47. Le 14 juillet

 As you all know, July 14th is the French "Fête Nationale" (National Holiday). Here is a series of videos and other resources that will teach you (almost) everything you need to know about this special day for the French. 

(By the way, you can also have a quick peek at my former blog on the topic, from the year 2018. I had focused mostly on "La Marseillaise", the national anthem.)

• In the first video I shared with the class, Ingrid from FrenchPod101.com gives a quick introduction to this Holiday. The video comes with French and English subtitles, so it's suitable for all levels.

• The second video we studied in class focuses on the Bastille, the royal prison that was stormed by insurgents on July 14, 1789, at the beginning of the French Revolution. This is part of the "Karambolage" series on the German and French channel Arte. 
• Click here to watch the video. 
• I also wrote a transcription of the video with some vocabulary notes.

• Since the above video was so full of dates and king's names, a quick review about how to say them in French was in order! Here is the review and exercise we did in class. (UPDATE: the last slide includes the answers.)

This concludes what we were able to cover in class, but here are some extra resources you may be interested in.

Let's start with another introduction to the topic by Geraldine, from the Youtube channel "Comme un française". She's explaining the Quatorze Juillet better than I could have done, but with the same accent! 😉 The video is in English with some French vocabulary thrown in, so it's a good resource for beginners.

Beginners as well as more advanced students may also appreciate this vocabulary list, complete with audio files, from the Kwiziq website.

Ready for something slightly more challenging? Try reading this explanation in French and do the short quiz at the end, from the blog "CaliFrenchlife".

Finally, for the courageous among you, here are a series of exercices based on a short video, presented by TV5Monde. Everything is in French, even the questions, which complicate things a little. I was hoping we could  do the exercices as a group during last class, but unfortunately we ran out of time. Let me know if you'd like to come back to this video in a future class. 

I hope this was helpful. Joyeux Quatorze Juillet!