The Halloween Story (Tripp) – French – Ben Slavic

I would like to share the reading that I wrote from Jim’s wonderful Halloween story and thank you Jim – it looks like a lot of people got some good stories from it. Embedded new (i.e. never seen, not part of the story) vocabulary is underlined. It’s pretty free form. I certainly didn’t choose to embed from a list, because I believe that Krashen is right on order of acquisition – that the mind will retain what it wants to retain from all the language it hears and no teacher can plan that order. A teacher’s conscious planning of what to teach when vs. the power of the individual’s unconscious mind to order everything from the input it hears? No contest – the unconscious mind wins. This took fifteen minutes to write after school on the day we created the stories. It is a mix of information from three classes. I used the notes given me by Story Writers. I added in stuff that could lend itself to emotional reading, to theatre. I repeated certain expressions and sentences several times. I kept the tense in the present to the extent possible (this story, because of the “ago” expression, forced me to write some of the reading in the past, but that doesn’t happen too often). If you do a class based on a reading like this, after having sufficiently PQA’d the structures on Monday and with a good story having been created on Tuesday, you will be very pleasantly surprised at the amount of lift off the reading can get, how much fun it can be, and how simple, compared to the story creation, it can be. A story like this would require at least a 90′ class to do properly and that is why I give the reading two class periods on W/Th to do some or all of the things listed in the link below. A good reading class is about as easy and fun and productive as anything in comprehension based instruction. It is, honestly, the easiest and best way to teach using CI, by far, in my opinion. Details: blow the text up, make is easily visible to the kids, use line numbers, and you may want to follow the list of suggestions made here during the actual class in order to not forget stuff:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/10/21/additions-to-option-a/
The reading:
Il y a un garçon qui vient de l’Espagne. Il est espagnol. Il n’est pas français et il n’est pas anglais. Il vient de Séville. Vient-il de Madrid? Non, il ne vient pas de Madrid, il vient de Séville.
Le  garçon s’appelle Bob. Le garcon, s’appelle-t-il Bob ou François? Il s’appelle Bob. Il ne s’appelle pas du tout François, qui est un nom français, parce que le garçon n’est pas français, il est espagnol. Bob n’est pas un nom espagnol, mais Bob est très fier d’être espagnol. Il ne veut pas être français parce qu’il pense que les français sont des femmelettes.
Il y a huit ans, au mois d’octobre, Bob s’est approché de son père (il ne s’est pas approché de sa mère, mais de son père) et il lui a dit qu’il voulait être Superhomme pour la Toussaint. Il a dit, “Maman, je voudrais être Superhomme pour la Toussant ce weekend.
En écoutant son fils, le père s’est fâché. Il ne voulait pas que son fils soit Superhomme pour la Toussaint. Il voulait que son fils soit un Power Ranger pour la Toussaint, alors il a refusé son fils et il a ri d’un ton fâché et il a chanté: “Tu ne peux pas! Tu ne peux pas! Tu ne peux pas être Superhomme! Tu ne peux pas être Superhomme pour la Toussaint parce que c’est moi, Superhomme. Je suis Superhomme! Je suis Superhomme! Tu n’es qu’un petit Power Ranger!” Et il a ri encore sept fois.
Bob n’était pas du tout content. Il voulait être Superhomme. Il ne voulait pas être un Power Ranger. Il a pleuré six fois.
There is a boy who comes from Spain. He is Spanish. He is not French and he is not English. He comes from Seville. Does he come from Madrid? No, he doesn’t come from Madrid, he comes from Seville.
The boy’s name is Bob. Is the boy’s name Bob or Frank? His name is Bob. His name isn’t at all Frank, which is a French name, because the boy isn’t French, he is Spanish. Bob is not a Spanish name, but Bob is very proud of being Spanish. He doesn’t want to be French because he thinks that the French are wusses.
Eight years ago, in the month of October, Bob approached his father (he didn’t approach his mother, but his father) and he said to him that he wanted to be Superman for Halloween. He said, “Dad, I would like to be Superman for Halloween this weekend.
While listening to his son, the father got angry. He didn’t want his son to be Superman for Halloween. He wanted his son to be a Power Ranger for Halloween, so he refused his son and he laughed in an angry way and he sang: “You can’t! You can’t! You can’t be Superman! You can’t be Superman for Halloween because I am Superman! I am Superman! I am Superman! You are only a little Power Ranger! And he laughed seven times.
Bob wasn’t at all happy. He wanted to be Superman. He didn’t want to be a Power Ranger. He cried six times.