Textures

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Textures

 

 

Pour approfondir

 

la communication

 

orale et écrite

 

ELIZABETH BERGLUND HALL

ANNE THEOBALD

MARK ANDREW HALL

JAMES PFREHM

 

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

P ublished with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.

Copyright © 2018 by Yale University.

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including

illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by

Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by

reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the

publishers.

Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for

educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please

e-mail sales.press@yale.edu (U.S. offi ce) or sales@yaleup.co.uk

(U.K. offi ce).

Editor: Sarah Miller

Publishing Assistant: Ashley E. Lago

Manuscript Editor: Juliana Froggatt

Production Editor: Ann-Marie Imbornoni

Production Controller: Aldo Cupo

Set in Verlag type by Newgen North America, Austin, Texas.

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933799

ISBN 978-0-300-20032-4 (paperback : alk. paper)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).

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Contents

 

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction ix

Chapitre 1 : Le Dépaysement 1

Chapitre 2 : La Vie moderne 26

Chapitre 3 : Le Sport 57

Chapitre 4 : La Beauté 86

Chapitre 5 : La Culture de masse 116

Chapitre 6 : L’Identité 148

Chapitre 7 : Les Étapes de la vie 177

Chapitre 8 : La Nature humaine 203

Chapitre 9 : La Famille 238

Chapitre 10 : La Critique sociale 265

Appendix 1 : Qu’en dites-vous ? Transcriptions 293

Appendix 2 : Cité-U Scripts 323

Credits 339

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Acknowledgments

 

 

We express our immense gratitude to Ullrich Langer for his general support

of this project and for his art and humor in the Cité-U podcasts. We thank the Institute of World Languages at the University of Virginia for its support and Hannah Holtzman for her diligent proofreading. Our thanks go also to the friends and colleagues who participated in our podcast recordings: Mélinda Caron, Julie Demoulin, Mat Fournier, Nouha Gammar, Antoine Guibal, Ben Hair, Pascale Hapgood, Thérèse Hardy, Maïlys Krier, Benoît Leclercq, Agathe Loison-Balac, Marie-Claire Morellec, Cécile Mousist, Mathieu Perrot, Lova Rajaonarisoa, Cécile Rey, Marylise Rillard, Christophe Schuwey, Tessa Sermet, Jan Starczewski, Alain Suiff et, Francis and Marie-Rose Tuella, and Leïla Wel-ton. We also thank the students of French 301 at Ithaca College (Spring 2014, Fall 2014, and Spring 2015), the students of French IV and Honors French IV at Collegiate School (Spring 2015 and Fall 2015), the students of French 3585 at the University of Virginia (Fall 2015), and the students of French 300 and French 493 at Hillsdale College (Spring 2016 and Fall 2016) for their feedback and insights on the materials of this book. We are grateful for the support of Tim Shea, Sarah Miller, and Ash Lago at Yale University Press. We express special thanks to our copy editor, Juliana Froggatt, for her meticulous work in preparing the manuscript. We have made every eff ort to obtain copyright permission. If there are any omissions, please contact us.

 

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Introduction

 

 

Textures has been designed specifi cally to meet the needs of third-year

bridge courses. Typically, these courses mark the transition from the tradi-tional four-semester sequence devoted to language acquisition at the lower level to advanced course work at the upper level, at which point the focus of study shifts, sometimes rather abruptly, to cultural content. A problem for many programs, whether large or small, lies in facilitating this transition, which is far from obvious. What is the best way to move students from a coherent series of courses grounded in a nationally adopted curriculum that emphasizes oral profi ciency to a far less coherent collection of courses whose curricula refl ect the philosophy and predilections of the individual instructor and whose content, even when it is visual, is explored and assessed primarily through reading and writing? In practice, programs have responded to this question by off ering a course, or as often as not courses, orienting students in one direction or the other. These courses tend either to further empha-size language acquisition through conversation, composition, and systematic grammar review or to jump directly into cultural analysis, introducing stu-dents to literature, fi lm, and other media as platforms for interpretive inquiry. As a result, students quite naturally come to see the upper level, if not the

 

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

 

entire program, as divided into two tracks. On the one hand there are the “language” courses, and on the other there are the “culture” courses. We saw the need for a textbook that better reconciles these two falsely divergent paths.

