By Lindsey Clark ’16 | Staff Writer
As a way to refine their language skills, the French IV Honors students have been assigned pen pals from France to correspond with throughout the course of the year, French teacher Madame Moon said.
Their pen pals live in Lyon, France, a city in the eastern part of the country, 250 miles south of Paris, Moon said. The students communicate through letters that are sent in packages, typically every few months.
“We do that because emailing is harder for me to monitor the exchanges and this way I am able to easily monitor the correspondence,” Moon said. “Also, it allows us to send cultural artifacts along as well.”
Some of the artifacts that will be sent include CDs, postcards, magazines or candy, because they are unique to American culture, Moon said. These objects allow the students to observe first hand characteristics of each culture.
“They find out that certainly there are a lot of interesting differences and I think they are surprised a majority of the times at the similarities,” Moon said. “When they receive a CD with similar music that is their pen pal’s favorite playlist and they realize that these are all songs that they know. It is neat for them to see although you are different in many ways, there are a lot of similarities too.”
Nadine Bradshaw, the teacher in France, believes the letters give her students a unique first hand experience of American culture.
“I think it’s a good way to discover the American style of life,” Bradshaw said via email. “Besides, for them it’s totally what they watch on TV with the Prom and all the clubs.”
Moon began the assignment while working as an English teacher in France. Then, her students wrote to pen pals from a school in Utica. She started the program at South with the same school in France when she moved back to Michigan in 2005, Moon said.
For her students, the opportunity to write to South students comes with hard work, Bradshaw said.
“It is not at all an assignment I gave my students,” Bradshaw said. “It’s more like a reward: if you work well in my English class, you will have American penpals!”
This year, almost all of Moon’s students have their own pen pal to correspond with.
“Typically we try to give every student their own individual pen pal. This year there was some sharing taking place, so for (my students) that’s fine, but some students in France will end up with two.”
In order to even out the letters sent, Moon is hoping to have more students from France participate in the correspondence.
“We are working on getting a couple more students from France to be able to get involved with the exchange,” Moon said. “Sometimes the classes work out well in sizes and there is only a little bit of sharing. Generally we try to level things out the best as possible.”
Although their pen pals are younger, in what would be comparable to freshman year in the United States, the letters still provide a way to find connections, French student Holly Daywalt ‘16 said. Daywalt found that her pen pal is a fan of American rap music.
“It is definitely different writing to someone than it would be to write an essay,” Daywalt said of the assignment. “It has helped me to learn how to write with informal conversations”
Sometimes, the students build strong connections with their pen pals and extend their correspondence outside of school, Moon said.
“They do it for the course of the school year and I give them the option at the end, that the students may ask for their pen pal’s personal email or Facebook name,” Moon said. “I have had students choose to continue that correspondence and they have found that they are even chatting on Facebook when they find each other both logged in at the same time, so that has been neat. Some students have made strong connections with their pen pals.”
Moon hopes that this experience for her students will be more than an opportunity to improve on their language skills.
“I hope that they will gain an appreciation for the use of their language skills they have acquired over the last several years,” Moon said. “And also to appreciate the cultures through first hand opportunity.”
