Foreign Lan Research Articles

Infographic text as a tool for organizing Russian-language educational discourse

Importance. The significance of the subject matter arises from the potential for organizing effec tive foreign language communication based on contemporary methods of educational materials’ visual representation, one of which is infographic – a relevant, authentic material that presents in formation in a concise and comprehensible form, integrating verbal and non-verbal elements.Materials and Methods. The following methods are used: analysis of academic research on the infographic text application in teaching foreign languages and practical experience generalization with the use of such materials in Russian as a foreign language. The research materials included academic papers that provided methodological justification for the infographics use as well as infographic materials available online and personal experience gained from utilizing infographic texts within the educational process.Results and Discussion. Based on the material analysis results on the topic, it is concluded that there is a significant potential for using infographic text with supporting structures in Russian as a foreign language teaching. In this regard, the theoretical knowledge necessary for a teacher to or ganize productive speech activity in a foreign language is described: the main stages of organizing work with infographics, the requirements for the of infographics content are listed.Conclusions. Infographic texts are valuable methodological material in teaching foreign lan guages, around which a foreign language educational discourse is built. Methodically, the tradi tional pre-text, pre-text and post-text tasks for working with the educational text should be orga nized competently. Here, support structures are important, which stimulate speech activity, con tributing to the effective work organization on the oral and written speech production based on a given algorithm.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF STUDENTS’ GROUP WORK IN TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES AT UNIVERSITY

The aim of the article is analysing the advantages and disadvantages of group work for students while teaching foreign languages at university, showing the feasibility of using group work in higher edu- cation. Methods of analysis and systematization of primary sources, interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups were used during the consideration of the problem. The process of teaching English in higher education has certain features that are associated with dif- ferent initial levels of language training of freshmen; the number of hours to study the subject; the number of groups; and sometimes absent enthusiasm for learning a foreign language. We emphasize that group work plays an important role in the educational process, and its introduction into the educational process should be one of the main tasks for students of philological specialties. Practice has proved that high-quality training in foreign languages for philological specialties can be carried out through the introduction of mod- ern educational technologies, such as: vocational training, project methodology, technology, such as: voca- tional training, project methodology, technology of fixing and distance learning, information and commu- nication technologies, and educational and control work. The study found that the use of interactive learn- ing technology involves seeking help in communication, including cognitive communication and constructiv- ist methods of teaching a foreign language. The facts proved that the use of innovative methods of teach- ing English and multimedia teaching methods can enhance the motivation of students to study foreign lan- guages, provide access to new alternative sources of information, develop independent psychological activ- ity, and develop communication skills, intercultural and professional abilities. Interactive technologies and online resources play an important role in group work while learning for- eign languages, providing an effective and engaging learning process. They promote active interaction be- tween students, stimulate involvement in language learning and improve language skills. To determine the advantages and disadvantages of group work, we conducted interviews with teach- ers and students to collect their impressions and thoughts about group work in the context of teaching for- eign languages. Subsequently, the reviews of teachers and students about their experience in groups dur- ing the study of foreign languages were analysed. Questionnaires were compiled, which included questions about impressions and thoughts about group work in the context of studying foreign languages. The questions concerned the advantages and dis- advantages of this training method, the efficiency from group work, the influence on motivation, etc. Fo- cus groups were held with students and separately with teachers to discuss their impressions and thoughts about group work. This allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of different points of view and identi- fy general trends. In group work during the study of foreign languages, the teacher and students play different roles, each of which has its own importance for successful learning. We will discuss the role of the teacher-facili- tator. The teacher acts as an organizer and leader of group work, promoting structured learning and prob- lem solving. Students actively interact with each other and with the teacher, exchanging ideas and opin- ions, completing tasks and solving problems. Scientists have demonstrated that the active participation of students in group work contributes to the improvement of critical thinking and the development of com- munication skills. The use of group work while teaching foreign languages at university has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it promotes the development of communication skills, and stimulates cooperation and motivation of students. On the other hand, there may be a risk of social blind steering, problems with the distribution of responsibilities and conflicts between group members. It has been concluded that it is important to properly organize and control the process of group work to achieve maximum efficiency in teaching foreign languages.

La versión original con subtítulo intralingüístico como recurso para la mejora de la pronunciación∗

"This article aims to show the potential of didactic audiovisual translation (DAT), for the improvement of pronunciation in French as a foreign language (FFL), through a pedagogical procedure based on listening and reading aloud a text, repetition, video recording and evaluation of the recording by means of an automatic intralinguistic subtitling tool providing written transcription of the reading aloud. This task also seeks to develop autonomous learning of oral skills, which are often overlooked in the teaching and learning of foreign lan- guages, through a DAT activity, designed to facilitate self-correction and improvement of pro- nunciation for Spanish-speaking university students at A1 level."

