French Lessons Research Articles

French Lessons in Late-Medieval England. The “Liber Donati” and “Commune Parlance”, edited and translated from French by Rory G. Critten

French Lessons in Late-Medieval England. The “Liber Donati” and “Commune Parlance”, edited and translated from French by Rory G. Critten

Formation of mediation competence among secondary school students while teaching French

Mediative competence defines the relevant skills of interaction, mediation and cooperation, which is important in the modern world due to international integration and globalization. However, insufficient attention is paid to it in the Russian methodology and the education system as a whole. There are no tasks for the development of mediation competence in French textbooks for secondary schools. The article examines the essence of the concept of «mediative competence», as well as the pecularities of its development while teaching schoolchildren. The article presents the author's set of mediative exercises. The methodological basis of the experimental research was the theoretical provisions of the development of mediative competence through interactive technologies. The study was conducted from November 2022 to January 2023 in the form of experimental lessons/parts of French lessons in the 8th grade of Petrozavodsk gimnasium № 17. 20 students took part in the experiment. The results of the study demonstrate the presence of positive dynamics in the development of mediative competence of students of the experimental group. According to the results of the study, it can be concluded that little attention is paid to the development of mediative competence in Russian schools. It is necessary to introduce more tasks for the formation of mediative competence into the learning process and ensure that they are performed on a regular basis.

Implementation of Communicative and Action-oriented Approaches in Teaching French for Tourism for the Indonesian Public Level A1/A2

Teaching French as foreign language (FLE) in tourism polytechnic is unique. The NHI Bandung Polytechnic of Tourism aims to train young professionals in the three sectors of tourism: hotels, travel management and tourism management. The aim of teaching French at school is to provide basic knowledge of French and to train students to be able to use French in a professional environment. French lessons at NHI Bandung Polytechnic of Tourism are taught in a classic way and focus on the grammatical aspect rather than on the communicative function. The problem of the lack of interactivity between the students and the teacher is considered as a hypothesis of the research. It is necessary to carry out an active pedagogy to invite the pupils to react during the lesson, to push them to participate. Based on this reflection, the author therefore decided to set up active pedagogy by using the communicative and action-oriented approach in the teaching of professional French for tourism

Peer Bullying in the Example of Valentin Rasputin’s story “French Lessons”

20. yüzyıl Rus edebiyatının en önemli yazarlarından biri olan Valentin Rasputin, içerisinde otobiyografik unsurları barındırdığı bilinen “Fransızca Dersleri” adlı öyküsünde zor koşullarda yaşamak zorunda olan bir çocuğun dramına yer vermektedir. Hikâyenin kahramanının en önemli özelliği eğitim için ailesinden ayrı kalmayı, açlık ve yalnızlıkla mücadele edebilmeyi küçücük yaşına rağmen göze alabilmesidir. Fakat bu zorlu koşulların yanı sıra onun mücadele etmesi gereken bir problemi daha vardır: Akran zorbalığı. Bu zor süreçte ona en büyük desteği öğretmeninin verdiği görülmektedir.
 Çağımızın en önemli problemlerinden biri olan akran zorbalığının geçmişte de var olduğu ve gelecekte de var olacağı bir gerçektir. Valentin Rasputin’in de “Fransızca Dersleri” adlı öyküsünde bu konuya değindiği görülmektedir.
 Çalışma, hikâyede ortaya çıkan akran zorbalığına ilişkin görünümleri tespit etmek amacıyla yapılmaktadır. İlk olarak, çalışmaya konu olan eser herhangi bir kayıt tutulmadan daha sonra ise akran zorbalığı odağında okunarak betimsel analizi yapılmaktadır. Elde edilen veriler eserde zorbalık şekillerine, kurbana, zorba tiplere ve zorbalık problemlerini çözme biçimlerine ilişkin yer alan görünümler başlıkları altında ayrıştırılarak analizleri yapılmaya çalışılmaktadır.

Language competences in lower secondary French-as-a-foreign language classrooms

Current language education policies in Europe place a strong emphasis on skills and the ability to use language to interact with others. The Companion volume to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages even states that in an action-oriented approach to language learning, “competence exists only in action”, thus rejecting the traditional competence/performance dichotomy (Council of Europe 2020, 139). In such an educational context, what is the role of language competences (i.e. grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation) in the language classroom? This article presents a classroom research study of French-as-a-foreign-language teaching in lower secondary schools in Norway. 45 French lessons in six schools were video recorded and analyzed to examine how and to what extent six teachers and their learners worked explicitly with the three components of linguistic competence. The findings show that grammar and vocabulary are explicitly taught in most classrooms, whereas pronunciation is rarely explicitly addressed.

