Celebrating Votes for Women

A hundred years after finally gaining the right to vote in the U.S.A., women today systematically both register and vote more than men. These two resources, one with a more complex article than the other, encourage pupils to discover the long campaign for suffrage, and some of the activists who worked for the 19^th Amendment and women who continue to oppose discrimination up to the present day.

You can download below a simpler and more complex version of the same article, with accompanying activities. The B1 version can be taught either in 3e (Rencontre avec d’autres cultures: repères historiques et géographiques) or in 2e (L’art de vivre ensemble: le passé dans le présent). The B1+-B2 fits well into the Cycle terminal theme Diversité et inclusion.

B1

Vocabulary  and Grammar

• the superlative (the first / the most famous)
• the passive (was arrested / was adopted / are created / was defended / was considered / were ignored...)
• relative pronouns (the first state where women could vote / everyone who believed / the women who worked for it...)
• want somebody to be / to do...
• demonstration
• even though / on account of
• over the years / across the country
• in honour of
• demand, ignore

Pronunciation

• woman / women
• suffrage /sʌfrɪdʒ/ / suffragist
• almost, theatre, honour, Wyoming, biography, title
• stress in words ending in –tion

B1+-B2

Vocabulary and structures

• suffrage movement: right to vote, suffrage, suffragist, picketing, hunger strike, polls...
• preterite
• voicing an opinion: To my mind, in my opinion, I reckon, I believe, I think, it seems to me that…
• qualifying statements: To a certain extent, in a way, up to a point…
• justify : Since, as, because, insofar as, inasmuch as…
• link words (cause/ consequence) : since, as, because, so, as a consequence, that’s why, …

 Pronunciation

• suffrage /sʌfrɪdʒ/

Both

Culture

• women’s right to vote
• the U.S. Civil War
• anti-slavery movements
• amendments to the U.S. Constitution
• the NAACP