Raymond Cormier

Longwood College

Farmville, VA 23909

rcormier@longwood.edu

Virtual French/Le Français virtuel: A New Approach to a Non-Conventional Subject

Raymond Cormier, Ph. D. and Kristen Ingram (Longwood 2002)

Rationale

Retrieval has always represented a challenge both for machines and for humans. As a lifelong teacher, I have often asked--Is there a more effective way for students to recall and then apply what they have learned? Apart from the old adage of “a change in behavior” taking place which proves learning has occurred--how can educators insure mastery of subject matter and then vouchsafe recall of the material for subsequent application? In a word, how can we make retrieval more efficient. What encoding will work particularly for humans? What learning environment will best permit the student/user to recuperate and invest in aspects of an enriching experience or tradition--which might otherwise be lost forever to posterity? It is quite clear to me that education, especially now with so many new technologies available, needs a new model.

Principles

Like simultaneous décor in a narrative or a film, synchronous presentation--like computer multi-tasking--allows individuals to carry on more than one activity at a time. Inspired to an extent by Richard Wagner's operatic theory (the *Gesamtkunswerk*), the “synergy” part of this concept embraces such simultaneity. While appealing to incidental learning, grammatical or culture-laden explanations, illustrations, and all-enhancing examples draw from the same authentic context. The approach allows for the incorporation of dramatic elements that at once raise the student’s interest and, particularly in the case of harmonious or lively music, open the cognitive sensorium--to maximize learning and retention, as Zemke has recently pointed out. Opera's simultaneity of music, drama, costumes, and sets provides a vivid pedagogical analogy. Moreover, the principles followed are grounded on the principle of multiple intelligences--appealing to at least five cognitive or diverse learning styles: the verbal/linguistic (involves reading and writing), logical/mathematical (finding patterns or sorting by category), visual/spatial (drawings), musical/rhythmic (use of song and harmony), and naturalist (recognizing cultural patterns). Moreover, Zemke has summarized six other issues in this arena--andragogy (adult learner behaviors), behaviorism (rewards for learning), cognitivism (meaningful variety), conditions of learning (strategic and logical task analysis), gestalt (insightful organization), and social learning (learning reinforced through observation). Cognitive synergy, in a word, sustains the phenomenon of memory, and this promising and dynamic notion corresponds to the conclusions of a new study by French psychologist Kostrubiec.

What is Virtual French?

Le Français virtuel is a working title for an innovative prototype French grammar review lesson. It is designed to run on CD-ROM, using interactive hypermedia technology, and was conceived originally and developed using Asymetrix Toolbook.

In this program, each intermediate to advanced level lesson reinforces a single grammatical notion. While reviewing the concept, the student-learner enjoys at least two super- or subliminal messages simultaneously, one visual (both text and graphics), the other auditory (both verbal and musical). All lesson content is culturally authentic, contextually driven, and relevant (unlike many current foreign-language grammar texts). The project thus features replicable applications of existing technology.

Each lesson's synergy asks of the learner to bathe in a step-by-step cultural immersion, a multi-sensory excursion (in the stacked style of a HyperCard program), which can be "unzipped" and exploited fully and at one's leisure, or segments of which can be skipped in order to focus uniquely on the more pragmatic grammatical exercises. The innovation also has appeal because of its potential replicability in other educational fields (particularly the humanities). The conceptual framework is adaptable for all language-learning areas, historical subjects, musical topics, or even art history content.

At numerous institutions of higher education, the technology to create such multimedia instructional programming exists (including the CD-ROM authoring software and hardware), but has not yet been fully implemented for classroom or auxiliary applications. Virtual French eliminates that lack, providing thus a third innovation--full use of current technological capabilities.