Language attitudes towards French: A mixed-method investigation on potential Chinese immigrants in Ontario and Quebec Canada

This mixed-methods study aims to explore the language perceptions of Chinese individuals who live in Canada and consider immigration, specifically focusing on their attitudes towards French. The goal is to understand their attitudes towards French and, ultimately, increase policy makers’ awareness of the future maintenance of French in Canada and re-evaluating the current language teaching approach. Seventy-eight Chinese participants from Quebec or Ontario regions completed two questionnaires that were derived from the Belief about Ethnolinguistic Vitality framework, followed by a semi-structured interview conducted with sub-sampled nine participants to explore reasons behind their attitudes. In terms of analyses and results, although Quebec participants believed that French would become more commonly valued and used in the future, both Ontario and Quebec participants claimed that French would not be as essential as English, and they had more positive attitudes towards the English acquisition because of its great regional power and instrumental benefits. Additionally, a multi-regression analysis demonstrated that attitudes towards French engagement were affected by sociocultural differences and language proficiency but were not affected by educational contact (French language course). The findings of thematic analysis indicate that problems about the monolingual teaching approach led to a negative view of French lessons and even a negative attitude towards engaging with the French language. Finally, practical implications and suggestions were provided in order to enhance their attitudes towards French engagement in Canada.

Improving Writing Skills With Year 10 French Students

In this article, the author casts over a school in South London and the different approaches taken to improve writing skills in French lessons. By drawing on, and critiquing, current MFL research and practice, the author aims to highlight some of the potential barriers to learning, such as challenging socio-economic circumstances, as well as emphasise the ways in which teachers may mitigate against these. By focusing specifically on writing in French year 10 lessons, the author breaks down the process of writing and helps both students and readers to improve their metacognition around key parts of current GCSE questions. The findings show that structured feedback and consistent praise can have a strong impact on attainment, helping to direct students’ efforts and increase their confidence.

The Advertising Poster: What Contribution In French Lessons?

Our article aims to present an approach that focuses on the didactisation of advertising by proposing the key tools for successful teaching of French. These publicity documents can also be used for evaluation purposes. This being said, we are going to evoke examples of activities and approaches that a teacher of FLE can use in his class, notably in the Moroccan school with its socio-cultural specificities. The latter is an inseparable factor in the production and design of the advertising poster. Among other things, we propose an analysis of the construction of the poster at the iconic and textual level, based on a corpus composed of three advertising posters representing three different telecommunications companies: Maroc Telecom -INWI - Orange. We will review the contribution of the advertising image in French lessons. In addition, we will propose a model of methodology and approach conceived for a French course by referring to our problematic presented at the beginning of our work, namely: How to achieve a semiotic approach to the advertising poster in the French language classroom? This being said, the salient points of our study are: firstly, the semiology of the advertising image. Secondly, the cultural framework and intercultural pedagogy in relation to the advertising poster. Thirdly, advertising as a didactic support in the teaching/learning of FLE.

Transférabilité didactique pour une inclusion efficiente des élèves allophones en cours disciplinaire de français

L’institution scolaire, dans une conception essentiellement linguistique, utilise le terme « allophone » depuis 2012 pour catégoriser les élèves migrants. Cette contribution s’adosse à une étude qualitative portant sur les facilitateurs et les obstacles de l’inclusion de ces élèves. Nous étudions les démarches didactiques mises en œuvre en cours de français disciplinaire, les transferts didactiques entre les disciplines et leurs effets. La didactique du français langue maternelle (FLM) peut se nourrir de la contrainte allophone pour favoriser la transférabilité des notions, des discours et des supports et aboutir à une didactique commune au FLM et au français langue seconde (FLS).

Dialogue with the past: linguo-stylistic analysis of V. G. Rasputin’s short story "French Lessons" (to the 85th anniversary of the birth)

The relevance of the article is determined by the fact that V. G. Rasputin’s prose is mostly researched from literary and methodological perspectives; less attention is devoted to its linguistic analysis. Despite the abundance of studies focusing on individual aspects of the short story "French Lessons", its holistic linguo-stylistic analysis has not been performed yet. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive description of the linguistic and stylistic specific features of the literary work in question. The research relies on the contextual, aesthetic-stylistic, linguo-poetic methods as well as level-by-level analysis. The paper identified a complex of linguistic means. On the one hand, these means are directed at the sphere of the environment depicted by the writer, and in which the main plot events unfold. On the other hand, they help to create the images of the author, the narrator, and the characters. The paper concludes that V. G. Rasputin made extensive use of lexical phraseological and grammatical means characteristic of the colloquial style to depict "fictional time". The characters’ specific speech features are reflected in the "author’s register" of the narration. The stylistic leitmotif of the story that determines both its composition and its imagery is a complex interaction of different viewpoints (those of the author, the adult narrator, the child-narrator, the characters). "Narrative time" is an amalgamation of colloquial and stylistically neutral means, a frequent occurrence of the adult narrator’s free indirect speech employed to assess the protagonist’s actions and emotions.

