Introduction (in English)

(in English)

Introduction

Welcome to Parlons-en! Manuel de français intermédiaire et avancé! This is an open-resource manual for the teaching and learning of contemporary French at the intermediate and advanced levels. This manual takes an international approach, where students will learn about various cultural notions from a variety of francophone spaces.

Volume 1: Culture features authentic materials that engage students to think critically about various cultural perspectives, notions, history, and contemporary events. Each lesson within the culture section is divided into three main parts: preparation, comprehension, and production. Each of these three parts includes sub-sections that enable students to work deeply in the text.

Volume 2: Prononciation (coming soon!) will feature authentic oral samples from French-speakers throughout the francophone world. Students can listen to and repeat the words and sentences, as a way to develop their pronunciation skills in French. Because most of the third-party resources feature standardized French as the norm, Parlons-en! Manuel de français intermédiaire et avancé includes many examples and explanations about this variety. However, the goal of this textbook is to feature varieties of French from outside of the Hexagon. Therefore, this manual will include examples from real speakers from many places in the francophone world. Students are encouraged to recognize a variety of accents and to adopt the one that they feel best suits them and their personal and professional goals. It is our hope that more speakers from outside of metropolitan France will create online pronunciation content for learners of French, so that we teachers can have a greater corpus to draw from.

The manual uses ACTFL standards in terms of the linguistic level of the students, cultural competence of the students, as well as the modes of communication. Teachers and program directors are encouraged to refer to the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements Proficiency Benchmarks at the intermediate level and at the advanced level, as well as the World-Readiness Standards For Learning Languages for more information regarding ACTFL proficiency standards.

Target student population

Parlons-en! Manuel de français intermédiaire et avancé is designed for either high school or higher education (college/university). At the college/university level, students would most likely be French majors, French minors, or have a personal interest in French beyond college/university general education requirements. They should be at the third year level (300 or 3000) or above. Some students have perhaps returned from study abroad or are preparing to go study abroad soon. Some students might be heritage learners of French. At the high school level, students should be in their fourth year (or above) of French-language study. This manual could work well in a French 4 honors or AP French course. Independent teachers and tutors can also benefit from using Parlons-en! Manuel de français intermédiaire et avancé in their sessions.

At the beginning of the course

Linguistic level at the beginning of the course

The minimal linguistic level for Parlons-en! Manuel de français intermédiaire et avancé is Intermediate mid (ACTFL scale), B1.1 (CERL scale) at the beginning of the class. However, this manual works best for students beginning the course at the intermediate-high level (ACTFL scale) or between B1 and B2 (CERL scale) across multiple modes of communication (interpretive, interpersonal, presentational). Students should be comfortable discussing their everyday lives, describing past events, and giving their opinions about topics familiar to them.

Because of the flexibility of this manual, students with linguistic levels higher than intermediate high can also benefit from this text. It is not uncommon to find students with an advanced level of proficiency (maybe even superior!) taking a course that could use Parlons-en! Manuel de français intermédiaire et avancé. For example, at the university level, there might be students from French-speaking countries who wish to take a French class to brush up on their skills or to fulfill a language requirement. They too can learn a great deal from this manual!

Two aims of this manual are to create activities that are linguistically challenging and also to focus on social phenomena that are contemporary and interesting to students. Hopefully, by engaging in the prescribed exercises, students can have a deeper understanding of the French-speaking world and grow linguistically in the process.

Grammar knowledge at the beginning of the course

Students entering a course that will use Parlons-en! Manuel de français intermédiaire et avancé should already be familiar with the past tenses (passé composé, imparfait, plus-que-parfait), some future tenses (futur proche, futur simple), and some moods (conditionnel présent, subjonctif présent). Additionally, they should have already learned some common pronouns (les pronoms d’objet, les pronoms démonstratifs, les pronoms interrogatifs, les pronoms relatifs, so on).

Cultural knowledge at the beginning of the course

Students should already know some major concepts about cultures in the French speaking world. They should be able to name multiple French-speaking countries, they should know that France was a colonial power, and they should be able to compare everyday cultural practices (some examples include meals, telling time, celebrating holidays, so on). They should be able to name some French-speaking celebrities or historical figures, as well as name some holidays in French. Typically, students make errors in the tu/vous distinction, even at this level, but they should be able to self-correct.

By the end of the course

Linguistic level at the end of the course

By the end of the class, most language learners will be at the intermediate high or at the advanced low level of proficiency (ACTFL scale). The linguistic goal of this class should be intermediate high, as this is the level at which most students who are non-native in the language graduate from a university, with a major in that language. If language-learning students come to class regularly and complete the assigned work, we as teachers should anticipate that students fall in the intermediate-high range. Students with substantial linguistic background in French (such as students who come from French-speaking countries or French-speaking families, or who have lived extensively in an immersive context) can reasonably test into the advanced range or higher, depending on their own personal experiences.

