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Activation of Existing Knowledge

Three months ago I started learning French on my own. I bought two books by PONS (see previous post), I watch Youtube videos (I recommend the channel "Learn French with Alexa") and I found a French tandem partner, who I talk to via Zoom. I guess what I mean by self-studying is that I am not planning to take any courses in French. I am simply going to use the above mentioned resources.

Yesterday I got an idea about what could be a good way to start studying a foreign language.

At the very beginning, why not activate everything that we might already know from a target language and analyze it a bit (with the help of a teacher or an advanced speaker).

Being born in Croatia, and therefore coming from a European culture, I already had knowledge of a few phrases and expressions in French. Maybe even more than I was aware.
In Croatia I studied art so some expressions I already knew come from this field.

Here are some examples of phrases that I already knew: Bonjour, Bon soir, en-face, enfant terrible, Notre Dame, raison d'etre, Ceci n'est pas un pipe, and of course the unforgettable "Voulez vous coucher avec moi...); something that we as kids in Croatia somehow knew and giggled while saying it...

There is so much grammar to extract from these few phrases, for which one would admittedly have to recruit a little help from a teacher.

I think this would be an interesting approach, because this knowledge is already "embedded" in our minds, it has already been "memorized" and therefore could be used well as a starting point for learning. It would "activate" and harness knowledge that is already there, similar to the activation of knowledge before teaching a topic in class. At the beginning of each class teachers often use the activation technique by inviting student to brainstorm ideas and associations connected to a certain topic. This is usually done on the whiteboard, in the form of mind-maps. It prepares the students for the topic of the day and is also used as a warm-up.

Why not use this approach to activate all the possible phrases from a target language that might already be part of students' general knowledge in their own culture? Followed by a short analysis on the whiteboard.

In the examples of my own previous knowledge of French, that I mentioned above, the following knowledge could be extracted or activated:

From "Notre Dame" teacher can extract the possessive pronoun before a singular feminine noun, with "Ceci n'est pas un pipe" teacher can easily show two parts of a French negation (supported by a reproduction of the Magritte's painting), and in "Voules vous we already have the ending of the conjugated second person in plural, and the personal pronoun "Vous")...

I am sure this technique would be a lot of fun in class, would also be very encouraging for the students because they would realise that they already have some knowledge of the language that they want to learn even before they start learning it. 




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