Literaturwettbewerbe - ein sinnvoller Beitrag für den fremdsprachlichen Literaturunterricht? Überlegungen zu den französischen Wettbewerben Prix des lycéens und Francomics

Although student competitions play an important role in school life, they are hardly discussed in the field of foreign language didactics (referring to the German context). This article presents the two largest competitions for French language teaching, Prix des lycéens and Francomics, and explores their potential for engaging with literary texts in a school context. What seems particularly successful about the competitions is that they take students seriously as readers and challenge them to engage creatively with the works they read. This is especially meaningful since French language teaching in schools has been facing many challenges. The competitions seek to redress such difficulties by providing a selection of current French books for adolescent readers, by offering additional teaching material and other services, and ultimately enriching and supplementing French lessons.

Киномузыка Бориса Чайковского: «тембровая оптика» и «визуальная акустика»

There is something inexplicable in the fact that the film music of the greatest Russian composer of the 20th century, Boris Alexandrovich Tchaikovsky (1925–1996), hasn’t yet been seriously analyzed – not only as a part of his multifaceted legacy, but also as one of the very meaningful pages in the history of music and cinematography. The entire “literature” about the film music of the artist is limited with several synoptical essays (sometimes with gross factual errors and incredible contextual comparisons). But after all he, together with S. Prokofiev, D. Shostakovich, G. Popov, definitively changed the status of music in the Russian cinematography. It is unlikely that this gap, incomprehensible to any professional, aesthetic and moral logic, can be explained only by the fact that the composer imposed a strict ban on the making the studies devoted to his life and work during his lifetime. He was the only composer in the country awarded with the title of People’s Artist of the USSR and the USSR State Prize, who refused official appraisal, although supposed chroniclers and various interviewers always surrounded him. The need for a phenomenological understanding of musical and cinematographic logic of Boris Tchaikovsky became evident after the completion by the article’s author the first monographic study of all the orchestral scores of the composer. B. Tchaikovsky knew cinema very well, he appreciated the unique features of the cinematography, used its expressive possibilities in his symphonic and chamber music in his original way. The composer created a gallery of vivid images in the film music beloved by millions, although many don’t realize its authorship. The poetics of B. Tchaikovsky’s film music raises a number of issues primary to the holistic understanding of the composer’s style: the role of music and the sound-timbre palette in the process of film-making; the “optical” properties of musical timbres, acoustic images as visual projections; the typology of timbral extension and cinematographic chronos; the linking of musical and visual plasticity, and others. For the first time are published the judgments of B. Tchaikovsky revealing some of his views on the essence of music in cinematography and the peculiarities of the interaction between the composer and the director. As the main analytical material are used such outstanding films like “Seryozha” by G. Danelia, “Burn, O Burn, my Star” by A. Mitta, “French Lessons” and “A Raw Youth” by E. Tashkov, “Aibolit-66” by R. Bykov, “The Marriage of Balzaminov” by K. Voinov and others.

Quebec Bill 96 - Time For a Primer on Amending the Constitution

On May 13, 2021, the Government of Quebec introduced Bill 96, “An Act Respecting French, the Official and Common Language of Quebec” in the Quebec National Assembly.1 Bill 96 is a multi-faceted, and fairly sweeping, modernization of the Charter of the French Language, commonly known as Bill 101. It is primarily an attempt to use the power of the state to ensure that French is used more in Quebec, that more Quebecers are educated in French, and that anyone who wants to learn French has access to French lessons.2 As there is some evidence that French is being used less in Quebec than it has been in recent decades, the government wants to act to make French the “common language of Quebec,” as the Bill’s title suggests. While a number of the provisions of Bill 96 may violate the rights of the English-language minority in the province, which is a matter that should be of concern to all Canadians and the Government of Canada, I want to address another issue with the constitutionality of Bill 96.
 1 Bill 96, An Act respecting French, the official and common language of Québec, 1st Sess, 42nd Leg, Québec, 2021 (first reading 13 May 2021), online: <www.m.assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/ projet-loi-96-42-1.html> [An Act Respecting French]. 2 Kate McKenna, “Quebec seeks to change Canadian Constitution, make sweeping changes to language laws with new bill”, CBC News (14 May

ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЯ МЕНТАЛЬНЫХ КАРТ НА ФРАНЦУЗСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ В ФОРМИРОВАНИИ ПРАГМАТИЧЕСКОЙ КОМПЕТЕНЦИИ СТУДЕНТОВ

The relevance of the article is due to the fact that at present the study of a foreign language in a modern university is considered as teaching communication activities, the development of students' ability to communicate in a foreign language on professional topics. The transition to new federal state educational standards entailed the need to introduce innovative technologies into the learning process, including new methods and techniques for interaction between teachers and students, ensuring the effective achievement of the results of educational activities. The purpose of the article is to analyze the theoretical foundations of the use of mental maps in the educational process and in the practical substantiation of the effectiveness of these developments in teaching French. The authors has analyzed a large volume of domestic and foreign literature on the research topic, proposed a method of working with mental maps in French lessons. The article is intended for teachers of the French language.

