Search

This study is based on data provided by a corpus 1,144,668 words of contemporary written standard French of a semi-specialized nature, consisting of journalistic texts relating to the introduction of the Euro. The aim is to investigate the potential of a corpus such as this as a resource for language teachers and learners in an area such as French for business, where competence in the expression of quantitative may be required. Through an analysis of the verbs and prepositions used in conjunction with the percentage symbol, the aim is twofold: firstly to show how the information obtained from the corpus can complement the contribution of the grammar and the coursebook, providing a resource with a variety of examples of actual use; and secondly to raise the question of how information such as this can be made available to teachers and learners in an environment which fosters inductive learning and learner autonomy.

This paper deals with the acceptability of syntactic constructions in the light of a distinction between written and spoken French. We present this distinction as one factor within a multifactorial approach. Relevant factors include pragmatic, stylistic, and syntactic constraints which will influence the acceptability of an utterance. We therefore argue that, by modifying the information structure, it is possible to make a construction that is strongly associated with spoken French (clitic left dislocation of the object) acceptable in a written French context. To test this hypothesis, we present a series of experiments testing the construction’s acceptability under various informational constraints. We propose a model with similar constraints for both spoken and written French including modality as one of the predictors.

We tested the effects of a professional development program (CASIS) on teachers' pedagogical practices and students' motivation and achievement in written French. CASIS involved a two-day workshop in which we taught teachers to use collaboration, autonomy support, authentic tasks, involvement, and structure. We conducted a quasi-experimental longitudinal study among 18 elementary school teachers and 277 of their students. The results showed large group effect sizes for four of the five pedagogical practices and increased intrinsic motivation for students whose teachers attended CASIS. The discussion centers on the implications of these findings for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies three thematic markers (TMs) in informal written French: pour ce qui est de, au niveau (de) and en matière de. We will demonstrate that they have different syntactico-semantic and discourse-functional properties and that the exact function of the TM construction results from the interplay between the inherent properties of the TM and the specific syntactic construction it appears in. We will demonstrate that TMs do not only introduce the aboutness-topics, but that they can also establish the frame in which the main clause holds or functions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Spoken and written French contrast in many ways. Our goal here is to show how later language development is profoundly impacted by experience with written language. More than 120 French-speakers/ writers, one group of children (mean age: 10;9) and two groups of adolescents (mean age: 12;7 and 15;2), participated in this study. Our analysis of noun phrases is inspired by the hypothesis of Preferred Argument Structure (Du Bois 1987) and examines referential cohesion in texts produced in contexts differing in modality (spoken - written) and text type (expository - narrative). Our aim is to demonstrate: (a) that spoken language production is governed by discursive constraints which control the flow of information; and (b) these discursive constraints differ for written and spoken production. Part of learning to become a literate user of French involves overcoming the discourse constraints governing spoken language production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have compared the written competency of French immersion students and their core French peers, and research on these learners at a postsecondary level is even scarcer. My corpus consists of writing samples from 255 students from both backgrounds beginning a university course in French language. The writing proficiency of core French and French immersion graduates was compared based on total output and several measures of grammatical and syntactical accuracy. Few statistically significant differences emerge. However, a subgroup of core French learners who had benefitted from an authentic immersion experience appears to outperform both regular core French and French immersion groups. The purpose of this quantitative study is primarily diagnostic; the results should help universities better serve the needs of first-year students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reports on an exploratory study to establish a semantic base for the concept of competence in the French-speaking literature on education. Doing so will make it possible to identify neighbouring concepts or notions that researchers can use to determine definitions and applications for the concept. The research team found only one dimension it could refer to as an invariable criterion, that is, one that is present in all six dimensions of the concept. Further studies need to be conducted to specify a shared vision of the concept of competence, which does not currently exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of learner corpora which provides assistance to written language assessment expert to analysis written text in native languages such as French and English and helps in determining language acquisition levels.

Copyright of Synergies Algérie is the property of GERFLINT (Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches pour le Francais Langue Internationale) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: In Modern French, parce que “because” seems to be replacing car “because, for”. This is not a new phenomenon: the competition between these two causal conjunctions (among others) started out almost a thousand years ago. Our corpus data show that parce que only recently gained the upper hand, but only in Spoken French, while Written French still allows the use of car on a par with parce que. We investigate here this double evolution – the dying out of car and development of parce que – with a corpus study including a written diachronic corpus (from Preclassical to Contemporary French) and modern spoken data. Our aim is to see when and how parce que came to the fore, and to study the role of grammaticalization and subjectification in this process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article presents a study which aims to develop the teaching practice of teachers regarding the use of writing portfolios in French immersion students in Anglophone secondary school in Kingston, Ontario. It mentions that the use of the teaching format of these writing portfolios will improve the linguistic accuracy of these students in written French which would be their second language. It states that data analysis is done to assess the improvement in the language production accuracy of these students. It also looks at the findings of the study as well as its contributions to literature.

The article presents a reflection on the multiple occurrences of the popular word "cul" (ass in English) in the political pamphlets of the Revolution period in France, at the end of the 18th century. According to the article, with the prohibition of the Carnaval in 1791, an entire series of pamphlets by moderates and royalists hurried to describe a world turned upside down in which ridicule could be used as a cruel, political weapon, in the burlesque tradition. The popular language used in the French political newspaper "Père Duchesne" during this period is examined.

