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Motivating students towards language learning includes embedding meaningful themes, communicative tasks, and authentic assessments. When voice and choice are held as essential qualities of the task, students invest in the resources to make meaning and express their own thoughts, thus moving us away from traditional assessments that emphasize surface-level understanding and towards critical thinking and proficiency. Applying the unit's learning to an interpersonal or presentational assessment that values not only the structures and vocabulary but also the students' synthesis makes their language learning personal.

Assessment is a central feature of teaching and learning. It is both complex and challenging in ordinary times, and these aspects are magnified in an online learning environment. Given its central role, it is crucial that its design and purpose is rigorous and robust. This paper presents justification for using interactive oral assessment as an online, innovative, authentic assessment approach that prepares students for professional life, combats plagiarism and promotes academic integrity. It shares findings through four brief case study examples of using interactive oral assessments in computing, education, French literature, and aviation. This study also demonstrates the value of a Community of Practice in developing expertise, confidence, and resources to support the effective application of interactive oral assessment.

This essay analyzes the educational significance of the metaphysical novel, that is, how it can be used to educate ourselves and our students. Mordechai Gordon begins by describing the nature of the metaphysical novel while contrasting it to "pure" philosophy and theory building. Gordon also situates Beauvoir's insights in the broader context of the ongoing conversation on philosophy and literature. In the next part, he examines Beauvoir's philosophy of lived experience and compare her philosophical approach to more traditional phenomenological theories. From the analysis of Beauvoir's philosophy of lived experience, Gordon turns to explore the role that "ambiguity," "contingency," and "complexity" play in helping us make sense of people's lives while drawing on examples from several metaphysical novels to illustrate these notions. He concludes this essay by reflecting on the question: what can the study of metaphysical novels bring to philosophy of education?

In this paper, we have reviewed and analyzed literature textbooks at the pre-university level, respectively in the high school. In this research, we have examined the way these texts are analyzed (the pedagogical apparatus as it is otherwise called). Such work is done considering the requirements of the latter to fulfill certain competencies provided by the program on which the text is drafted. The method we used is based on two parallel directions. One is about the aforementioned comparison of the required competencies and those realized in the pedagogical apparatus of the textbooks of different publishing houses, which have gained the right to be part of the textbooks that can be selected by different schools for the treatment of the subject of literature. This is seen according to the rubrics provided by the program, those currently implemented, and the competencies suggested by us, which we do not see implemented by the first two. In parallel, we have identified the problems in terms of simple text analysis, in a stylistic, pragmatic-reflective plane, giving our suggestions for each case. About 80% of the textbooks show problems with the way the rubrics are constructed and almost 90% of the rubrics are constructed with questions that may go beyond the rubric topic. The paper is accompanied by a concrete example of text analysis suggested to the professional network of literature teachers. This model is based on the experience of Italian and French textbooks.

This paper describes one approach to focusing on Connections, one of the five Cs from the World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, as a means of exposing introductory language students to culturally diverse authentic texts through drama-based pedagogy. Our approach focuses on an instructor working within an established departmental curriculum for introductory language courses. Despite these constraints, the instructor was able to create a two-day instructional sequence that allowed students to interact with each other through their engagement with the work of the Francophone playwright Charles Moravia (1875-1938). The activity sequence was embedded in the grammar and vocabulary presented in the assigned textbook chapter, aligned with the communicative goals for the unit, and also integrated the graduate student instructor's own doctoral research interests in a way that was energizing for instructor and students alike. The authors demonstrate the viability of expanding a given syllabus to offer novice language students a more culturally diverse range of authentic texts, including a range of genres, all while consistently serving the needs of a proficiency-based classroom.

The paper is focused on the study of the interconnection of context and evaluative utterances in French. The assessment of different aspects of the world is viewed as a considerable part of human cognitive activities. Considering this, in the paper evaluative utterances are analysed in relation to logical, semantic, pragmatic and communicative properties of evaluation as an element of a linguo-cognitive domain. It is emphasised that the pragmatic analysis is of great significance in the interpretation and explanation of positive or negative polarity of the utterance evaluation. The present article also demonstrates the importance of various semasiological and syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices in the process of highlighting the positive or negative evaluative effect. Following the principles of pragmatic analysis, the author outlines the language means realising positive and negative polarity of the utterance evaluation. The study also proves that the units being neutral at the language level acquire evaluative potential in context. The results obtained confirm the idea that the correlation between the evaluative utterance and its context helps understand the encoded in the evaluative utterance presupposition of communication being the speaker's communicative intentions associated with his/her epistemic state.