In keeping with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Lan-guage’s Standards for Language Learning in the 21st Century and the rec-ommendations laid out in the Modern Language Association’s 2007 report “Foreign Language and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World,” Textures off ers an integrative approach to the study of language and culture. It promotes a pedagogy of holistic communication that addresses all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) while in-troducing students to the interpretive skills necessary for literary and cul-tural studies. This approach, which places communication at the center of the learning experience, presents language and culture as integral to each other, as indeed they are, so that profi ciency in the language is treated not solely as the mastery of discrete skills but rather as the ability to express oneself accurately and fully in a variety of cultural contexts and at varying degrees of intellectual depth and intensity. Language control, vocabulary us-age, comprehension, and comprehensibility are not approached in isolation but are presented concurrently through the use of authentic audio, visual, and printed “texts” that demonstrate their interrelated nature, or texture. The accompanying activities and exercises organize themselves around one or more of three modes of communication: (1) interpersonal, through small group and class discussion as well as explicit role play that asks students to react to and put themselves into the various perspectives revealed through-out the chapters; (2) interpretive, through explicit analytic questioning of the literature, still images, podcasts, and other media presented in the chapters, as well as through creative writing and oral assignments that ask students to analyze intuitively and imaginatively; and (3) presentational, through ac-tivities that invite students to present their individual perspectives on the chapter content through writing or speaking. Through the inclusion of di-verse cultural products and a variety of activities, Textures seeks ultimately to instill greater translingual and transcultural competence by asking students to explore the cultural perspectives and practices that manifest themselves through, and as often as not as, language.

 

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CONTENT

Textures consists of ten chapters. Each chapter develops a central theme

and is divided into sections (Pré-texte, Texte, Contexte, and Hors texte, each explained below) that lead students through a variety of texts and activities addressing the theme from multiple perspectives. Because our approach in this book is holistic and seeks to encourage communication, we have not in-cluded an exhaustive grammar review. Instead, we have highlighted targeted structures as they appear in each chapter’s main text and have provided ex-ercises in the comprehension and discussion questions that follow as a means to reinforce each particular structure’s use. Although Textures is conceived of as a stand-alone text, instructors may wish to supplement its treatment of grammar with an additional book to provide more extensive review and prac-tice. Alternatively, Textures itself could be used as a supplement in a gram-mar review course to give students opportunities to work with the structures they are studying in richly developed and authentic contexts.

Just as we envision Textures being used with a supplemental grammar

text or as a supplement to another textbook, we also expect and encour-age instructors to adapt their use of Textures to the needs of their individual programs and courses. Although each of the book’s ten chapters functions as a cohesive whole that can be worked through in linear fashion, there is no need to proceed through Textures precisely as it has been laid out. Of the ten chapters, for example, we expect only fi ve or six to be used in a given semes-ter course. Some themes may intrigue more than others. Some texts may work well in a certain course, while others may fall fl at. Along the same lines, not all sections need to be covered in any given chapter. Some instructors may wish to start with Pré-texte, move on to Texte, and then jump to Hors texte, skipping Contexte all together. Others may choose only Contexte for a particular theme as a stand-alone unit in its own right. Whatever the case, we have tried to provide a large enough variety of questions and activities in each section so that instructors can make real choices without sacrifi cing the richness of the communicative experience. In the end, each instructor will fi nd which chapters best suit her and her course’s needs, and we hope that Textures’s fl exible design will encourage experimentation and play.

 

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Pré-texte

A still image introduces each chapter. The purpose of the image is to help students immediately visualize a particular perspective or perspectives on the chapter theme. These images are accompanied by descriptions that place them in their cultural context and invite students to describe what they see. Selected vocabulary is provided to help with the description. Students are asked to compare their own perspective (temporal, social, cultural, etc.) to that depicted in the image. In addition to the image, the Pré-texte sec-tion includes vocabulary and listening comprehension activities based on an unscripted podcast (Qu’en dites-vous ?) that presents three native speak-ers’ spontaneous responses to questions relating to the chapter theme. Stu-dents may also be asked to contribute their own responses to the podcast questions.

 

Texte

This section is organized around an unabridged contemporary short story by a French or francophone writer that expresses the chapter theme. We have chosen complete rather than excerpted works because we fi nd them to be more eff ective means of presenting authentic cultural material and of inspiring discussion and interpretation. Longer texts are divided into shorter parts, with questions following each part, to make reading more manageable and less intimidating. This section is divided into two subsections (Mettez-vous dans l’esprit and Mettez-vous à la place), which lead students through vocabulary-building activities, grammar review exercises, comprehension questions, and interpretive and interpersonal activities based on role play and creative writing.

Targeted grammar by chapter: