oral and written productions? (ii) Do individual differences play a role in learners’ acquisition of PC and IMP? The last three chapters describe the context of the study, its participants, the conditions under which the study was conducted, and the tasks that were used for data collection. The study contained three groups: a recast group, a clarification recast group, and a control group. The reported results suggest that the type of CF provided to learners is vital, as it appears to affect their performance of the targeted French structures. Recasts were found to be more effective than clarification requests. In addition, the study suggests that“CF in the form of recast had significantly contributed to the participants’ improved linguistic performance [as well as their] level of accuracy” (152). Moreover, the study implies that language learning may be different from other types of learning, since analytical ability, for example, did not influence incidental learning. This book has clear implications for the teaching of foreign languages in general and of French in particular. In terms of methodological applications, the author asserts that recasts“can be successfully incorporated into communicative tasks and teacher-student classroom interaction”(156). Like any study, the one described in this book has several limitations that are explained in the concluding remarks. These limitations involve the number of the participants, the role of the teacher as investigator,and the type of institution where the experiment was conducted, among other factors. Despite these cautionary observations, it is useful for language teachers to be familiar with the book’s findings, which aid in choosing the type of CF to provide to students. University of Delaware Ali Alalou Pivot, Bernard. Les tweets sont des chats. Paris: Albin Michel, 2013. ISBN 978-2-22624852 -7. Pp. 162. 12 a. Host of the long-running literary forum Apostrophes and the grueling televised dictation Dico d’or, Pivot seems an unlikely twitteur. After all, the only constraint of a tweet is its length. The receivers revel more at its freshness and novelty than at its careful crafting or attention to grammatical and spelling conventions. For this champion of linguistic prescriptivism, however, a tweet can transcend its often ephemeral nature: form need not trump content. Pivot’s allusion to haiku is apt. The year’s worth of Pivot’s tweets assembled in this volume displays not the contingent “here and now” tweet, but rather those crafted with epigrammatic vigor. His project is announced in the title: tweets are cats because, like the feline, they move about silently. Moreover, his cats get along with birds, that is, the Twitter pictogram. This simile along with the easy slippage between the animate and its pictorial symbol tip Pivot’s hand. In his tweeting, Pivot valorizes the metalinguistic and poetic functions over the immediate, informational , and referential qualities of the“paradigmatic”tweet. Not surprisingly, he insists that the act of writing should foster literacy: “Écrire, c’est faire entrer la grammaire 280 FRENCH REVIEW 88.3 Reviews 281 dans son âme” (41). Pivot proscribes the acronyms, phonetic spellings, and other orthographic deformations that signify a breathless rush to broadcast news within the 140-character constraint. Rather, he constructs a Twitter bon usage that respects the users of the language, rather than treating them as“engourdis du cervelet”(11). Pivot’s tweets can be self-reflexive as well, in both an invigorating and nostalgic sense. He is eager to explain why a man in his seventies should take up this medium, which appears to be the domain of the younger and the more dynamic members of society. In yet another play on words, Pivot explains that he takes pleasure in the action of gazouiller. In Quebec, the verb is close in meaning to jaser. It has also been proposed as a replacement for tweeter. As an aging writer, he laments the imposition of glasses: one can no longer pretend not to see or recognize. Finally, he finds the existence of the verb mourir and its derivatives unfair. They signify an act in which they will not participate:“‘Mort’, ‘mourir’ sont des mots en pleine forme, menacés d’aucune maladie. Ils ne mourront pas. Ce n’est pas juste” (27). I...
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Jun 18, 2024
Florence Ligozat + 1
Open Access