Machine translation (MT) provides a seemingly accelerated alternative way to communicate in the target language (L2). A convenient service to the public, MT renders a potential disservice to language learners. In this pedagogically focused article, we show concrete and detailed examples of how language instructors can turn MT and other electronic tools such as translation memories, grammar- and spell-checkers, or mapping tools into virtual assistants to empower students to use them responsibly. Two classroom interventions, one at a large public research university on the West coast and the second one at a medium-sized public university in the Midwest, aimed to develop students' awareness of the language learning process, while introducing them to various online tools that can help them communicate better in L2 without blindly using MT. The interventions were designed for intermediate level students. The first group of students were part of an advanced composition course who were shown limitations of MT and alternative editorial tools in L2, while the second group was part of an introductory literature course in which students were introduced to reasoning maps, such as mind, concept, and argument maps, to assist them with L2 communication. The main takeaways from these interventions were the need to readjust the students' attitudes as much as the instructors' mindsets if we want to make MT an ally. Shifting focus from accuracy to comprehensibility changes the stakes in L2 communication as the production of meaning becomes an exercise in student agency and leads to the satisfaction of being able to communicate spontaneously in the target language.

In this article teachers will find a rationale and examples for connections between literature and other disciplines, such as history, science, art, political science, philosophy, and psychology. The article addresses the goal of the Connections standard, as defined by the "World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages" (W-RSFLL) (NSFLEP, 2015), namely, to help students expand their knowledge, engage in critical thinking, and attempt to solve problems creatively. With this goal in mind, it examines two literary avenues for making connections: first, literature in the original language, and second, literature in translation. It demonstrates connections with history, political science, and art within a language or literature course. Some examples include the question of immigration through Marie-Thérèse Coliman-Hall's short story "Bonjour Maman, Bonne fête, Maman, [Greetings, Mama; Happy Mother's Day, Mama"]; the role of colonialism in French history through the poetry of Léopold Sédar Senghor; and the question of national identity through Daudet's La Dernière Classe ["The Last Class"]. The article also addresses literature in translation through examples taken from the author's personal experience in teaching an interdisciplinary course. Among the topics are the role of memory through Bergson and Proust, and Einstein's "space-time" through Proust and Bakhtin. This topic includes folk-tales, accessible in the original and translation. Finally, the article illustrates a multi-disciplinary approach to atomic warfare through the film "Hiroshima mon amour." It emphasizes the role of the language teacher in guiding students to make connections between language and content disciplines, notably through the three modes of communication, and illustrates the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving and critical thinking.

This article attempts to realize the dominant approach in developing the academic curriculum of language degree and French literature in Iran. It concentrates on analyzing the content of the curriculum approved by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in Iran and the University of Tehran. It was concluded that the first curriculum opts an approach of broad areas by considering the isolated components of language learning. It encompasses the literature of each century. Yet, Tehran University has sought to review the curriculum of Bachelor degree in 2011. With regard to the course of the general French, curriculum decisions are influenced by the corporation, specifically by French companies (under the influence of the action-oriented perspectives in language teaching). In these courses, the approach is based on the general areas. The courses in French literature are based on learning objects and are part of a multidisciplinary approach.

The use of digital exhibitions in two advanced language and culture courses within a liberal arts curriculum provides an innovative pedagogical approach to promoting language learning and critical analysis. This article proposes a pedagogy to incorporate Maker-Centered Learning (MCL), the framework that emerged from a Harvard Graduate School of Education research project, Agency by Design (AbD) in 2012, into language courses. Through the lens of the three indicators ("looking closely," "exploring complexity," and "finding opportunity") and related descriptors put forward by the AbD project, the analysis of the two language courses--one French and the other Spanish--as case studies reveals how, despite differences in course objectives and design, they achieved similar results by (1) facilitating learner autonomy, (2) developing learner communities, and (3) fostering learning on a continuum by going beyond the classroom. We demonstrate that creative projects made possible through digital tools can generate opportunities for engaging with language, literature, and culture in ways that transform students into collaborators and creators of knowledge. This approach consequently displaces the MCL framework from its more traditional association with Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) fields, and bolsters the claims of scholars who view the arts and humanities as equally fertile ground for its application. The pedagogical methodology detailed here could be replicated in any language classroom.