It is my hope that Virtual French will have a long-range impact on college curricula. Its uniqueness will be a draw for students, especially as CD-ROM technology becomes more widespread among future generations. The project's replicability will make it an interesting and suggestive model for other areas of the curriculum. As a supplement--in the context of a “blended learning” approach (see Barbian 2002) to teaching French--the model represents a powerful ingredient. Its relevance to Advanced Placement students and the Home-Schooled in French is obvious, although the project's primary audience is the adult learner seeking a pleasureful review of French grammar principles. Obviously, the stronger the student, the more effective the multimedia comprehension, as recently reported by the team of Maki and Maki in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.

Nevertheless, one can envision--in a later development, beyond the mere prototype lessons--future lessons as well. On several CD-ROMs, it will thus become possible to embrace, recuperate and, in the end, enjoy the best of French culture and civilization--all to enhance and insure appreciation by future generations.

Application (Alpha version--Lesson One)

This prototype lesson focuses on one particular difficulty in French grammar, but, in order to make the whole more interesting, illustrative essentials from the life of Paul Gauguin have been incorporated.

Based on specific biographical details from the life and times of late Impressionist painter, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), this intermediate/advanced French grammar lesson on the relative pronouns features interactive multimedia--completely authentic color graphics, audio and video clips, and illustrative examples that use elements of the painter’s stormy life. Also added are samples of authentic music, animation segments, an interactive self-assessment, a video clip from the feature film Lust for Life, excerpts from Gauguin's Tahitian journal, Noa-Noa ("Perfume"--which text itself is used to illustrate the grammar forms), and simultaneous voice-over as a guide for monitoring the lesson's navigation..

Goals for this lesson include i) mastery of relative pronouns in French; ii) improving control of particular French grammar problems and obstacles typically encountered by American students; and iii) permitting the student to retrieve and invest in aspects of enriching French culture which otherwise might be lost to posterity.

Background

The challenge of relative pronouns arises usually not at the very beginning lessons in French grammar, but rather at a moment of transition, from, e.g., the Novice-Mid to the Novice-High level. In most textbooks, the concept is introduced in the second semester or third quarter of study. (Note: each lesson of Virtual French is accompanied by a mini-glossary of difficult words and expressions.)

Relative pronouns in French create difficulties for American students. Part of the problem is that traditional English grammar has dispensed with terms like "antecedent," "subject," "direct/indirect object," "verb," or "noun." The idea of using elements from Gauguin's life story (in this case) enhances the grammar illustrations with suggestive and dramatic value.

For example, if we take the sentence (using English examples...)--

Paul Gauguin's first wife had five children. He abandoned her in 1884.

...it will be noted that the verbiage is elementary, repetitious and awkward. To improve the sentence, one might write--

Gauguin's first wife, whom he abandoned in 1884, had five children.

The idea is to make one smooth sentence out of two clipped and somewhat clumsy ones. The relative pronoun whom, which introduces a relative clause, allows this improvement. (For more detail in French, the Dossier/Appendix below contains the elements of the grammar lesson along with practice exercises.)

The uniqueness of the approach lies in the incorporation of Gauguin's biography. As the lesson unfolds, color representations of Gauguin's paintings complement the presentation, as well as brief highlights from the music of his contemporaries, Camille Saint-Saens and Claude Debussy, or, alternately, traditional Tahitian folk music.

Lesson Two

In this segment, a second lesson teaches the past tenses in French while drawing on authentic elements from the life and films of New Wave director François Truffaut (1932-1984). The design brings together grammar illustrations from the director's voluminous correspondence, color and black and white graphics, music from Truffaut’s film soundtracks, with monitoring voice-over, self-assessment, bibliography and filmography, and four videoclips to illustrate tense usage. Most especially, this step involves the difficult contrast (for English speakers) between the two past tenses in French, the passé composé and the imparfait, or the present perfect vs. the imperfect tenses. After several pages of explanations and orientation, the forms of the imparfait, then those of the passé composé are introduced. All examples illustrating the contrast between the two tenses are drawn directly from Truffaut’s own letters; the videoclips illustrate powerfully the same concept. In fact, one scene from the director’s 1977 brilliant hit, L’Homme qui aimait les femmes, exemplifies uncannily and quite perfectly the two tenses (actually explains the usage of the imparfait in the film’s title!). The lesson concludes with several self-correcting cloze-type exercises.