Bilingvalno obrazovanje i vaspitanje na školskom i predškolskom nivou u Srbiji i u svetu

This paper, first of all, gives an overview of theoretical-pedagogical and other assumptions on teaching in school and preschool bilingual education. It gives an overview of some of the currently applied didactic-methodological, curricular and other solutions of this kind in countries where the practice of bilingual education has recently come to life, includ- ing Serbia, where it is practiced today in numerous state or private kindergartens and schools, especially in larger towns, i.e. in environments where it is easier to find educators who speak foreign languages. Some important requirements for educators and teachers regarding their language competencies that qualify them for educational work in one of the foreign languages are considered, such as competence in both certain subject and the foreign language in which it will be taught, the skill in terms of cooperation between the subject teacher and foreign lan- guage teacher, etc. Also, empirical indicators on the efficiency of bilingual teaching in foreign and domestic practice are discussed, such as research projects on the effectiveness of bilingual teaching in the world that have been aimed at determining how much it has contributed to the level of development of student competencies, with most of such research being conducted in Canada, Finland and Germany. Some of the benefits of bilingual education include better results of bilingual students when compared to non-bilingual peers in all language skills (speaking, lis- tening, reading and writing in English, French and German), higher motivation levels, a richer lexical fund, more skills of knowledge transfer, language spontaneity, intercultural awareness, cognitive flexibility and creativity, etc. However, it has been concluded that, given that there are not many dilemmas of a scientific-theoretical nature regarding the earlier inclusion of preschool children and students in various forms of institutional bilingual education, it is unsustainable that bilingual education is still an educational novelty in Serbia, and that, judging by the insignificant number of preschool institutions and schools in Serbia committed to bilingual education, this problem is still not given enough attention. Therefore, it would be useful, at least at the optional level, to offer university students foreign language teaching programs that would functionally train them for this type of teaching.

21世纪以来我国外语教学研究主题可视化分析与反思

In order to understand the research topics and research frontiers of foreign language teaching research in our country since the 21st century and its deduction process, by using the Citespace5.8 do- cument visualization software and knowledge measurement methods, the CSSCI database foreign lan- guage teaching research papers in CNKI from 2000 to 2021 were analyzed. The core author groups, key journals with papers, core establishments of papers published and keywords of foreign language tea- ching papers were extracted, analyzed and deeply excavated. This research explains the hotspot and the evolution of foreign language teaching research topics in China and summarizes the main factors affec- ting the change of foreign language teaching research topics and the improvement direction of current foreign language teaching research.

FORENZIČKO PROFILISANjE GOVORNIKA IZ UZORKA NA ENGLESKOM KAO STRANOM JEZIKU – ANALIZA TRAJANjA VOKALA

Forensic speaker profiling is a procedure employed in criminal cases where there is a voice recording of the criminal, but there is no suspect. It encompasses determining the age, gender, origin or socio- economic status of the recorded speaker (Rose 2002; Kašić, Đorđević 2009a; Jessen 2010). One of the challenges of modern forensic phonetic science is speaker profiling from the voice sample in a foreign language. In the current research, we analyzed the vowel duration of five speakers from Novi Sad and five speakers from Niš, when they were speaking spontaneously in their mother tongue, Serbian, and in a foreign lan- guage, English. We compared the quantity of vowels of each group of speakers within-language and across languages. The acoustic analysis of vowels was performed manually in Praat (Boersma, Weenink 2018), by looking at the spectrogram and waveform of the recordings. To test the difference in means of two groups of data, we used the Welch t-test (Welch 1947). Our results show that urban speakers from Niš and Novi Sad do not exhibit statistically significant differences in the duration of their English vowels. However, certain duration relations that exist between vowels may be indicative of one’s native dialect.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЯ «ПРЕПОДАВАТЕЛЬ – СТУДЕНТ» В УСЛОВИЯХ ДИСТАНЦИОННОГО ОБУЧЕНИЯ

The pandemic of the new coronavirus infection and the subse- quent distance learning have become a problem that requires an immediate solution from the pedagogical community. The current situation set some chal- lenges for “teacher – student” interaction that were not sufficiently obvious in the traditional form of education. The loss of students’ motivation to learn, as well as decrease in interest in events taking place in the outside world, came to the fore. Many students found themselves isolated from family and friends, so relationships with classmates and teachers appeared of importance. In addi- tion, students with special educational needs (SEN) suffer in these conditions greatly. The author of the article examines the reasons for the “loss of meaning”, and also suggests ways to increase motivation when teaching a foreign lan- guage online, including the use of game teaching methods, unusual approaches to the organization of extracurricular forms of work, etc. Moreover, the article emphasizes the importance of ensuring psychological comfort for students.

