Academic literature on the topic 'French class'

The historiographic struggle over the representation of the Paris Commune, as begun by the daily press in 1871 and continued in the works of many subsequent scholars, is in fact part of a larger ideological battle. This thesis argues that in order to understand the significance of the Commune, it is necessary to return to contemporary writings. It studies the bourgeois reaction to the Paris Commune using as source material diaries, correspondence and monographs of upper class observers of the Commune. Through these writings, the Commune is seen as a socialist threat to bourgeois stability, and a sign of the disintegration of the ideals of the French Revolution.

Based on the principles of social constructivism, multiliteracies and Freire’s (1970) critical pedagogy concept of dialogue, I observed and reflected upon my current practices as a teacher of additional languages. The main purpose for this study was to examine the role of creating collaborative short films in social cohesion and student engagement in the Core French classroom. The study included one grade 10 Core French class who explored course content (television and film genres) by creating their own collaborative short films. The short film unit, including an optional show casing in the school theatre, took place over a span of 5 weeks. I collected data through a variety of forms: field notes, journal reflections, questionnaires, focus groups, and interviews. Once data were collected, I used an arts-based approach (screenplay writing) to both analyze and disseminate my findings. The research-based screenplay that I wrote is based on the data and I share this writing in the thesis along with an analysis of this artistic process which deconstructs the screenplay for the reader. I shared the screenplay with participants to seek further insights and feedback. My findings and discussions are largely based on understandings gleaned from the process of writing the screenplay.

The literatures of Immigration from North Africa to France represent one of the constitutive fields of investigation for Postcolonial Francophone studies. As such, approaches to this are often locked in a postcolonial perspective. Through my courses in 20th century literature, I discovered several aspects of literature of immigration that relate to French popular literature. In light of this, my dissertation establishes a link between these two literary genres by analyzing the evolution of urban spaces in the Parisian periphery. The primary objective of this dissertation is to translate aspects of the contemporary issues of the French banlieues from a purely postcolonial perspective to questions of institutional choices in French city planning over the course of the past hundred and fifty years. The underlying assumption is that the spatial transformation that has taken place has affected the social interactions of the inhabitants and contributed to the evolution of a working class mentality. The expectation is that in-depth understanding of this interaction will allow me to explore the socio-cultural situation in France’s suburbs today. Beginning with the renovation of Paris, undertaken by Haussmann in the second half of the nineteenth century, each of the five chapters of my dissertation corresponds to a particular moment of this evolution. For every chapter, I analyze the characters’ relationships with their spatial surroundings, as well as the nature of their social interactions with other residents. The first novels are the only ones of my corpus set in the interior part of Paris. As more and more of the urban working class is driven outside of the city limits by the renovations and the rapidly developing industry in the periphery, the texts illustrate the increasing social isolation and loss of agency for the characters. In aligning popular literature and literature of immigration on the same axis, my focus lies primarily on the geographical space, the banlieue, and its transformation in time.

A primary goal of foreign language instruction today is to increase opportunities for authentic communication among students. One way to accomplish this is through synchronous computer-mediated classroom discussion (CMCD). While this electronic medium is highly interactive and beneficial for second language acquisition (SLA) on many levels, studies have noted that learner output in CMCD is often inaccurate. In order to heighten students' attention to features of the target language (TL), SLA research suggests integrating a focus on form (FonF) within meaning-based activities. In the CMCD literature, however, FonF has not been widely treated. The current study addresses this gap by documenting the linguistic and interactional features present in intermediate, university-level French students' synchronous discussions. Furthermore, students' perceptions of their general experience with CMCD are qualitatively examined.In this study, students participated in CMCD once a week, for 16 weeks. Discussion prompts encouraged them to use their French meaningfully to communicate with each other while paying attention to accuracy. To make form salient, students set pre-chat language goals; their transcripts were graded on both content and accuracy; they received whole-class and personalized feedback on their transcripts; and they corrected a percentage of their errors. Results show that balancing the concurrent pressures of form and content was challenging for the students. Likely determined by their proficiency level as well as the medium of CMCD itself, students produced mainly short and simple messages in the present tense; used an average range of vocabulary; and wrote with variable grammatical accuracy. As for being accountable for their language usage, students responded very well. Most importantly, focusing on form was not found to be incompatible with students' ability to engage in rich, meaningful, and enjoyable communication. While focusing on accuracy, students shared their opinions and aspects of their personal lives while remaining in the TL. Moreover, they used French for a range of social, strategic and interactional functions. Students also reported the overall experience as highly motivating and rewarding. These findings point to CMCD as a valuable means of increasing authentic classroom communication and indicate that attention to form need not be sacrificed in the process.

This thesis considers the influence of three West Indian writers who contributed to the development of Negritude as a literary, social and political phenomenon. The author shows that the racial awareness central to the Negritude movement was strongly affected by the experiences in Haiti and Martinique in particular. The thesis is comprised of three chapters and a conclusion. The first examines the awakening of racial consciousness in Paris in the 1930s and ‘40s, placing those developments in literary and historical perspective. This chapter also serves as an introduction to the milieu of West Indian and black American writers who were aggressively active in deriving a literary response to racial oppression. The second and third chapters analyze the roles of individual writers. The second chapter probes the writings of Jacques Roumain. He made an impression with his Marxist analysis of the Haitian situation, pushed for an “indigenous” Haitian literature, and developed the peasant novel. By using excerpts from essays, poems, and his novel, Gouverneurs de la Rosee, the writer details the influence of this Haitian author on Negritude writers. The third chapter considers two lesser—studied writers, the Martinicans Etienne Lero and Gilbert Gratiant. Gratiant embraced the mixed cultural heritage of Martinique, while Lero fought for an African outlook in initiating Legitime Defense, and through other contributions. An exploration of a small sampling of their work will help to clarify the context of color and caste in Martinique. The conclusion summarizes the authors’ social critique of French civilization and shows that the experiences of the West Indian authors discussed in the thesis influenced the principal leaders of Negritude--Leopold Sedar Senghor, Leon Damas and Aime Cesaire--and that this can be seen in the conceptions the Negritude movement embraced.