Lesson Three (under construction)

Lesson Three represents a poem by Paul Verlaine, "Mandoline," and focuses on the pronunciation of French sounds and reading poetry aloud (not intended for beginners!). Once again, music complements the lesson, with embedded French chansons (among others), principally musical transcriptions of Mandoline by Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré, sung by array of mezzo-sopranos and tenors. Also highlighting the ambiance are dozens of auditory and visual representations of mandolines--all accompanied by a challenging phonetics tutorial with lively animation and a monitoring self-assessment module.

* * *

To summarize, the cognitive assumption is a) that students can concentrate on more than one theme at a time; b) association with the drama, for example, of Gauguin's artistic life will reinforce recall of the grammatical essentials; and c) the simultaneous experience of sound (voice and music) and graphics will create positive associations for learners, thus, once again, vouchsafing recall.

Assessment

Controls within each lesson are varied. For example, Lesson One features a multiple-choice series wherein the user must conjoin (selecting the best answer) into one sentence two disparate sentences, using the correct relative pronoun to link them. The content of the sentences draws on elements from Gauguin's biography. Correct answers are rewarded with visual and auditory stimuli. By contrast, the Truffaut lesson offers fill-ins--a longish and humorous episode that deals with a certain satirical character "Oscar" (from the 1976 Truffaut film "Small Change")

--which is presented in cloze format, once again with correct answers supplied to the learner at a mouse click. There is also a segmented retelling of the “Little Red Riding Hood” fairytale, complete with multiple-choice questions to reinforce control of past-tense usage.

For the pronunciation lesson, a whole series of consonant/vowel combinations, accompanied by animated stick figures, are available to the user, who, at the click of a mouse, can cause the auditory clusters to be repeated.

In conclusion, we turn to the words of this paper's co-author, Kristen Ingram, a student who had a semester's worth of direct contact with all facets of the program. She writes: "Virtual French provides the student an opportunity to learn once again and more profoundly the fundamentals of the French language, while acquiring new aspects of French culture. Not only does the program combine the language with the culture, but also introduces a third element--the technology. While navigating Virtual French, the student gets a full mental work-out, with nearly all one's senses involved and engaged. It’s really fun!"

NOTES

Presentations of Virtual French

Southern Conference on Language Teaching-Myrtle Beach, March 1997. Presentation of Lesson One (as adapted, in the context of multimedia assessment)--on the use of the relative pronouns in French, in the context of the life, times, travels, loves, and paintings of the Late Impressionist, Paul Gauguin.

Also presented at Foreign Language Association of North Carolina-Greensboro, October 1996; at the League for Innovation in the Community College-Phoenix, AZ, November 1996; and Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference-University of North Carolina-Wilmington, March 1997.

Lesson Two was introduced at the Foreign Language Association of Virginia-Richmond, and American Council of Foreign Language Teachers/American Association of French Teachers-Nashville, November 1997.

Lesson Three was presented in outline format at the Central Piedmont Community College Literary Festival, Charlotte, NC, March 1996.

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FAQs

1) What if I just want to begin learning French, will this software work for me?

There are numerous programs for beginners on the market. This package aims at those interested in a grammar review, ideally, the adult learner who needs to brush up on or extend his/her grasp of essentials.

2) Why won't Virtual French be available on the World Wide Web via password security?

Do you mean the "World Wide Wait"? For those with an incredibly slow dialup connection (locally, off campus at 26.4 and rarely faster), placing the student/learner in such a bind would be more painful than water torture.

