FAQ-Mentor Corner

Students practice for oral events (poetry, prose, sight reading, drama), tests (interpretive listening and reading), as well as expand into music, art, and cartoon events. Competition over such a broad field is very motivating! 

No, but it is the French competition in Texas recognized by the American Association of Teachers of French and the French government. It is broader in scope than UIL competitions.

There are awards given based on school achievement and individual achievement. Your students can focus on competing individually. 

Schools are required to bring a judge. You will enter your school judge’s information when your register. If you know anyone else who is interested in judging, please direct them to the Judges tab on our website. We would be very grateful to have them help!

*If you are having difficulty securing a French-speaking judge to accompany you, please contact the President of TFS @ president@texasfrenchsymposium.org

Meet with students (or groups of students) on a regular basis to practice for the competition. Meeting virtually is definitely an option. More advanced students or francophone individuals can help you with your practice sessions. Poetry, prose, drama, and music selections should be made during the first semester. You can create a file of selections that can be used from year to year. Students can prepare for group events (bac, drama, vocal music) by gathering in person to practice. 

Vive Voix from Wheaton College is a useful resource for poetry. You can
download text and listen to recorded poems. (Google Vive Voix)
Prose and theater selections can be taken from textbooks or novels.
ABU is a free French online library of public domain texts.
For music, contact music teachers.
Be sure that the selection is by a francophone author (attach biographical
information if the person is not well-known) and is NOT Anonymous.

Remember that most selections have a time limit of 3 minutes.
Music limit is 5 minutes.

Only poetry and drama pieces have to be memorized.
Prose should be practiced so that a student can look up occasionally.
But any oral performance is a dramatic performance! Practice using
pauses, change of tone, gestures.

Please see the TFS Constitution for the discussion on placement. Some
students may need to compete at one level higher than their level at school.
Some may need to compete at even higher levels depending on the
number of advantages the student has. (Advantages can include a
francophone family member, study or living in a francophone country, etc.)

Unfortunately no! (But Le Grand Concours has a division for native
speakers.)

The deadline to register students is typically in mid-November, check the
website or your mailing for the precise deadline. After the students are
registered, you will enter their events. After that time, you
will be able to reassign events to other previously registered students
until the cutoff date in January. Please note that you cannot replace
the person–you can just reassign events that the student who dropped
was going to do.

Yes, we need your help at the contest, and you will be assigned to proctor tests and judge.