Independent Exploration: French-Speaking Countries

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Les pays francophones – French Speaking Countries

Note:  Scroll down to the very bottom of the page for some cool Seterra geography games you can play to get credit!

Below are some YouTube playlists highlighting various countries and territories that speak French.  They are organized by geographic region.  There is a map above each playlist to help you find the countries in the playlist.  Watch at least 3-5 videos (or portions of videos if they are over 5 minutes long) (try to vary by region) and then for a follow-up, answer the following 3 questions:

1.  What country or region were you surprised to learn speaks French?
2.  What’s something interesting you noted or observed?
3.  What country would you be most interested in visiting or have you already visited?

Note:  You will see some casual alcohol consumption by adults in some of the videos.  Obviously I do not condone underage drinking.

Also note:  On many of the French language videos, you can get closed captions in French or English.  Click on the CC button (if it’s available) to make closed captions appear.  Then, to change them to English, click the little gear icon to the right and click “Subtitles/CC” and if English isn’t an option, click “Auto-translate” and select English from the list of languages.  If the closed captions are auto-translated, they will not be perfect, especially if the speaker is speaking very fast or not clearly, but they will help you follow along.

All maps except Oceania were made with MapChart.

L’Europe

Note:  Bruxelles (Brussels) is a city in Belgium.  Nouvelle-Aquitaine is a region in the southwest of France.  Corse (Corsica) is an island region that is part of France.  Provence is an area in the south of France.  Marseille is a city in the south of France.  Camargue is an area in the south of France.  Versailles is a city outside of Paris where French royalty used to live.  Pas-de-Calais is an area in northern France.

L’Afrique

Note:  Cotonou is a city in Benin.

L’Amérique du Nord (North America)

Also, here is a video about Saint Pierre and Miquelon that I cropped using EdPuzzle:

Les Caraïbes / L’Amérique du Sud (The Caribbean/South America)

L’Océanie (Oceania – Area Surrounding Australia and New Zealand)

Note:  Tahiti is a part of French Polynesia.

L’Asie – Asia

It’s important to note that French is not widely spoken in Asia anymore.  The countries or areas where it was spoken were once French colonies, but in the decades since regaining their independence, the French language has died out.  When you learn about French in Asia today, you’ll mostly see remnants of the culture in the food and the architecture.

Mlle Decker’s Journey Through la Francophonie
These two videos take you on a photographic tour through the French speaking countries and regions I’ve traveled to. 

Seterra Geography Games

Here are some cool geography games you can play to earn credit.  Play at least two games and send me a screenshots of your scores and times at the end OR name 3 geographical facts you learned from playing the game to get credit.