РОЛЬ ТЕКСТА И МЕТОДЫ РАБОТЫ С НИМ В ОБУЧЕНИИ ИНОСТРАННОМУ ЯЗЫКУ НА СОВРЕМЕННОМ ЭТАПЕ

The present article is dedicated to the necessity and importance of continuing teaching students to work with great amount of information in the form of texts, as well as to acquire methods and strategies of this work. Gradual but unfaltering rejection of the use of texts in teaching a foreign lan- guage can lead to lowering the level of its mastering. To understand the deep reasons for the existing situation in this sphere, it is necessary to look at the experts’ opinions of the new generation of young people. In spite of the quick changes in the world, education preserves its strict standards that establish the landmarks upon which the pedagogical and educa- tional processes are built. In the course of several last years the teachers of the department of foreign languages have participated in the preparation of English-language materials for the Olympiads, organized by the RSUH. The author analyzes strategies and tactics of work with big texts, selection of topics, used in these Olympiads, as well as the tasks, developed for operating such texts. These types of work with big amount of information lead us to the neces- sity of forming and developing in students such aspect of the communicative competence, as its text-forming component. Here we can speak about all the skills, technologies, tactics and strategies, that are used to facilitate the stu- dent’ work in the analysis of existing texts, creation of new texts, stimulation of class and home self-study in the spheres of creative scientific and artisticwork, for example, writing an artistic essay or a scientific article. And the basis for such work will be constituted by the text.

ПРОБЛЕМА ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКОГО УПРАВЛЕНИЯ ХОДОМ УДАЛЕННОГО ЗАНЯТИЯ ПО ИНОСТРАННОМУ ЯЗЫКУ В ВУЗЕ

The article discusses some features of teaching a foreign lan- guage in the context of an emergency remote shift, that is teaching unplanned and urgently switched from offline to online. It is likely that this format will keep a foothold in future to some extent, so it is worth paying attention to the development of teaching methods for such new specific contexts. The author examines such teaching from the perspectives of the general theory of management and the psychology of learning, incorporating the computer- mediated one. The purpose of the article is to propose an approach to op- timizing “classroom work” in an emergency remote format. The problem of management in a remote foreign language session is considered as a problem of teacher’s understanding of the entire focuses of pedagogical attention and selective intervention on those that need to be adjusted at the moment. Based on the generalization of the author’s own observations, the experience of teaching a foreign language under remote conditions, as well as the analysis of modern scientific research literature and a questionnaire survey of students, a conclusion was made about the productivity of using the basic concepts and provisions of the management theory in relation to the novel nonconventional conditions of language teaching. The role of the educator is similar to that of a manager developing successful pedagogical strategies, some of which are recommended in this paper.

Factores motivacionales de los adultos para el estudio de una lengua extranjera

This study arises from questioning the reasons why students study foreign lan¬guages and the variables that may influence their choice. The sample consists of 90 individu¬als enrolled in foreign language courses through the UNED Associated Center in Pontevedra. They are mostly women (70%), with an average age of 42.23. An adaptation of the Educational Motivation Scale (EME-E; Nunez, Martin-Albo and Navarro, 2005) was used as a research tool for this study. This new scale includes 28 items which assess three types of learning motivation (extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation and lack of motivation) and seven subtypes. Regard¬ing the motivation dimension (α = .87), the factor analysis determined that the seven subscales corresponding to knowledge-oriented intrinsic motivation, achievement-oriented intrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation oriented towards stimulating experiences, external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation and lack of motivation are consistent for its con¬struct. A demographic questionnaire was also used to collect information on gender, age and education level. Descriptive and inferential analyses of the data were performed. The results show significant differences between the variables under study. They pointed out the impor¬tance of encouraging intrinsic motivation and professors’ role in motivating students’ learning process. This clearly shows the need for faculty training programs. The discussion revolves around potential implications of motivational nature, based on students’ job, age, and gender, to learn foreign languages

Literature in the expanded field: intermediality at the crossroads of literary theory and comparative literature

Comparative Literature in the Age of Convergence Culture Since the late 1970s, at least, for as always things have already started to happen when one starts noticing them, the traditional field of comparative literature has been characterized by three major shifts. Firstly, due to a shift in the language profile of both students’ choices and program offerings, there has been a radical migration from comparative literature to literary theory. The decreasing interest in the study of foreign lan...

