French Movie Talks

I’ve been working on creating some French movie talk activities over the summer, and I’m just about done! I’ve already uploaded a bunch of them and there are several more in the pipeline. My students LOVE movie talks, and it’s a way to get lots of CI into their ears and minds without them realizing. I teach the vocabulary they will need, then tell the story. The first time through, it’s without much detail. When I’m sure they’ve got the general idea of the story, I tell it again – this time, adding more detail. Then I go through it one more time, recapping the plot and detail. I ask students to tell me (in English) what they expect to see in the video. Then we watch the video, with the sound off while I narrate. Each movie talk activity lesson includes a pre and post-viewing activity, a script for the movie (which you can make simpler or more complex depending on the level of your students), a retell/rewrite activity and an answer key.

Tips for writing your own French movie talk

If you’re looking to write your own French movie talk activity, I have some suggestions for finding the perfect video. First, you will not want anything that is too long. 3-5 minutes is plenty, anything longer will just be unwieldy. I find that sometimes students get annoyed by the stopping and starting of the video, so it would be a problem in a much longer video. I would also suggest videos that don’t have a lot of dialog – you are looking for action in the story that you can easily describe. You might even come up with an activity to describe what they people would say at different points in the video, so videos that don’t focus on spoken lines would be better for your purposes.

If you’re not sure how to do a movie talk, I have several free French movie talk activities in the store. Here are some links to check them out!

If you’re interested in more movie talks, take a look at the movie talk section of the Frenchified store. You can also find them in the Frenchified store on Teachers pay Teachers if you’d rather shop there.