The authentic texts students will read, watch or listen to will provide them with rich vocabulary. By the end of the course, students should be able to incorporate that vocabulary appropriately within their own written or oral productions.

Furthermore, because this manual will also include a pronunciation portion, by the end of the course, language-learning students should have made improvements in their pronunciation. They will still have a noticeable foreign accent, but their pronunciation should be understandable by native speakers unaccustomed to language learners and the pronunciation should not hinder the comprehension of the overall message. In the event of a mispronunciation that leads to misunderstanding, the students should be able to self-correct and overemphasize the portion that was previously unclear.

Grammar knowledge at the end of the course

This manual will present the grammar concepts mentioned above, as well as other concepts that might be new to the students. This manual will present additional verb tenses and moods: les temps littéraires, la concordance des temps, le conditionnel passé, le subjonctif passé, and le futur antérieur. Students will also learn pronouns such as: les pronoms possessifs and le participe présent. By the end of the class, students should be able to use a variety of verb forms and pronouns when prompted. They should also be able to use a variety of verb forms and pronouns when not prompted explicitly to do so, but to a lesser degree as compared to when they are prompted to use such forms.

Cultural knowledge at the end of the course

Students should be able to discuss the topics they’ve been learning about in depth. They should be able to describe strengths and weaknesses of a given cultural practice, they should be able to describe cultural perspectives on a given topic, and they should be able to advance an argument for or against a practice. They should be able to compare a cultural phenomenon from a French-speaking country/region and their own country, arguing for or against its adoption where they live. Students should gain a deeper and more nuanced view of francophone cultures, beyond the often romanticized and asepticized view that many language learners often have.

Open-access content

In order to enable teachers from all over the world to use this manual, all of the material presented is open-access. This means that the content was either created by the principal author Shureka Nyawalo, an assistant, or one of the many contributors to this project. Embedded or linked content from third-party sources (such as online articles or YouTube) are used by permission of the original author or content creator. For sources where no permissions have been granted, a reference is provided so that teachers and students can locate the texts themselves.

Thanks

First, I’d like to thank the United States’ Department of Education for their funding. My colleagues and I were the recipients of a generous grant from the US Department of Education for the purposes of developing pedagogical materials. The full title of our project is The Curricular Enhancement, Development, Access, and Research Language Resource Center (CEDAR LRC). Parlons-en! Manuel de français intermédiaire et avancé is the fruit of this grant. This specific project is entitled “Decolonizing the French Curriculum: Towards a More Inclusive Representation”. A full description of this project, as well as the projects of my colleagues can be found at: The Curricular Enhancement, Development, Access, and Research Language Resource Center (CEDAR LRC).

Secondly, I would like to thank the collaborators in this project. Many thanks to the individuals who lend their voices to the audio portions. The speakers come from a variety of French-speaking countries and regions in the world. Thanks to them, this manual includes voices from many places in the francophone world. They have given not only their voices but have also given me ideas on texts or concepts that I have been able to incorporate into this manual.

Third, I’d like to thank several individuals who served as assistants in this project. Florian Griffon, Cameron Kruse, Sylvie Wanda, Marouane Khadori, Loïc Filie-Hémery, Xileny Cuero Cuero, Addyson Beecham, Emma Ortquist and Kate Murphy (all from the University of Cincinnati) all contributed to this project. They located online content, requested permissions, located published academic articles about open-access resources, proofread, provided feedback, ensured the quality of the manual, and performed a variety of tasks along the way. Additional colleagues and friends, such as Graziella Couasnon from Université Bordeaux Montaigne, provided their input as well. Parlons-en! Manuel de français intermédiaire et avancé could not be possible without them.

Additionally, I’d like to thank my family and my colleagues for their support and ideas. Creating a manual is no small feat, and my family and colleagues have supported this effort. My husband, Mich Nyawalo, obsessively watches French news and current events on YouTube, and I’ve gotten many ideas for cultural themes thanks to him. My University of Cincinnati colleagues (Kara Moranski, Godoy Peñas, and Anne Lingwall-Odio) have helped me stay on track, have provided me with a framework for my manual, and have enabled me to stay within the confines policies of the federal grant.

Last, but not least, I’d like to thank you, those who read and use this manual. Thank you for adopting this manual into your teaching or into your learning of French. It is my hope that students find this manual easy to use, interesting, and that it increases their desire to study francophone cultures.

Bonne lecture!

Dr. Shureka Nyawalo

Associate Professor Educator and Coordinator of the Basic French Language Program

University of Cincinnati