De Bello Grammatico: En Français

De Bello Grammatico™: En Français is a word play card game built to reinforce French vocabulary and grammar in an engaging and entertaining way. The game uses tried and true educational concepts and brings them together to make an interesting and fun learning experience.

Are you a French teacher looking for an educational way to keep your students occupied without losing their attention? Are you a French student who wants a fun way to study with friends? Try the game both teachers and students love.

De Bello Grammatico™: En Français can be played in the span of a normal class period, as a supplement to a normal French curriculum.

But how does it work? Each round, one student plays a Sentence Card (usually a quote from French history or Literature), for which other students suggest alterations by playing a Word Card which will replace a word of the same part of speech. When all of the students have played a card, the Juge (the student who played the Sentence Card) chooses which substitution suits the sentence best. For example, for the Baudelaire quote Le vieux Paris nest plus, students might suggest cards like vieillard or dément, altering the sentence to The old geezer is no more or The demented city is no more. The idea is that students can have fun mutating quotes into inane, ridiculous sentences.

And how is this educational? While playing, not only are students being exposed to a variety of quotes by French authors, but they also learn additional vocabulary and reinforce grammatical concepts such as part of speech and verbal conjugation. You see, players are encouraged to read the sentences in French and inflect appropriately.

Surely this game is more suited for advanced French classes, then? Every Word Card includes basic inflectional data, just in case the students havent memorised their paradigms yet, as well as clues to determine the meaning of the word, such as synonyms, definitions or pictures. Ideally, students should be able to figure out what the words mean without needing to consult external resources like dictionaries or encyclopaediae, in order to facilitate play (but of course reference tools should not be discouraged). Further, you can customise the game by adding cards from expansions, which may cover topics more suited for upper-level classes, or make your own cards to tailor the game for your curriculum!