Research on academic socialization has predominately focused on the L2 educational experiences of international students. While foreign language (FL) research has explored "multiliteracies" and "intercultural learning," literacy in a FL continues to be understood as the use of foreign words and grammar combined with culturally familiar reading and writing practices. This article, which is conceptual in nature, highlights the potential to socialize US FL learners to literacy practices from the target culture. It reports on an upper-division French literature and composition course that was redesigned to socialize students at UC Berkeley to two French academic genres, namely, the "explication de texte" and "commentaire composé." The insights from the present project, which are not language-specific and hold relevance for undergraduate and graduate students alike, encourage critical reflection within FL departments on what is--and can be--entailed by literacy in additional languages.

This study reported on the results of a quasi-experimental research to explore the effectiveness of using a cooperative learning method on students' academic achievement, their group working behavior and their perception and opinions towards cooperative learning in a Modern French Literature course. The sample included twelve junior students majoring in French who registered in Modern French Literature course in the second semester of 2010 at Rangsit University. The sample was further divided into three groups and each group contained four of more or less competent students. The Learning Together technique of the Cooperative Learning method was used as treatment to teach 12 topics of the 14 topics of the Modern French Literature Study Guide, written by the researcher for the 2010 academic year. For the last two topics of the Study Guide, each student was required to self-study the content prior to class. During the 11 weeks of the experiment period, the effects of using cooperative learning on students' learning achievement were examined through the results of the pre-tests and post-tests, administered to the class before and after each topic, and through the results of oral presentation and group work quality assessed by the teacher and by the audience after each session. The group working behavior was examined through the teacher's appraisals, and through the self-assessment of each member after group working. The results revealed that the use of Learning Together technique raised significantly the students' learning achievement at 0.01 statistical level. Especially, the students whose pre-test scores were rather low benefited the most from cooperative learning, as their post-test scores were apparently increased. The results also indicated that, according to the teacher's assessment, the students gained group working skills at a high level while they self-evaluated their group working skills from a high to the highest level. Regarding their perception of cooperative learning, the overall satisfaction with Learning Together technique was positive, ranking from a high level to the highest level. (The means are between 4.38-4.76).

"USC Digital Voltaire," a digital, multimodal critical edition of autograph letters, aims to combine the traditional scope of humanities inquiry with the affordances and methodologies of digital scholarship, and to support scholarly inquiry at all levels, beyond the disciplines associated with Voltaire and the Enlightenment. Digital editing, and digital editions in particular, will likely expand in the next few decades as a multitude of assets become digitized and made available as online collections. One important question is: What role will librarians and archivists play in this era? "USC Digital Voltaire" points in one possible, creative direction.

Western Europe has been constructed in the field of education abroad as a "traditional" location: in some sense or another that label is used to suggest that it has a kind of static or dormant significance. In reality, Western Europe is an enormously rich location for study abroad precisely because it is a fluid learning environment that contains and sustains multiple meanings and ambiguities. It is a location that has been represented and constructed by American culture in some key ways over time and what is represented is simultaneously true and untrue. Within that paradox resides a great learning opportunity. This article explores some of the ways in which Europe has been created and recreated in the American mind and relates those constructs to the limitations, opportunities, and dynamics that may be explored in education abroad. Those constructs represent in part the baggage that students bring with them. In this article, the structure will recreate the experience of students coming to Europe. The essay explores the baggage they carry; engagement with the European environment, and, finally, the process of return. In that structure, which mirrors the experience of the study abroad student, a partial but suggestive set of perspectives emerge that go further than defending the traditional and, instead, present a cogent set of rich realities that collectively create the case for Europe. (Contains 35 endnotes.)

