La fabuleuse aventure des Bleus par Dominique Georges

Abstract

Reviewed by: La fabuleuse aventure des Bleus par Dominique Georges Jessica L. Sturm Georges, Dominique. La fabuleuse aventure des Bleus. CLÉ International, 2019. ISBN 978-209-031717-6. Pp. 64. Teaching language through a specific context or cultural lens is an excellent way to get students engaged with the material, since it creates natural occasions for communication in the L2. La fabuleuse aventure des Bleus provides both a context for the presentation of new vocabulary and a cultural lens for students to compare French soccer, or sports in general, to their own country's focus on sports. With the immense worldwide popularity of soccer, and the sport's growing popularity in the United States, many students at the elementary, secondary, or university/college level would enjoy reading the story of the 2018 Men's World Cup Champions, les Bleus. Sports as a cultural lens is quite promising in the French language classroom. First, it is quite easy to draw parallels between the United States and France, in how their citizens practice and consume (watch) sports. Second, as teachers it is to our benefit to expand students' vision of French culture beyond food, fashion, art, architecture, etc. This book facilitates that expansion by recounting the team's path to the 2018 Men's World Cup while including mini-biographies of several players. Third, social issues such as immigration have a definite place in any discussion of sport. Talking and writing about soccer in the Francophone world and immigrant players in France is an approachable way to address a complicated topic in class. In addition, La fabuleuse aventure des Bleus is a highly accessible reading text, designed for the A2 level and accompanied by both a series of helpful footnotes and a soccer vocabulary list at the end. Students who are soccer fans or players will be able to intuit much of the vocabulary from reading in context, but the provided list will aid any with technical soccer terms. This book also contains a series of reading comprehension questions for each chapter, generally true/false, fill-in-the-blank, or multiplechoice. Beyond the reading activities and questions, this book can serve as a jumping-off point for class discussions, writing assignments, and making comparisons and connections between soccer or sporting culture in general in the students' community and in France. After reading this A2-level text on French soccer, students may feel better able to read authentic texts in French or Francophone newspapers on soccer. Another direction to take from this text is to investigate soccer in other Francophone countries, or to discuss immigration in the context of sports teams. Beyond being an appealing text on its own, La fabuleuse aventure des Bleus creates opportunities to explore numerous issues in France and the Francophone world, providing students with something to talk and write about, as well as a fascinating lens by which to examine the target culture(s) in French class. [End Page 275] Jessica L. Sturm Purdue University (IN) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French