Lead With Languagesin 2015

Foreign Language AnnalsVolume 47, Issue 3 p. 373-375 President's Message Lead With Languages in 2015 Mary Lynn Redmond, Mary Lynn RedmondSearch for more papers by this authorMartha G. Abbott, Martha G. AbbottSearch for more papers by this author Mary Lynn Redmond, Mary Lynn RedmondSearch for more papers by this authorMartha G. Abbott, Martha G. AbbottSearch for more papers by this author First published: 18 August 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12095Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume47, Issue3Fall 2014Pages 373-375 RelatedInformation

1987] The Missing Link in Vision and Governance: Foreign Language Acquisition Research

While foreign languages are experiencing a boom across the country, their academic status in foreign lan guages and literatures departments is still not clearly defined. The traditional split between tenured and tenure-track faculty members engaged in scholarship of various kinds and nontenured lecturers or precep tors engaged in foreign language pedagogy is still the model at most institutions. This is the situation even

1997] Bypassing the Traditional Leadership: Who’s Minding the Store?

By tradition, the leading association of scholars in the field of foreign lan guages and literatures is the Modern Language Association, and under its umbrella, ADFL functions as an association for departments, focusing at tention on matters of language program administration (Welles 1). In this way, the MLA has built into its structure a recognition that the administra tion of departments calls for special attention, that administrators of depart ments need their own seminars and publications in addition to the scholarly meetings and journals that otherwise provide MLA members with venues for discussion.

Planning an Immersion Experience

For the past eight years, our small, liberal arts college in eastern Kansas has hosted foreign lan guage immersion days for local high school stu dents of French, German, and Spanish. These immersion day workshops have proven beneficial for all parties involved. Not only do the visiting stu dents and teachers enjoy participating in the day's activities, but our university also benefits from at tracting potential students, namely language ma jors. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of hosting an immersion workshop and outline the steps for organizing such an experience. We will focus particularly on the workshops in French and German, as one of the most important goals of Im mersion Days is to attract more students to these programs. French and German enrollments have suffered similar terrible losses in the past two decades (Brod and Welles). As professionals in the two fields, we have worked together tirelessly to compensate for these losses. Davidheiser offered several possibili ties for attracting and retaining university French and German students, one of which is a day visit that allows high school students to learn about the programs offered by the university. If students are given the chance to experience the language on campus and to get to know the faculty, then they may be motivated to become part of the program. This idea was the basis for holding immersion workshops and we can report that these workshops have been successful in attracting students to our language programs. There are many other benefits of hosting an im mersion workshop in any type of educational insti tution. The activities conducted during these work shops allow students to interact with each other in a relaxed and enjoyable setting. Also, the students have the chance to use the target language outside their classrooms and make new friends while speaking the language. Sometimes activities that cannot be feasibly implemented in the classroom due to time or resource constraints can be done during an immersion workshop. Finally, immer sion workshops allow students and teachers from different institutions to interact and share ideas, therefore promoting better articulation between the high school and university-level language cur ricula. Immersion experiences are nothing new and have been conducted in several different formats. One such format is the summer immersion camp. These camps take place over a week or longer and can include both students and teachers. These im mersion camps require substantial resources and staffing. It is also clear that the students and teach ers who attend will have to pay larger fees for their attendance, a factor that may prove to be prohibi tive for some students. However it is obvious that a lengthy experience such as those provided at these camps is invaluable and can allow students to im merse themselves in the language when they might not have the opportunity to travel abroad. In order to overcome the demand for resources, Nylus and Maiwald stressed the need for community involve ment in an undertaking such as the immersion camps. Sponsorship by members of the commu nity could help to defray the costs of running the camp. These longer immersion experiences allow for some innovative structuring. Shrum wrote about her experiences with high school teachers, native speakers of the language, and junior counselors working together to form curricular teams that led group of students through the foreign language camps (219). In so doing, the students who at tended received close attention from more than

Stationenlernen: A Student-Centered Approach to Working with Foreign Language Texts

