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In the Netherlands it is common to read literature in its original language in the college bound tracks. So for french dd will have to be able to read Dumas, Camus, Zola etc. In French.

 

We are absolutely not there yet.

 

Dd reads now maze runner, 7en poche, and terre/jardin des lettres (4) in French

She considers reading as the only fun part of French, so I don't want to kill that.

But I also want to stretch her so she will be able to read Dumas, Camus a.o.

 

Has anybody suggestions for booktitels to bridge that gap?

Dd will become 15yo next year.

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Maybe try Readlang? I've played around with the free version, and I like the concept. It lets you click on words you don't know and then save them to flash cards.

 

If French literature is like English literature, you can start with the older fairy tales and work your way up to novels. At least in English "literature" seems to have a core vocabulary of a couple hundred words that you don't encounter too many other places.

 

Hope this helps!

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What my dd did at that point was to find American novels that she was familiar with (and probably had read before in English), and find their translations in French and read them in French.  That seemed to be the perfect go-between until she was ready to take on original French language novels that she was completely unfamiliar with.

 

You can often find translations of popular English novels at university bookstores.

 

 

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Maybe more "modern" literature? Vian, Barjavel, Modiano... Even Beauvoir and Duras might prove easier and more interesting to her than the "heavier" classics and they are all part of the body of literature that the average French person reads, just maybe not the part that the average student of French reads, so not as if it would be junk reading.

Edited by bibiche
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Maupassant short stories? We are doing these now as audio/reading simultaneously. I don't know how much sinks in as I don't have any study questions/output required.

we found Jardin des Lettres lovely but really hard to do without a native speaker at home. So your DD's French is much more advanced than my DS. Maybe go down a couple of grades, for example, I know they do Medicin Malgre Lui in 6th grade there and there is a "biblio college" edition with study questions, etc.

In my DS's intermediate French textbook there is a small piece by Beauvoir.

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Maybe more "modern" literature? Vian, Barjavel, Modiano... Even Beauvoir and Duras might prove easier and more interesting to her than the "heavier" classics and they are all part of the body of literature that the average French person reads, just maybe not the part that the average student of French reads, so not as if it would be junk reading.

I think that could be a path to travel.

But I just don't know good titles.

I even don't know the authors you mentioned except Beauvoir.

 

I am aware of Maigret (by George Simenon) and Amelie Nothomb as they are from Belgium.

Dd can read Maigret but considers Nothomb slightly too difficult to read now.

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Maupassant short stories? We are doing these now as audio/reading simultaneously. I don't know how much sinks in as I don't have any study questions/output required.

we found Jardin des Lettres lovely but really hard to do without a native speaker at home. So your DD's French is much more advanced than my DS. Maybe go down a couple of grades, for example, I know they do Medicin Malgre Lui in 6th grade there and there is a "biblio college" edition with study questions, etc.

In my DS's intermediate French textbook there is a small piece by Beauvoir.

Dd uses Jardin des lettres just for input, not for output.

It is my way to increase the reading level without buying lot of books.

If she needs more time for a level we buy the same level from Terre des Lettres, but at the highers levels the content becomes more similar.

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Dd uses Jardin des lettres just for input, not for output.

It is my way to increase the reading level without buying lot of books.

If she needs more time for a level we buy the same level from Terre des Lettres, but at the highers levels the content becomes more similar.

Interesting. So you don't do any of the exercises, using it as an anthology of reading? I see where that makes sense, because both DS (!!!) and I loved the readings. I had not thought to use it that way, I even bought the teacher guide for the answers. Maybe this summer we will go back to it.

I'll go ahead and admit that like you, I'm not very familiar with the authors bibiche recomended. I read Modiano only bc of the Nobel prize thing and it's not my sort of cup of tea. The language is not too complicated (so I see why it's recomended) but the writing is very...modern and sparse, IMO.

Eta that what I have on my aspirational list for DS until fall are those books:

Une si longue lettre

Maupassant

Pagnol (thanks, bibiche!)

Maybe the Moliere mentioned above if I can get his tutor to grade him. I don't feel like reading plays in French any more than I want to read them in English.

Edited by madteaparty
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She has to write some of the letter exercises as that is an exam requirement.

But a full essay is above our cup of tea.

 

In one of de JdL (i think 4) they cover a part of L'avare from Moliere.

Louis de Funes, a well known actor for us, played in a movie-play, so we watched that after the reading.

Dd considered it very funny.

 

If dd love a reading I buy the book.

 

For output we use a pretty standard french as foreign language textbook.

But for 'reading/literature' I assign JdL /TdL and as she also likes the reading she sponteneously talk about it (in Dutch).

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Here is a link to book lists from a Catholic girls school, so you know they will be "appropriate" ;) :


 

Some of the following might be too daring to have been included in the above linked lists, but are fine for your daughter's age:

 

Marseillaise Trilogy by Marcel Pagnol. This is a group of plays that are easy to read and entertaining. MariusFanny, et César

If she wants more Pagnol, try the books La gloire de mon père and Le château de ma mère. All five of the Pagnols have been made into films. :)

 

L’Etranger by Albert Camus is a short, easy to read modern classic. There will be lots of reading guides.

 

Some others in no particular order, but all should be relatively easy: 

 

La petite Fadette, George Sand

Colomba, Merimée

Pierre et Jean, Maupassant

L’Amant, Marguerite Duras

Candide, Voltaire

L’écume des jours, Boris Vian

La Dame aux camélias, Dumas fils

Le rouge et le noir, Stendhal

La nuit des temps, Barjavel.

