Grammar Is A Sweet Gentle Song

French school debates of recent years, which are simultaneously debates about the French Republic’s identity and values, have generated a spate of internationally successful literature and film on the topic of education. While mainstream media and scholarly essays tend to treat these works as faithful representations of classroom reality, The Pedagogical Imagination takes a different approach. In this study of French education and republicanism as represented in twenty-first-century French literature and film, Leon Sachs shifts our attention from “what” literature and film say about education to “how” they say it. He argues that the most important literary and filmic treatments of French education in recent years—the works of Agnès Varda, Érik Orsenna, Abdellatif Kechiche, François Bégaudeau—do more than merely depict the present-day school crisis. They explore questions of education through experiments with form. The Pedagogical Imagination shows how such techniques engage present-day readers and viewers in acts of interpretation that reproduce pedagogical principles of active, experiential learning—principles at the core of late nineteenth-century educational reform that became vehicles for the diffusion of republican ideology.

A resource book of supplementary materials for the teaching of grammar through songs. Singing Grammar is part of the Cambridge Copy Collection. It is a resource book of supplementary materials for the teaching of grammar through the medium of song. The Audio CD contains eighteen songs, each with a specific grammar focus, and is suitable for students from elementary to intermediate level. For each of the songs there is a clear page of teaching notes followed by a motivating song worksheet, a grammar exercise page and a fun grammar game for classroom use. The material is especially suitable for younger learners but could also be used successfully with adults.

This volume collects papers presented at the annual French Literature Conference, sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of the University of South Carolina.

An award-winning historian presents an absorbing account of the French mind, shedding light on France's famous tradition of intellectual life Why are the French such an exceptional nation? Why do they think they are so exceptional? The French take pride in the fact that their history and culture have decisively shaped the values and ideals of the modern world. French ideas are no less distinct in their form: while French thought is abstract, stylish and often opaque, it has always been bold and creative, and driven by the relentless pursuit of innovation. In How the French Think, the internationally-renowned historian Sudhir Hazareesingh tells the epic and tumultuous story of French intellectual thought from Descartes, Rousseau, and Auguste Comte to Sartre, Claude Lé-Strauss, and Derrida. He shows how French thinking has shaped fundamental Westerns ideas about freedom, rationality, and justice, and how the French mind-set is intimately connected to their own way of life-in particular to the French tendency towards individualism, their passion for nature, their celebration of their historical heritage, and their fascination with death. Hazareesingh explores the French veneration of dissent and skepticism, from Voltaire to the Dreyfus Affair and beyond; the obsession with the protection of French language and culture; the rhetorical flair embodied by the philosophes, which today's intellectuals still try to recapture; the astonishing influence of French postmodern thinkers, including Foucault and Barthes, on postwar American education and life, and also the growing French anxiety about a globalized world order under American hegemony. How the French Think sweeps aside generalizations and easy stereotypes to offer an incisive and revealing exploration of the French intellectual tradition. Steeped in a colorful range of sources, and written with warmth and humor, this book will appeal to all lovers of France and of European culture.

This book argues for the importance of literature studies using the historical debate between the disinterested disciplines (“art for art’s sake”) and utilitarian or productive disciplines. Forgoing the traditional argument that literature is a unique spiritual resource, as well as the utilitarian thought that literary pedagogy promotes skills that are relevant to a post-industrial economy, Guiney suggests that literary pedagogy must enable mutual access between the classroom and the outside world. It must recognize the need for every human being to become a conscious producer of culture rather than a consumer, through an active process of literary reading and writing. Using the history of French curricular reforms as a case study for his analysis, Guiney provides a contextualized redefinition of literature’s social value.