For years, foreign educators at the postsecondary level have acknowledged a prob lematic gap in many foreign curricula be tween lower-level courses and upper-level courses (see Hoffmann and James, Barnett, Rice, and McCarthy). The communicative methods and pedagogical goals of language courses usually have little in common with those of advanced courses, and it is often very difficult for students to make a successful transition between the two (see Mittman, Eigler). The root of this curricular problem, Richard Kern argues, lies in the fact that the lower-level lan guage sequence is pragmatic in its focus, aimed at developing students' communication skills in per sonal and professional contexts, whereas the more scholarly upper-level content courses seek to sharpen students' analytic skills, their cultural sen sibilities, and their ability to express themselves formally (Reconciling 20). With these divergent goals come very different pedagogies. Language courses usually focus on social interaction in a warm, supportive, collaborative environment. Topics addressed there tend not to challenge stu dents' thinking, and students are encouraged to offer their personal opinions. In upper-level con tent courses, by contrast, students are expected to analyze and synthesize material, orally and in writ ing, using formal discourse and citing textual evi dence. The atmosphere tends not to be collabora tive or supportive (or fun, as many classes are)1; instead, individual students are ex pected to listen to lectures and contribute to discus sions led by the instructor. Given the different na ture of and courses, then, it is hardly surprising many foreign programs suffer from poor retention of students from the lower-level to the upper-level sequence. In response to this situation, a number of re searchers and educators have begun to rethink the structure and goals of the traditional foreign lan guage curriculum and to propose ways in which the and halves of the curriculum might be integrated (see, for example, articles in Scott and Tucker). One possibility lies in the con cept of foreign literacy as a new organiz ing principle for foreign education (Kern, Literacy 40). As Richard Kern explains, in a literacy-oriented foreign curriculum, work with texts becomes the central enterprise at every level:

A More Capacious View of Scholarship

As a member of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, I am happy to share here a few reflections on our report and, especially, on the urgency of our policy proposals. In doing so, I want to focus on and around the report's third recommendation, which reads, The profession as a whole should develop a more capacious conception of scholarship by rethinking the dominance of the monograph, promoting the scholarly essay, establishing multiple pathways to tenure, and using scholarly portfolios (11). Indeed, if there was one aspect of the data that the task force collected that disturbed me the most, even if it confirmed my suspicions, it was the statistics showing just how fixated we are in English and foreign lan guage departments on monograph production as the gold standard in tenure and promotion cases. Almost ninety percent of Carnegie Doctorate-granting institutions rank monographs or very important in promotion and tenure processes, and almost half of all Carnegie Master's and BA insti tutions do the same. Even more alarming, a third of all departments and half of all PhD-granting institutions now demand progress toward a second book for tenure. And while articles are also valued by almost all institutions, other forms of scholarship?broadly defined?are not: textbooks, bibliographic scholarship, scholarly editions, and journal editing are all being devalued. In my opinion, this is an untenable and unjust state of affairs. I describe this state as untenable and unjust not only for practical rea sons, given contextual factors that the report details and that I reiterate

Post‐War Humor in the Upper‐Division German Literature Classroom

A motivational survey conducted in the De partment of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis in the fall of 2004 found that 60.5% of students in beginning, intermediate and advanced German dasses con sidered literature to be an important component of their German instruction.1 While this percentage has certainly fluctuated during the years in which this survey has been administered [2002-2006], the relative consistency of the student response to the inclusion of literature testifies to the value stu dents place on literature for language acquisition. But how this interest can best be nurtured and en couraged to develop and how it may best serve the related but unique goal of language acquisition is open to widespread interpretation in light of the various obstacles faced on all levels of foreign lan guage courses. In order to provide sufficient enter tainment value to maintain student engagement and tempt students to examine German cultural expression from a lighter angle, an upper-division German literature course was designed to focus on humor. Along with this heightened entertainment value unfortunately can come a heightened level of difficulty of comprehension, which often makes foreign-language humor appear too daunting, and therefore an undesirable task. Despite the difficulty of comprehending humor in second language literature, it was nonetheless selected as the organizing principle for an upper division course on German literature-German 4104-in the Spring semesters of 2003 and 2006, Studies in Genre: In Search of German Humor.2 Because it was felt that humor offers such unique insights into German history, culture and psychol ogy, it is too precious a resource to be rejected as a topic of discussion due to the level of difficulty, without adequate effort exerted toward its integra tion. Furthermore, humor has been attributed with the accomplishment of four main interactional tasks: [creating] affiliation and [strengthening] bonds between people, [... providing] a means of expressing negative feelings indirectly, [... en abling the] display and [negotiation of] both indi vidual and group identity and [... serving] as a means of protecting one's positive face (Bell 26-27). The goals for this course, which drew its numbers from advanced sophomores, juniors and seniors, were to investigate the nature, purposes and audiences of various genres of German hu mor, as well as to continue practice of the German language with special emphasis upon writing. Our area of study ranged from some of the earliest in carnations of humor in the Schwanke of der Stricker in the thirteenth century to the eth nic-comedy concept of 21st-century comedian, Kaya Yanar-a German of Turkish-Arabic descent -with every endeavor made to quash assertions of the Germans as a humorless people. The focus of this arficle is on the latter portion of the course

