students appreciate being able to see examples of contextualised sentences with key verbs used in the full range of tenses in a simple exercise to increase awareness

Direct/Indirect speech

Students link direct speech quotations to the protagonists and then transform the direct speech to indirect speech sentences, a key process for giving key evidence in essay writing.

Essay writing process

List of unused essay titles for practice whilst going through film.

Essay planning and sample essay

An essay plan using a template is used with advice on creating each step of the process.

The sample essay is designed to demonstrate successful essay techniques.

Modified essays

Student essays with comments on how to improve them and in some cases corrected versions.

Useful external links

There is a considerable amount of useful material available from film related websites, universities and exam boards and we have linked to some of the best examples.