As a follow up to my post on Subject Pronouns in Textbooks: Written vs. Spoken French and how French textbooks do not include the spoken meanings of the pronouns, I came across a few examples of the use of ils in the indefinite sense while preparing transcripts to use in class. Textbooks still teach that on [...]
Full Story »More Beginning French Songs
More French songs for beginners! I like quirky (ok, weird) repetitive songs that make the vocabulary stick. L’alphabet Comment tu t’appelles ? Les prénoms Ça va (there is no actual video for this song but I love the Muppets!)
Full Story »Mind the Word extension for Chrome: Learn languages as you browse the web
If you use Google Chrome as your web browser, Mind the Word is a useful extension to help you learn vocabulary in another language while you browse the web. From the description: “In every webpage visited, it randomly translates a few words into the language that you would like to learn. By exposing you to [...]
Full Story »International Women’s Day and Encouraging Women to Learn Languages
International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. Improving the lives of women is very important to me, especially since women continue to be oppressed all over the world – including in my own country. I truly believe education is the key to [...]
Full Story »Beginning French Songs and Videos
I am teaching beginning French this semester and since all of the classrooms are equipped with computers and projectors, I have been delighting my students with weird songs and videos to reinforce the vocabulary they are learning. So for beginning learners of French or other French teachers who want to use videos in class, here [...]
Full Story »Linguistic Semantics: Language Reflects Ways of Living and Thinking
Anna Wierzbicka is a Polish-Australian linguist who has extensively researched intercultural linguistics, semantics and pragmatics. I have been reading many of her books and articles for my PhD research because she is interested in how language reflects ways of living and thinking, and more specifically, how the lexicon or words of a language can provide [...]
Full Story »French Books Giveaway: Win a FREE Autographed Copy of Say it in French or Great French Short Stories of the Twentieth Century
My second book published by Dover Publications, Great French Short Stories of the Twentieth Century: A Dual-Language Book, is now available! The original French stories are on the left page and literal English translations are on the right page. There are 15 stories representing authors and settings from France and other French-speaking areas such as [...]
Full Story »Quebecois Christmas Songs
Some of these are obviously rather comédique rather than folklorique. Enjoy! 23 décembre by Beau Dommage La valse de Noël by Fernand Gignac La toune de Noël by Crampe en Masse C’est Noël, il neige dans ma tête by Paul et Paul Le père noel s’t’un québecois by Les Cowboys Fringants
Full Story »More Christmas Songs in French
More Christmas songs in French! Most of these videos have lyrics so you can learn the words and all of them are French versions of English songs you probably already know. Don’t forget the five songs I posted two years ago: French Christmas Songs La Promenade en Traîneau (Sleigh ride) Le Petit Renne au nez [...]
Full Story »Subject Pronouns in Textbooks: Written vs. Spoken French
Thanks to corpus linguistics, the differences between written and spoken French are easier to describe and analyze. Since I am particularly interested in how textbooks treat both types of French, I was happy to see research comparing corpus linguistics data to textbook representations of the subject pronouns by Waugh and Fonseca-Greber at the University of [...]
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