Register and Genre in French 3 Emails to Host Families
A French 3 teacher has 27 students exchanging introductory emails with a partner class in Lyon. Before sending, the teacher reviews drafts to host families and finds that 11 students open with « Salut, » 8 close with « Bisous, » 6 address the host mother with « tu, » and several write « Je veux… » for requests or include emojis. Students have studied tu/vous in isolated exercises but have not analyzed email conventions. The partner teacher reports that families found some messages « un peu familiers » but not offensive. The teacher has one 45-minute class before the emails must be sent and wants to assess sociolinguistic competence as well as cultural knowledge. The department rubric currently weights grammar heavily and has no category for register. Some students argue that French teenagers use « salut » with adults on social media.
1. Diagnose the pattern and decide what to teach in the single class period.
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The pattern is not random grammar failure; it is genre and register transfer from peer texting to a first-contact email with adults. « Salut » and « Bisous » mark solidarity and closeness, which are inappropriate with a host family the students have not met, while « tu » to the host mother miscalculates the power and solidarity relationship. « Je veux » is direct in a context that calls for « je voudrais » or « pourrais-je. » The students’ social-media argument has some truth: French teenagers do use « salut » with familiar adults online. That makes the lesson about context, not a universal rule. In 45 minutes, the teacher should prioritize openings, closings, and request formulas, because those are the highest-salience features and can be revised immediately. The full tu/vous paradigm is too large for one period and is not the main problem. The goal is appropriateness given relationship, purpose, and medium, not ceremonial formality.
2. Design the 45-minute lesson so that students revise their own emails before sending.
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Begin with a five-minute schema task: students rank three recipients-a close friend, a host mother, a school principal-by formality and predict which greetings fit. Then present two short model emails, one to a friend and one to a host family, and ask students to notice differences in greeting, pronoun, request form, closing, and emoji use. In the next ten minutes, students sort a bank of phrases into « ami » and « famille d’accueil » columns and justify two borderline cases, including « salut » with a familiar adult. Give fifteen minutes for rewriting their own email with a checklist: appropriate greeting, tu/vous consistent, one polite request formula, appropriate closing, no emojis or explained emojis. Finish with five minutes of partner review using the checklist and a whole-class debrief on one revision that changed meaning. Students should send the revised version, not the original, so the task remains authentic.
3. How should the teacher assess sociolinguistic competence without overcorrecting or stereotyping French usage?
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The rubric needs a separate sociolinguistic-appropriateness dimension with descriptors such as « uses greetings and closings appropriate to a first-contact adult, » « maintains consistent tu/vous, » and « uses a polite request formula. » Grammar can remain a dimension, but it should not absorb register; a grammatically perfect « Je veux » is still pragmatically direct. Assessment should be scenario-based: students explain why they chose « vous » for the host mother or why « bisous » fits a friend but not a first email. That lets the teacher check reasoning, not just mimicry. The teacher should avoid presenting French as uniformly formal or implying that « salut » is wrong everywhere; the lesson is about context, age, medium, and relationship. Students can also compare a French texting norm with an American one, which addresses cultural knowledge. Revision should be part of the evidence, and the final judgment should focus on whether the message would be understood as respectful by its intended reader.