Boston In French: a new online network for lovers of French culture
Where can you find shared French-American groups about education, gastronomy, book club picks, conversation exchanges, jobs, classified ads, apartment swaps and more? At Boston In French, the new, free, innovative and collaborative network! Create your profile and exchange, inform, contribute and debate questions and interests related to the French culture and language, and connect with francophones, Francophiles and French individuals in New England.
The French Heritage Language Program was created in 2005 by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and received additional support from the Alfred & Jane Ross Foundation. It is designed to support and enrich the teaching and learning of French language, literature, and culture for students of Francophone background enrolled in New York City public schools. The primary objectives of the program are to help these students develop proficiency in French (reading comprehension, writing, oral expression and other literacy skills), and keep a connection to their respective cultures and identities, while increasing their opportunities for success in their new environment.
Through university partnerships, this project also hopes to contribute to scholarly research in the field of heritage language learning. As a pilot program, it is a place for pedagogical and methodological exploration, and a way to build new partnerships. We seek to develop curriculum models that can be replicated and adapted in other cities in the United States, in France as well as in other countries.
The French Heritage Language Program works closely with the Internationals Network for Public Schools, which includes nine high schools for new immigrants in New York City and one in Oakland, California, all working at the development of models for global education.
Throughout our years of language teaching, we experienced the all-too-common frustration of constantly searching for THE textbook suited to our French language classes and never finding one. What we needed was a textbook teaching beginners or near-beginners how to live in French in the Canadian context. We could not find it, so we wrote it. Teaching how to live in French in the Canadian context means being able to interact with Francophones in a way similar to how Francophones interact among themselves. This implies knowing the rules of communication, being familiar with French-Canadian culture, using real language, and being actively involved in one's learning. À bon port can best be described by these key-words: communication, Canadian, authentic, learner-centered.
Our long term goal is to promote research relating to the acquisition of French as a second/foreign language, by providing access to a growing database of French Learner Language Oral Corpora. The contents of the database are being made freely available to the research community, in the form of digital sound files and related transcripts formatted using CHILDES software. A search facility is also provided which enables researchers to select the sound files and transcripts they wish to download from the site. The database currently contains over 4000 files (sound files, transcripts and morphosyntactically tagged transcripts). The website also aims to include an inventory of other French interlanguage corpora not available within FLLOC but held by other researchers and institutions.
"The Wiki is designed to help teachers, parents, and students find ways to advocate for the French program in their schools and universities, start a new French language program, and even improve strong, active, and vibrant French programs."
"The French Cultural Center is thrilled to unveil the first ever francophone e-Library in the United States, available to residents of New England! Our initial, hand-picked collection of 500 e-Books and e-Audiobooks spans classic and contemporary literature, as well as non-fiction works such as history, biographies and travel guides. It includes offerings for Francophiles at all levels, from beginners to native speakers, and a number of young adult and early reader titles. To learn more about the collection, feel free to browse the e-Library catalog before registering."
"Canal plus" is a television station in France. "Zapping" [roughly meaning channel surfing] is a show that is a montage of TV clips collected over the week. It's a great way to get exposure to French and familiarize yourself with certain aspects of French culture.
The website will have "Zapping" from recent weeks as well.
The Museum of Fine Arts is hosting five recent French children's films with the following titles on the following days:
> Ernest and Celestine
Saturday, April 13, 2013
2:30 pm - 3:50 pm
> Kirikou and the Men and the Women
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
3:15 pm - 4:45 pm
Friday, April 19, 2013
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
> The Painting
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
> A Monster in Paris
Thursday, April 18, 2013
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
> Zarafa
Sunday, April 21, 2013
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
For plot summaries and more information on the aforementioned films listed above, click here: http://www.mfa.org/programs/series/boston-international-children%E2%80%99s-film-festival.
Tickets go on sale March 29th and are $10.00 for adults and children ages 3 & up.
The Chambers-Rostand Corpus of Journalistic French [Electronic resource] (Le Corpus Chambers-Rostand du français journalistique) This resource is freely available, you should be able to download it now.