Le bourgeois gentilhomme, Molière

Nana, Zola

Sarrasine, Balzac

Colonel Chabert, Balzac

Edited by bibiche
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Is there a way to rate the language difficulty of the books in a way we can do English level books for example (Lexile score or AR level). Any such equivalents for French?

I am drooling over Pagnol books, but realistically we need at least another year maybe two to reach that level. Harry Potter is probably as difficult as we can go right now. Balzac will most likely be forever out of question.

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Here is a link to book lists from a Catholic girls school, so you know they will be "appropriate" ;) :

http://www.lesvignes.org/Liste-d-ouvrages-de-litterature

Some of the following might be too daring to have been included in the above linked lists, but are fine for your daughter's age:

Marseillaise Trilogy by Marcel Pagnol. This is a group of plays that are easy to read and entertaining. Marius, Fanny, et César.

If she wants more Pagnol, try the books La gloire de mon père and Le château de ma mère. All five of the Pagnols have been made into films. :)

L’Etranger by Albert Camus is a short, easy to read modern classic. There will be lots of reading guides.

Some others in no particular order, but all should be relatively easy:

La petite Fadette, George Sand

Colomba, Merimée

Pierre et Jean, Maupassant

L’Amant, Marguerite Duras

Candide, Voltaire

L’écume des jours, Boris Vian

La Dame aux camélias, Dumas fils

Le rouge et le noir, Stendhal

La nuit des temps, Barjavel.

Le bourgeois gentilhomme, Molière

Nana, Zola

Sarrasine, Balzac

Colonel Chabert, Balzac

Thank you!!!

I will check them out with dd.

 

Is only nana easy from Zola?

I own Germinal and Au Bonheur des Dames.

 

And I own Pere Goirot.

 

I am really glad with your list!

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Thank you!!!

I will check them out with dd.

 

Is only nana easy from Zola?

I own Germinal and Au Bonheur des Dames.

 

And I own Pere Goirot.

 

I am really glad with your list!

Nan, I think Zola is pretty accessible in general. It is just that Nana is the one on my shelf that my eyes alighted on, and an old favorite that I enjoyed around your daughter's age. Pere Goriot is great, though longer and more complicated than Colonel Chabert.  The advantage to any of the classics is that you will find lots of "fiches lectures", often even for free online.  

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We both have kids in Jardin des lettres 4e--and we both have Molière fans!

 

I agree that Dumas, etc., is a big mouthful to chew--as much in terms of length as of difficulty. Bibiche knows far more than I do, but I did have a couple of small ideas that maybe could be useful. My son read several Molière plays--maybe she might be interested in more of those? He also has read some Jules Verne--not true classics, but not junk, either. Also very good, and much enjoyed here, are the Saint-Exupéry aviation books: Vol de nuit, Terre des hommes, Lettre à un otage, and Courrier sud. For a short and easy one, you might try André Maurois's Patapoufs et Filifers (that went over well here); my boy is currently working on Raymond Queneau's Zazie dans le Métro, but is finding the slang a huge challenge (but so far, he's enjoying the challenge!).

 

He also read some of Perrault's tales and the Jean de La Fontaine fables.

 

My husband wants him to read Racine next--the vocabulary is fairly limited, apparently (about 3000 words?)--and because he thinks every civilised person should read Racine! I will ask him if he has other ideas.

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One more thing, just from a philosophical point of view...what seems to me to have worked best here so far is just sheer volume of reading, whether the books are great ones or not. We certainly read lots of more-or-less fluff in French, just to build up the amount of exposure--lots of BD, lots of Petit Nicolas and Tintin, lots of forgettable series books, lots of magazines--just to strengthen the French muscles. That may not be what you're after--and of course different things work for different children--but I just thought I'd toss that out there as an idea. Like you, we are interested in them being able to read French for pleasure, and we try to encourage that.

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I think that could be a path to travel.

But I just don't know good titles.

I even don't know the authors you mentioned except Beauvoir.

 

I am aware of Maigret (by George Simenon) and Amelie Nothomb as they are from Belgium.

Dd can read Maigret but considers Nothomb slightly too difficult to read now.

 

Wen I was in grade 10, we read a novel called Mad Shadows - the French title is Le Belle Bete. By Marie-Claire Blais. It's a fairly short novel and could be a good choice for reading in two languages.  It might be one to pre-read though, it's a little disturbing, though not explicit.

 

ETA: My dh was doing a French course recently - he was reading a French translation of Lord of the rings. 

Edited by Bluegoat
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I have this middle school list from the back of one of the books in the series but it seems steep to me. The Iliad is read in middle school there, apparently. As is Boule de suif (!).

DS's tutor has finally agreed to move from the abdridged CIDEB stuff and is doing Marcel Aymé, les contes du chat perché, to be followed by Pagnol.

Edited by madteaparty
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For English and Dutch I aim for one book per month.

For French & German one book per 2 month.

And book is above ca. 200 pages.

 

Thinner books are okay, but then one has to read more.

Not every book has assignments along it.

Some are 'just for reading'.

Some are to talk about, some are to write about.

 

DD is in a modern languages track though,

And I have Dutch expectations in this area.

Flemish tend to read much less for the oral exams.

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