Introduction

Objective: encouraging students who learn French to read French literature
The texts which we gathered here could be read by students who have level B1 and B2 (intermediate and upper intermediate) in French, but by adding the synonym of some of the words in English, we tried to make it accessible for the students who have level A2 (elementary level). We also provided a simpler version of “La Ficelle” by Guy de Maupassant.

Guy de Maupassant is a 19th century French writer. He is best known for his short stories. He was part of the literary movement of realism. We have chosen three texts from his short stories : “La Ficelle” (1883), “Le Papa de Simon” (1879), and “Le Père”  (1887). We encourage you to read his other books: Le Horla, Boule de Suif and Une vie.

Alphonse Daudet is also a 19th century writer, he is known by a collection of short stories: Lettres de mon moulin. We have chosen two texts from this collection: “La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin” (1866) and “Les Étoiles” (1873) and we encourage you to discover his other short stories as well.

We also added « L’ Homme qui plantait des arbres »  which is a short story published in 1953 by French author Jean Giono. This text of 20th century adresses the concerns of our time, such as sustainable development, environmental protection and peace. We encourage you also to read his other book : « Le Moulin de Pologne »

We have created some simple questions and activities in order to help students understand the texts.