Gamification as assessment tool in a French lesson

The relevance of the research is justified by the need to study the relationship between motivation and assessment as key aspects of learning French. This interdependence presupposes the search for the latest approaches to assessment, that apart from aiming at the final outcome of learning, are also focused on the student’s development (progress). From that perspective it is particular importance to resort to gamification that provides for applying game mechanics to non-game contexts. This approach has recently become a widely-held across a wide range of industries demonstrating its potential in education. The main purpose of the scientific research is to highlight the main aspects of gamified assessment in French-as-a-foreign-language lessons. The scientific novelty of the paper is defined by in the fact that for the first time it outlined the main mechanisms of gamification as assessment tool. The author applied the method of critical analysis of the scientific sources and the method of scientific observation of the pedagogical process. Conclusions. Gamification in the context of assessment involves introducing game elements in order to make it more approachable and thereby to assure students’ engagement and motivation when conducting the assessment. Gamification as a tool can be applied to the design of innovative tasks related to assessment. It is argued that the inclusion of some aspects of the gamification technology can have a positive effect on the development of innovative assessment system. However, reasonable combination of such technologies with already existing teaching methods can be viewed as a guarantee of students’ effective formation of French competence in the process of foreign language learning.

The saving call of femininity in the works of V. G. Rasputin (from “Rudolfio” and “French lessons” to the story “Natasha”)

The saving call of femininity in the works of V. G. Rasputin (from “Rudolfio” and “French lessons” to the story “Natasha”)

Role-playing game as an integral element of the modern French lesson at higher education institutions

Role-playing game as an integral element of the modern French lesson at higher education institutions

Theoretical and Practical Aspects of the Formation of Foreign Language Communicative Competence with the Help of Infographic Documents Using the Example of French Lessons

Theoretical and Practical Aspects of the Formation of Foreign Language Communicative Competence with the Help of Infographic Documents Using the Example of French Lessons

Measuring effective teaching: Student perceptions of their modern languages lessons in England

Evaluating the quality of classroom teaching is a complex task. Alongside observation tools and value-added student attainment measures, there is growing international interest in the potential of student perception surveys (SPS), which gather data about teaching practices from whole classes of first-hand observers. This paper reports on the refinement and trial of an existing SPS (available from the Colorado Education Initiative) to make it specific to the teaching of modern languages. Using both student (n = 1370) and teacher (n = 41) surveys, and follow-up interviews with Heads of Department (n = 6), the paper investigates students’ classroom experiences of French lessons across fourteen secondary schools. The SPS_ML was was found to have high levels of internal reliability and provided data that correlated with a range of other known measures of effective teaching. Three distinct, languages-specific factors emerged from a factor analysis, which is interpreted as strong support for a subject-specific approach to developing measures of effective teaching. The three development areas suggested by the data relate to 1) the teachers’ responsiveness to the needs and interests of their students; 2) the motivation and engagement of students in language lessons; and 3) the extent to which students are encouraged to adopt strategic approaches to language tasks.

Moving beyond language(s): a case study on a newcomer’s translanguaging practices

AbstractNumerous scholars have investigated translanguaging in students with a migration background by examining the deployment of their linguistic repertoire. By contrast, few studies have adopted a social semiotic perspective on translanguaging. Similarly, studies on newcomers in this field are scarce. Newcomers, especially those to the trilingual education system in Luxembourg, face significant language challenges. The present paper explores the ways in which Portuguese-speaking Harry combined the resources of his semiotic repertoire in science and French lessons in Year 4, and discusses different combinations of resources. Findings based on field notes and video-recordings of classroom activities show that the eleven-year-old engaged in learning by activating his prior knowledge and deploying his semiotic repertoire in resourceful ways. He mobilised features of five languages, coordinated linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic resources, and aligned his resources to those of his peers. Furthermore, he reproduced the semiotic combinations of peers as well as the translanguaging practices in class. We show that a newcomer orchestrates his semiotic resources in complex ways to communicate, make meaning and engage in learning processes. Further research into the deployment of the semiotic repertoire at school is needed.