By using the local London area, the students were keen to spot our school/landmarks/shops etc that they were familiar with and even argue about how to get where and best.  This also let students consolidate shops/places having only the English on screen as it won’t say “supermarché” on shop signs, which would be a giveaway had we gone directly to France.  Admittedly, going to France would add an excellent cultural element and this could be developed in future lessons.

Using screendumps from Streetview of a nearby shopping street gave a chance to practise the prepositions of place in a more engaging and familiar context: Utilisez les prépositions de lieu pour décrire les images: e.g. la pharmacie est à côté de la banque

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In another activity, the newly added Google Maps functionality of viewing Streetview and the traditional aerial map view simultaneously came in very useful.  I pretended I was a tourist standing in front of the school and students had to give me directions - Excusez-moi, pour aller à la bibliothèque s’il vous plaît?.  I then followed their instructions accurately in real time on Streetview and Google Maps to check if I would end up where I’m meant to.  The map view allowed phrases like “deuxième rue à gauche” to be produced while the streetview allowed prepositions to be exploited (et c’est au coin, à côté de la pharmacie) This forced students to flesh out their directions and be much more precise with prepositions etc.

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Simon Howells has taken the use of Google Maps a step further, intergating it into an ICT based project.  See his excellent video below and finished product for details and ideas.

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La Jetée - a work of genius

With a bit of time to go before I get started on teacher training and edublogging proper, I’ve decided to post a bit of an aside which is nevertheless is still somewhat related to languages and learning.

So, why Beyond the Pier as a blog name? A somewhat convoluted story involving World War III, a personal love of French and photography, Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys ,  the joys of translation and not finding the domain name I really wanted.

While studying French at university I happened across La Jetée while looking for some films to watch as an easy and painless way to improve my French.  In a nutshell, it is the story of time travel in Paris  in the aftermath of apocalyptic World War III.  Survivors carry out time travel experiments as a way to try and save the human race.  Sound vaguely familiar?  That’s probably because Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys subsequent film was based upon Chris Marker’s 1962 short film.  I fell in love with the film and after seeing it had a few moments of genuinely stunned silence.  What captivated me, besides the intelligent and thought provoking storyline, was the format: a 28 minutes long, dialogue free, narrated photomontage of exquisite black and white stills.

In one scene a man travels back in time and walks with his girlfriend in a park and the narrator tells:

“They walk. They look at the trunk of a redwood tree covered with historical dates. She pronounces an English name he doesn’t understand. As in a dream, he shows her a point beyond the tree, hears himself say, “This is where I come from …”"

“Ils marchent.  Ils s’arrêtent devant une coupe de séquoia couverte de dates historiques. Elle prononce un nom étranger qu’il ne comprend pas. Comme en rêve, il lui montre un point en dehors de l’arbre. Il s’entend dire : « Je viens de là »”

This is essentially where the name Beyond the Pier comes from.  I loved the idea of the man pointing to somewhere beyond the tree, as yet ungrown, the future, and the man delivering his private in-joke “This is where I come from”.  So this blog should have been called Beyond the Tree but alas, somebody had already nabbed the domain name.  Settling for second best I chose Beyond the Pier given that the film revolves around an event on a pier at Paris Orly airport which is where the film’s title comes from.  In short, it is a reference to the future, the use of technology and communication, all of which I feel suit the aim of this blog, albeit in a rather obscure fashion.

Subtitling of films and translations are something I find extremely interesting and this film opened the door for me to this world.  Why a redwood tree when sequoia exists in English?  Why “They look at the trunk” rendered as “they stop in front of”.  Is a pier or jetty something you would have an an airport?  Where is the water?!  This kind of micro-translation, that takes contextual and cultural nuances into account, is an excellent linguistic exercise and something I hope to take advantage of during my teaching.  More generally, watching foreign language films with subtitles gives an extra support as a language learner and it can help you by

• immersing you in the target learning language.
• exposing you to new vocabulary and phrases.
• reinforcing those words you already know.
• helping you to take more fully on board words you slightly recognise but have not yet assimilated into the vocabulary you use by way of textual confirmation
• helping you get a sense of the linguistic rhythm and pronunciation of native speakers
• exposing you to the foreign culture and history.
• letting you do all this while watching an (hopefully) interesting film.

I intend a future post on some interesting/odd translations from films and TV, if you have any suggestions or material just leave a comment.  If you have come this far in this post you deserve a reward and here it is.  In my mind one of the greatest and most unique films of all time here on Youtube, in its entirety, completely free.  No excuses!

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There is an active community on Teachers.tv and it is a great point of contact for teachers to share resources, ideas and tips.  There is a lot of good material on Modern Foreign Languages (MFL), especially in relation to ICT.  In time, and over the course of my PGCE, I hope to get to try some of these out in the classroom and report back on the Beyond the Pier.  Here is an example video titled Resource Review – ICT Special: Secondary MFL that typifies the quality of the content on Teachers.tv.

Being a UK site with many programs screened on TV channels, there are copyright issues with some resources and a lot of videos are unfortunately for “Personal non-commercial educational use in the United Kingdom only“. I spoke to a member of their support staff who said they were currently working on distributing internationally – watch their site for updates on this apparently.  (I do not condone the use of proxies to view content from abroad, but I do know Google will happily reveal how to tutorials to you…)

In their own words:

“Through engaging videos, practical resources and an active online community, Teachers TV supports the professional development of anyone working in school, enabling them to widen their skills, develop their practice, and connect with others in the field.

In addition to the website, Teachers TV programmes are available on the TV Channel on Sky 880, Virgin Media 240, Freesat 650 and Freeview 88 (4-6pm) and, most recently, through iTunes U.”