Meaning and direction in foreign language teaching

This document explores the possibility to link to foreign lan - guage teaching practice in the classroom, two streams of theo - retical elements set by late research on neurosciences about the cognitive processes underling learning, and the elements from sociolinguistics dealing with languages in contact. The objective of the paper is to consider those elements as an en - riching source for didactics and as an alternative to practice based on recipe -like activities well designed to different settings. Reflective teaching is presented though, as the empirical tool to make language education a real part of praxeology, in which effective teaching is connected to meaningful and contextualized didactics.

Pré-histoires II: langues étrangères et troubles économiques au XVIe siècle by Terence Cave (review)

188 Reviews unusual book which tells us a lot about the importance of storytelling, whether true or false, forthe understanding ofthe human psyche, whatever the period. Edinburgh Graham Runnalls Pre-histoires II: langues etrangereset troubleseconomiques au xvf siecle. By Terence Cave. (Cahiers d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 61: Les seuils de la modernite, 5) Geneva: Droz. 2001. 212 pp. ?36.76; SwF 54.30. ISBN 2-600-00627-3. This volume shares with its predecessor, Pre-histoires: textes troubles au seuil de la modernite (Geneva: Droz, 1999) an approach and a methodology which are sketched out in an introduction that is a model of clarity: there is no globalizing or synthesizing aim, but rather a set of studies focusing on particular 'seuils hypothetiques pour indiquer une lente transformation' (p. 13). The 'seuils' in question are fluid, mobile, available almost solely to historical hindsight, but not to be confused with 'turning points' (this term may be useful to historians, but scarcely accurate) or 'ori? gins'. 'C'est cet ensemble de traces, ce qui etait la avant qu'il n'y eut une "histoire", qui est considere ici comme une "pre-histoire"' (p. 15), and consequently these ana? lyses follow no preconceived chronological or geographical order, and indeed often deliberately eschew such a method. Not the least important preconceptions to be rejected here are those which concern a supposed univocal Rabelais, or the different 'Rabelais' ('popular', iearned', etc.) created from the antitheses of Rabelaisants. The firstpart ('Polyglottes') considers a growing linguistic and geographical awareness initially epitomized by Pantagruel's famous meeting with Panurge on, significantly enough, the pont de Charenton (Pantagruel, Chapter 9), and then by the output of language teachers such as Gabriel Meurier and Gerard Du Vivier. The second part ('Le fons et abisme des monnaies') focuses on economic questions, especially on the complex phenomenon of progressive-price rises (I'encherissment), analysed by Bodin in his Response a M. de Malestroit of 1568 but perceived in a certain fashion earlier in the century (1546-52) by Charles Du Moulin and again Rabelais (the praise of debtors, the Dindenault episode), and, later, in a characteristically original way, by Montaigne ('Des coches'). The paradoxical Francofordiense emporium of H. Estienne (1574) and Ronsard's 'Hymne de l'Or' (1555) also figure here. The links between these apparently disparate parts are made manifest: learning a modern foreign lan? guage had a commercial application, the foreign trader's very otherness, like inflation, was a source of anxiety, and, as we discover, the cornucopiaof trade has its linguistic equivalent in the handbooks and word lists generated on a seemingly industrial scale by language teachers in the great centres. Although Terence Cave studiously avoids, and for good reason in this context, a loaded term like 'Renaissance' (let alone a sup? posed 'crisis ofthe Renaissance'), the dynamism, exuberance, and transformationthat it connotes are singularly well brought out in this thoughtful study. Prehistoires II does indeed, as the author indicates, bring to mind the paradoxical method of Mon? taigne in its study ofthe particular as a means ofapproachinga hypothetical universal, or its recognition of a potential general truth lying behind vaguely felt, occasionally visible but always transitory manifestation. Pre-histoires II is a challenging study and a pleasure to read. University of Wales, Lampeter T. Peach ...