3) What about copyright issues? Upon the completion of Lesson Three, a publisher will be sought to market the project on CD-ROM. At that point, under contract, it is hoped the published will secure the rights to reproduce the graphics, sound, and other files.

3) How many lessons are planned?

Twenty-Four, including the pronunciation lesson (3). Four or five are currently in draft format (e.g., on the Definite Article, using the works of Hector Berlioz).

Dossier/Appendix

Paul Gauguin et le Tahiti

Leçon sur les Pronons Relatifs en français

I. A. _Qui_ functions as the subject of the clause and may refer to a person or a thing.

B. _Que_ (or _qu'_ before a vowel or vowel sound) functions as the direct object of a clause and may also refer to persons or things.

C. _Où_ may introduce a relative clause referring to a place or time; its usage helps avoid using lequel with a preposition.

_Faites UNE phrase des deux phrases, en utilisant un pronon relatif_--<Answers in brackets.>

_Qui_, _Que_, _Où_

1. _La première femme de Gauguin avait cinq enfants_. _Gauguin l'a abandonnée en 1884_.

<_La première femme de G., qu'il a abandonnée en 1884, avait cinq enfants_.>

2. _Gauguin décrit les primitifs_. _Ils sont innocents_. <_G. décrit des primitifs qui sont innocents_.>

II. A. _Dont_ may refer to persons or things and means whose, of (about) which), of (about) whom. It cannot be followed by a possessive adjective, and can be used only when it immediately follows the noun to which it refers (otherwise use _de_ + _lequel_).

B. _A qui_ as the object of the preposition (_à_) refers to persons only.

_Dont_, _à qui_

1. _Tahiti est un paradis tropical_. _J'ai entendu parler de Tahiti_. <_T. est un paradis tropical dont j'ai entendu parler_.>

2. _Gauguin a rendu visite à Van Gogh en 1888_. _Van Gogh était à Arles_. <_V.G., à qui G. a rendu visite en 1888, était à Arles_.>

III. A. _Sur qui_, _Avec qui_, and _Pour qui_ consist of qui preceded by a preposition, which cannot be discarded in constructing a sentence. These refer to persons only.

B. _Lequel_, which, is the relative pronoun used after a preposition and refers to things or to persons. It must agree with its antecedent. When preceded by _à_, _lequel_ contracts to form _auquel_, _auxquels_, _auxquelles_; _à_ plus _laquelle_ does not contract.

_Faites UNE phrase des deux phrases, en utilisant un pronon relatif_--<Answers in brackets.> _Sur qui_, _Avec qui_, _Pour qui_, _Chez qui_, _Lequel_

1. _Gauguin a voyagé plusieurs fois aux pays exotiques_. _On ne peut pas compter sur Gauguin comme mari fidèle_. <_G., sur qui on ne peut pas compter comme mari fidèle, a voyagé plusieurs fois aux pays exotiques_.>

2. _Dans un livre, Gauguin parle de la culture tahitienne_. _Le livre est intitulé *Noa Noa* ("Parfum")_. <_G. a écrit un livre, *Noa Noa*, dans lequel il parle de la culture tahitienne_.>

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Sample Mini Self-Test

_Faites UNE phrase des deux phrases, en utilisant un pronon relatif_--

1. _Gauguin a épousé une Tahitienne_. _Elle était jeune_.

2. _Gauguin est allé au Tahiti_. _Au Tahiti il faisait torride_.

3. _Les industries principales des Tahitiens sont le tourisme et la pêche_.

_Les Tahitiens s'occupent de deux industries principales_.

4. _On attribue la découverte du Tahiti en 1767 à S. Wallis_.

_S. Wallis était un capitaine anglais_.

5. _Gauguin a étudié brièvement avec Camille Pissarro_. _Camille Pissarro était un peintre impressionniste_.

6. _Les Tahitiens étaient une inspiration pour le peintre français_.

_Gauguin a dépeint des superstitions polynésiennes en des couleurs lumineuses_.

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