Arts resources available on the Internet and DVDs provide a flexible, richly resonant, student-friendly framework for a coordinated study of the connections between the style and structure of Proust's novel and the social and cultural worlds he depicts. "In Search of Lost Time", a product of an artistic revolution as well as a critical and historical contemplation of the question of how this revolution came about, looks back towards the arts of previous generations, compelling its readers to adopt a multitude of approaches in order to move forward into the Proustian world. A deeper, more intimate understanding of the world of the "Search" can be achieved in any classroom anywhere by integrating carefully selected electronic resources for film, architecture, painting, music, costume, decor and dance with the teaching of the written text. In particular, perspective in contemporary painting as a model for Proust's innovations in narrative plays an important role in this study. (Contains 2 notes.)

This essay explores the educational contribution of the Comtesse de Genlis' "Théâtre à l'usage des jeunes personnes" ["Theatre of Education"] (1792/1779-1780), a four-volume collection of closet drama, in light of the social, political and cultural shifts occurring in France in the period prior to the French Revolution. In particular, in two plays from "Theatre of Education," "La Marchande de Modes" ["The Milliner"] and "Le Libraire" ["The Bookseller"], Genlis depicts the bourgeoisie's proper behaviour toward the aristocracy and its natural place in the world. Thus both plays exemplify the educational and the political role of Genlis, who attempts to tame the bourgeoisie through the twofold argument of proper education and effective parenthood, so as to keep alive the social order of the "ancien régime."

The infamous story of a young office clerk called Meursault has long entertained literary critics, scholars, musicians, artists and school teachers for the light and shadow that it reveals around and on the human condition. His character has been lauded as existential hero and rebuked as lacking agency. In this article, his story, in Camus' "The outsider," is explored as an educational challenge to a society to reflect on the territory it occupies, and the ways in which the sociopolitical machinery deals with perceived anomalies (like the character Meursault). The article explores notions of normalcy and ordinariness in relation to Meursault's thinking and experience in order to consider the idea of what lies outside, or beyond, thinking about education. The argument here is that Meursault's failure to intervene in his own life challenges both the ways in which we are ordinarily educated and the ways in which we ordinarily resist our education.

In one of his notebooks, Albert Camus describes, "The stranger," "The myth of Sisyphus," "Caligula" and "The misunderstanding" as pertaining to a series; a schema that suggests that if one were to write about one of these literary works, one would be writing about parts of a whole unless one also engaged with the others. Whether one does this or not, may or may not reflect the nature of the relationship one sees these texts as sharing. "The stranger" and "The myth of Sisyphus" share something unique: they are both as Camus describes them, zero points; a zero point here being understood as the zero point "at which" one thinks about one's existence. This article begins with a reflection upon the relative philosophical value of understanding "The myth of Sisyphus" as a work of art and then occupies itself with how this understanding might provide an opportunity for self-reflection when reading "The stranger." The reading of "The myth of Sisyphus" is not used so much to better understand Meursault (the protagonist of "The stranger") and his story but to invert our interpretative methodology such that it is possible to speak to the reader as a significant actor. "The novel is thought of in terms of the gifting of a philosophical problem," a problem which the author of this article attempts to understand from the point of view of how one might see oneself as paradoxically implicated in the drama of its articulation. It is this paradox that will lead us to speak of the narrative of "The stranger" as referring to a problem in how philosophy speaks to our experience of education.

Among the most neglected of Albert Camus' literary works is his play "The misunderstanding." Composed while Camus was in exile in occupied France, and first performed on stage in 1944, "The misunderstanding" depicts the events that unfold when a man returns, without declaring his identity, to a home he left 20 years ago. Unrecognized, he is killed by his mother and sister for financial gain. This article draws on ideas from Emmanuel Levinas in identifying and discussing some of the key ethical and educational themes in the text. It is argued that the forms of misunderstanding evident in Camus' play mirror those exhibited in pedagogical institutions such as schools. "The misunderstanding" demonstrates that what is often missing in our communicative relations is careful attention to the Other. Camus does not offer us any easy way out when confronting the impossibility of fully knowing ourselves and others; instead, he shows that we must acknowledge the suffering this brings and take responsibility for it.

