49. La France et ses régions

 France is a very diverse country. Each region has its own geography, landmarks, culture, characteristic landscapes, and even its own language in some cases. To complicate things, the administrative entities known as régions were re-arranged in 2016. The new map is supposed to be simpler, but personally, I'm still getting a bit confused! I guess it will take some time getting used to it...

Here are a few activities to discover French geography and famous landmarks.

  • Geography exercise: La France, tu connais? (document created by FranRC91 at ISLCollective). In this exercise, you'll have to identify France's main rivers and mountain ranges, and associate cities, regions and pictures. Here's the answer key. [Beginner]
  • French landmarks and regional features, based on the map from the exercise above. We started in class to identify and explain the numerous illustrations appearing on the map. This is an ongoing, collective effort. Here's the list (in progress) of the 73 illustrations. Feel free to add your own identifications, descriptions and links to the spreadsheet.


In class, we also had a look at the following text and map in order to understand what are the new French regions and how they differ from the old ones:
  • Interactive map of French regions: before/after (from an article in the French magazine L'Obs). Scroll down till you reach the map titled "avant/après". I especially like the slider effect that let you see how the old regions were combined into the new ones.

Do you need to practice the names of the regions and their chef-lieux (= capital cities)? Here are a few resources aimed at school children, but also useful for language learners. Have fun!

  • Game: Régions de France (scroll down to the blue image and click on "jouer". Click on the right region. Alternatively, click on "jouer sans chrono" play without timer.)
  • Set of 3 games: Les régions de France. Click on "jouer", then select a game:
    1. Jeu des régions [hardest]: type the name of the displayed region. 
    2. Jeu des chef-lieux: select a city on the list and locate it on the map. 
    3. Puzzle [easiest]: move each region to its right place on the map.







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