Un Scénario

Students write dialogue for a portion of a sequence from a film or a TV show.

Set-up

Select a scene from a French film your students are going to see, from a film you like, from a film you happen to have handy, or even from an American TV show that's popular with the class. Keep it short: about 3 minutes is enough. It is important that the scene have two or three characters, and that they speak to each other.

Get students into groups of 2 or 3. Ideally, the number of students per group would correspond to the number of characters featured in the clip.

Tell the students that they are going to write a script for (name of film or TV show).

First, they are going to watch the scene.
Then they are going to discuss the names of characters and general situation . (limit this to one or two minutes)
Then they are going to watch again to note how many lines they need to write and in what order.
Then they are going to write the "scénario."
Then they are going to read the scénario as you show the image.

Warnings and advice

As you can guess, if the scene is too long or complicated this will take forever.

If you don't give some guidelines -- this will take forever. I suggest you give the scene a name or a general subject (A Birthday Surprise; An Argument; An Embarrassing Moment) ahead of time.

Provide a "center" for each dialogue by requiring that each group use an expression you have learned recently: "Ce n'est pas possible!" "Ça alors!" -- or a very dull sentence from a dialogue or homework -- anything. Students will be more attentive to each presentation if they are waiting to hear where the line shows up.

If you are strapped for time, choose a shorter scene with more characters and put students in groups of four. That cuts down on viewing time, composition time, presentation time, and number of presentations.

Students will have fun using a clip from American TV. I like Dick Van Dyke myself, because students don't already know the plot (cf. Friends or Simpsons).

If you use a French film or TV show you can follow up with listening comprehension using the actual dialogue. You'll have to cover up subtitles with a notebook or a strip of paper.

Cheryl Krueger
University of Virginia