The goal in developing a thematic study of the French language at the first-year level is to propose a direct and pragmatic approach that will facilitate the students' learning process at both the oral and written level.
Value of a thematic study of language
Focusing a language course on a specific theme has a twofold purpose: first, it will attract students with similar interest, thus fostering their eagerness to participate actively in class exchanges and discussions; second, it will provide a definite direction to their activities, thus giving cultural substance to their practice of vocabulary and grammar.
Psychology of learning: the beginner's perspective
Students in first-year language courses find themselves in a situation that parallels that of young children as they develop knowledge of their own language. Indeed, young children discover the realm of language through an exploration of the cultural objects that gradually allow them to construct their identities as both speaking subjects and members of a given linguistic collectivity. Similarly, the discovery and practice of a foreign language revolve around the exploration of cultural objects as a means of fostering the beginner's gradual capacity to respond to situations and express himself or herself accordingly.
Proposed theme: children's literature
The idea in selecting children's literature as a thematic approach to the French language is to reduplicate the situations in which young children learn their own language, thereby grounding the students' discovery of French on a concrete cultural experience, but in a manner that will engage them gradually to construct their identities as French-speaking subjects through a both dynamic and analytical approach of the values, themes, and motifs specific to children's literature of the French tradition.
Methodology: selection of materials
The selection and presentation of course materials will be made in accordance to the successive stages that are typically part of the linguistic learning process as provided by introductory manuals to French at the first-year level.
An example are the initials lessons of such manuals, which introduce the beginner to simple modes of expression (equivalent of "to be" and "to have" in the present tense; indefinite and definite articles; rudimentary notions of grammatical gender, singular and plural). Accordingly, the materials selected as concrete illustrations of those initial lessons will include such works as French limericks of a repetitive nature > sample, including songs and poems that are routinely recited to children as a means of helping them enumerate and identify the cultural objects of their immediate environment.
Another example is the subsequent lesson that introduces students to the parts of the body. Here again, children's literature contains an abundance of limericks, poems, and songs that induce a young child to remember, at times mnemotechnically, at times metaphorically, the names and specific usages of his/her members (e.g., the fingers), while inducing him or her to construct a linguistic identity as a living body.
Gradual presentation of materials
Children's literature proves to be a remarkably rich and abundant source of materials whose transmission may take a wide variety of aspects. The examples cited in the preceding paragraph, for example, evoke an oral type of transmission, consistent with the students' still limited capacity of expression after their first two weeks of initiation to a foreign language such as French.
In subsequent weeks, as students acquire more sophistication with respect to time (e.g., grammatical past and future) and capacity of expression (e.g., vocabulary for a mental type of activity), they will be provided with materials that entail a written kind of transmission (to the extent that those materials address a young audience that has reached a level of literacy allowing them to read on their own). An example is a French fairy tale > sample, which is already familiar to American students, such that it will facilitate their first contact with a work of imaginative literature in a foreign language.
Children's literature will also provide materials designed to help students develop their capacity to write in French. Such written exercises may take a variety of forms, ranging from imitative writing (e.g.: "compose a fairy tale similar to the one we have just read and discussed"), to anagogic writing ("compose a limerick that will help remember and identify the cultural objects characteristic of a French household"), to reproductive writing ("transpose in French a story that was a favorite of yours as a young child"), to creative writing ("invent a story that will illustrate an initiatory moment in the life of a French child").
Integrated documentation
The examples cited above are of a mostly textual character, consistent with the level of fluency expected of a beginner. As students develop their knowledge of the French language&emdash;both orally and in writing&emdash;this thematic approach will become a multimedia presentation of children's literature of the French tradition, including:
1) chronological approach to children's literature:
for the very young
for the reading public
for adolescent readers
2) typology
children's literature and mythology
children's literature and history
children's literature and science
children's literature and humor
children's literature and science fiction
3) genres and forms
albums: interaction of texts and images; major themes and
motifs
comic strips as adaptations from the American tradition in its
cultural specificity
4) folklore
legends and tales
songs
the Francophonic tradition
5) para-literary
cartoons
movies
documentaries
6) new media
CDIs and interactive scenarios
animated books
journals and reviews.
This thematic approach to French language courses at the first-year level through integrated documentation aims at inducing students to participate actively and creatively in the gradual construct of their identities as subjects speaking, writing, and thinking in a foreign language.
Students will thus be expected to develop their fluency both orally and in writing through an exploration of a specific source of materials&emdash;children's literature of the French tradition&emdash;that will provide them with concrete cultural situations wherein they will acquire the means of expressing themselves in any societal context as pertaining to French culture. At the same time, students will acquire the tools to analyze and explore a specific cultural production&emdash;children's literature&emdash;and will henceforth be in a position to apply their analytical expertise to any other forms of production, literary or not, that will be presented in French language courses at the second-year level and above.