Images Postcards from the Bowman Gray Collection at the University of North Carolina You can browse by country, name, or subject (includes photos and many caricatures as well, like the one on the left). Photos from the French site 1914-1918.fr. Texts For both in-class discussion and as a written assignment, I had students read an...Read more »
One difficult aspect of teaching grammar is the disjointed impression given by a series of grammar lessons: when going over the difference between the gerond and the infinitive, for example, we tend to give students a long series of sample sentences showing when one form is used rather than the other. When talking about...Read more »
Raymond Queneau’s Exercices de Style (1947) is a useful and engaging text to use in an intermediate language or writing classes. Students at both levels seem to enjoy delving into Queneau’s project – that is, to tell the same story in 99 different ways. It is an example of “contrainte littéraire” – the technique of...Read more »
Literature from outside of metropolitan France is finding an expanding presence in undergraduate French courses, freeing students from the idea that the great works of French literature must only come from France (or Paris). The incorporation of francophone literature into survey courses has been a valuable addition to presenting the broader role of the...Read more »
Many instructors of French shy away from literary analysis in elementary and intermediate language classes. To be sure, discussion of literary theory can be difficult even in advanced courses. It can be daunting to aim to read texts and analyse them when even the basic verb tenses are still unclear. But it is important...Read more »