This study investigated visuo-orthographic knowledge in deaf readers of French compared to age-matched hearing subjects. More specifically, we were interested in knowledge related to the legal position of double consonants and to the fact that double consonants are much more frequent than double vowels in written French. We used a word-likeness choice task in which subjects had to determine which of two pseudo-words most resembled a real word in written French (e.g., fellut or felutt). The participants were 24 deaf students aged 10 to 18 and 24 matched hearing students. The main results indicate that deaf readers develop the targeted knowledge, but to a lesser extent than hearing controls. Different avenues are proposed to explain this difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of French Language Studies is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

For EU institutions, having a single internal working language – for which English is the only candidate – would be the most efficient solution and, to all appearances, in the best interests of each member state and language community whose language is excluded as a working language. However, for member states from the large non-anglophone language communities, such a solution seems barely acceptable and, in addition, would not correspond to the EU's official language policy on the preservation of language diversity. This is because “English only” is expected to inevitably transcend the borders of internal institutions and further limit the function of the remaining widely-spoken languages, especially as a lingua franca and in foreign language teaching. This contribution presents the conflict of interests between the smaller and the larger language communities in having only one or several institutional working languages for the EU and sketches out a possible solution which would serve both political and communicative demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Langage & Societe is the property of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The purpose of this study was to intervene in the process of the Halliwick Method (swimming), in order to improve the method, or some of its aspects, for a sample of 14 individuals with Down’s syndrome (aged six to 21 years), using both an individualized educational setting approach and a differentiation of the elements of the Halliwick Method. The pre-intervention phase included medical examination, IQ, measurement of the behaviour according to the Rutter Scale and a Test of Physical Performance for each subject. Next, the subjects were assigned to seven pairs of case studies, where each individual following a Halliwick Method’s swimming programme was paired with an individual following a modified swimming programme based on the same method, on physical health variables, IQ, behaviour and motor abilities. The duration of each swimming programme was 24 weeks for each individual, at a frequency of once per week, for 40 minutes. In the light of the findings of this study, further recommendations for the improvement of Halliwick Method procedures were made, common factors that affected the performance of each individual were identified and their relation with performance was explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the essential characteristics of the writing style of Willa Cather. According to the author, there are aspects of the French language present in Cather's English prose, especially in the book "Death Comes for the Archbishop." The author suggests that because Cather was a former teacher of Latin and read French literature in the French language, she was aware of common roots between the French and Spanish languages, elements of which are present in the novel. Passages in her book that present a switch from English into French, examples of punning with French names that remain hidden in the text, and remarks on the list of ships named by Cather in her works are discussed.

We describe the principles underlying ILLICO, a generic natural languagesoftware tool for building larger applications for performing specific linguistictasks such as analysis, synthesis and guided composition. We show in thispaper to what extent this approach is relevant to CALL, or, more precisely,to the development of CALL systems. Our interests lie in the building of linguisticgames that allow the production of well-formed sentences, starting eitherfrom a set of constraints or from other sentences. In order to do so, we formallydefine the relevant constraints and illustrate their use through the linguisticgames developed in ILLICO. Finally, we discuss some possible extensions forcreating other linguistic games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses a study which determined if the free composition method of teaching is more effective than the foreign language transition method in developing ability to write the French language. Selection of the participants; Methodology; Findings and its implications.

Planning and sequencing lessons in task-based language teaching has been considered a challenge because there is no agreed-upon theoretical framework for sequencing tasks. The SSARC model (stabilize, simplify, automatize, reconstruct, and complexify) of task sequencing allows for predictions about L2 learners' interlanguage development. However, previous task sequencing studies have reported mixed findings. Therefore, the current study further investigated the effectiveness of sequencing tasks using the SSARC model for promoting L2 written lexical complexity (e.g., lexical diversity), grammatical accuracy, and fluency. Novice French L2 writers (N = 42) at an elementary school in Lebanon carried out three experimental tasks in two different orders: simple-to-complex, and complex-to-simple. Pre-test and post-test measures of their written production and discrete point tests of target lexical and grammatical forms were administered. Results showed that the writers in both groups improved in terms of their lexical diversity, grammatical accuracy of relative clauses, and fluency, but the simple-to-complex group maintained the gains over time. Pedagogical implications for task sequencing in L2 contexts are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-language prosodic differences are well-known at the phrasal level and below, and a few studies have shown language-dependent differences in speakers’ prosody over a discourse or text [Fon (2002), Smith and Hogan (2003)]. For comparison with the patterns found in production, this study examines listeners’ preferences in text-level prosody. Previously-analyzed recordings of one speaker of American English reading aloud an English text, and one speaker of Parisian French reading a comparable French text, were used as a basis. The discourse organization of each text was analyzed by several native speakers who categorized each sentence-to-sentence transition as a Topic Shift, Continuation or Elaboration. The original recordings were manipulated in several ways to alter rate, sentence-final lengthening and pause duration, and the manipulated versions were presented to listeners. English listeners liked best those versions where values for rate and lengthening matched the speakers’ means for each separate type of topic transition. French listeners preferred the version where each prosodic variable kept the same mean value throughout. These results are supported by acoustic measurements which also point to a more salient role for rhythmic effects at the discourse level in English than in French. [Work supported by NSF grant BCS-9983106.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]