January 29th, 2013

Today, I outsmarted my 3rd and 4th year French students. Each day in all my French classes, I provide a French expression (provided by a calendar my parents got me for Christmas) and we translate it and then talk about a grammar point of sorts. Well my 3rd and 4th years thought they would be funny, and they took a picture of my calendar where the phrases were written, and they translated them before class so that when we did it in class they acted like they already knew the answers. Har har har, whatever :P So anyway, today I thought I would one up them by taking the expression for today and putting it in "verlan", a cultural dialect that started with the younger generations and grew into a cultural phenomenon. Essentially, it's an inverse of syllables (verlan is actually a prime example, being the inverse of "l'envers", meaning "inverse" in French) and it has certain rules as to which syllables you can invert and what sounds you can add or drop. So by doing this to the expression, I was able to keep my students from cheating with the expression as well as give them a cultural lesson. Their reaction was priceless--sometimes I love being a teacher! :)