and conversation course or reinforce oral and writing skills in a follow-up course to French for Business. With his new textbook, Penfornis opens the door to many possibilities. University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Stéphane Pillet WOOD, ALLEN G., ed. Global Business Languages: Challenges and Critical Junctures. Vol. 15. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2010. ISBN 1-932739-21-3. Pp. 175. It is still unclear to scholars what it means to teach foreign language “for business.” This was true even before the triple storm currently threatening French in America: the crisis in the humanities, the mass closing of French programs nationally, and the growing austerities facing education at large. University French departments still adopt “business French” curricula with delicate ambivalence, often viewing them as competing with literature or linguistics. Yet le français des affaires has forged ahead. Business majors have not left marketing or finance for French alone, but many now add it as a minor or second major. Plus, for many, these courses provide an alternative to yet another survey course named for a numbered century. The 2010 volume of the annual journal Global Business Languages should interest French teachers. Interdisciplinary and covering many languages, this volume offers a fair survey of a curricular phenomenon still emerging across our profession . One useful article, by two colleagues teaching Spanish, presents ways in which we can help our students market their nascent knowledge to prospective employers. Abbott and Lear propose activities to get students thinking and talking about their skills—by requiring students, say, to use less descriptive academic terminology and more language from actual job postings. In this case, graduates interviewing for jobs are more likely to express their “business Spanish service learning course,” more compellingly as a “community-based practicum in social service with Spanish-speaking clients” (9). Grounding its practical suggestions in recent surveys about what employers want from college graduates, the article ends with critical advice to teachers of all foreign languages: “When we give students the tools to connect their valuable skills to job-market needs, they can go beyond just saying that they value our business language courses to actually demonstrating that value to employers” (14). Hager’s ideas about teaching intercultural communication are similarly sensitive to the strategic-communication element. For him, students should use the target language to reflect as much on their home culture as on the target culture. Building on Kramsch’s idea that it is “not enough for [students] to learn how to enter the other culture on its own terms” (126), Hager convincingly argues for activities that push students to contemplate their own cultural norms in order to switch more ably between cultures. As expected, internships appear in this volume. Abbott and Lear develop them as a pedagogical opportunity. Another article, on internship opportunities at foreign consular offices, does so, too, but without real analysis—spending more time explaining consulates than on any real pedagogical applications of internship experiences there. Thompson’s French-specific article, “Understanding La Francophonie in the Context of the Business French Curriculum ,” inspires some thought but delivers more in the way of information than actual methods. His claim that there exists “a framework by which the entirety of la Reviews 167 Francophonie can be presented to students” (69) might seem a little dubious, but his presentation of the major world indices for countries (GDP per capita, global competitiveness, number of French speakers, etc.) provides a nice base for potential curricular additions by creative teachers with knowledge of French-speaking regions. This eclectic volume is useful, but students in French still need more muscular gestures from our profession about how our courses equip them to use French. Will “business French” ever describe an indispensable form of teaching or learning ? To begin to succeed professionally in French, an American is still likely to need three things: solid oral proficiency, personal experience in a French-speaking culture, and the ability, if called upon, to mention Senghor, Varda, Sarkozy, or Lévesque meaningfully, while standing or moving in a way that shows that s/he is ready to do some business. University of Wisconsin, Madison Ritt Deitz Film edited by Michèle Bissière KAURISM...
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Sep 1, 2014
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