Maria Edgeworth's pedagogical short stories "Mademoiselle Panache" (1800, 1801) and "The Good French Governess" (1801) portray contrasting French instructors, and illustrate a transformation in English girls' education in French at the end of the eighteenth century. While "Mademoiselle Panache" looks back to the disingenuous French instructors of eighteenth-century comedy, demonstrating English anxieties about the supposedly corrupting influence of the French on young girls, "The Good French Governess" shows the positive influence of French emigres in late eighteenth-century French instruction. In contrast to critical assumptions that the English public's outraged response to the French Revolution terminated English interest in all things French, these and other contemporary texts show that English girls' education in French was not diminished by anti-Jacobin attitudes, and indeed flourished into the nineteenth century. (Contains 1 note.)

Byrnes (2001) has suggested that the disconnection between language and literature instruction within many foreign language departments has consequences on the professionalization of graduate students. These structural issues lead to questions about graduate students' development. How do teaching assistants (TAs) perceive their competency as "language" and "literature" instructors? What are the sources and consequences of their self-beliefs? Teacher self-efficacy (TSE), or a teacher's perception of his or her capabilities to bring about desired objectives in student engagement and learning (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk-Hoy, 2001), was explored to gain insight into TAs' perceptions of teaching competence. This qualitative study evaluated 10 French literature doctoral students' TSE beliefs to teach literature and their accompanying sources, personal assessments and analyses, and consequences. Results revealed that although the TAs found the graduate program to be highly effective in its formation of literary scholars and language instructors, they found that the pedagogy of literature "falls in a gap between these two holes" (teaching assistant, study data excerpt). (Contains 1 figure and 7 tables.)

This article challenges the predominance of modularization across the UK university system, arguing that the fragmentation of the learning experience which results from this model undermines the possibility of a disciplinary understanding. It proposes instead a practice of imaginative writing which, by engaging students' experience, interest and enthusiasm, encourages them to develop an appreciation of their discipline and the intellectual and discursive resources to participate meaningfully in it. The argument is supported by detailed discussion of the teaching and learning experience on a final-year course in French literature and thought with specific reference to the writing assignments that balance intellect and creativity. (Contains 1 figure.)

This article reads two late nineteenth century short stories--one by Guy de Maupassant and the other by Louisa May Alcott--through the interpretive framework of Critical Disability Studies. It contrasts the traditional view of disability as a deficit or pathology that befalls certain unfortunate individuals with a newer one that understands it much like gender, race, and social class. Both stories reveal much more about sighted people's fears than they do about blindness. Ultimately, this method of reading historically says much about forces such as national identity, capitalism, philanthropy, gender roles, social class, and the complex relationship each has to the troubled concept of modernity that emerged in both France and the United States. (Contains 16 footnotes.)

Writing effectively is academically and professionally crucial for students, and helping them attain that skill is a major goal for writing instruction. The social networking site Ning offers a variety of Web 2.0 tools that can help students learn to write as well as write to learn. In this article, the authors describe their personal experiment using Ning to implement a semester-long write-to-learn activity with two sections of the writing course French Literature and Civilization in Translation. Although this article is a personal account rather than an exhaustive scientific study, the authors hope that a discussion of their experience, their students' feedback, and perceived results will guide others considering such activities in their classrooms. (Contains 5 figures and 7 endnotes.)

Describes methods used in teaching an introduction to French literature to help students connect literature with their own knowledge so that they see it as a link to interpreting their world and themselves. Suggests teaching literature heightens students' awareness of the power of language, which makes them better users not only of French but also their own language. (Author/VWL)

Describes the rationale, careful development, and first offering of an ethics course in French based on the works of the Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy. The course encouraged students to read literature from a variety of perspectives and also helped them apply ethical theory and examples to their own situations and provided a way for them to understand their study of French as part of an educational whole. (Author/VWL)

To encourage the students in her French class to read books in French, a teacher implemented a project involving literary journals. Students recorded their reflections on their reading, first of a novel chosen by the teacher, then of individually chosen novels. Appropriate evaluation of the journals posed a particular dilemma. (JLR)

This issue of "Kansas English" contains three articles on the topic "English Literature Outside Traditional Rubrics." The first article, by Nancy S. Prichard, discusses the importance of the new literatures in the education of children and young adults. New literatures are defined as the writings of minority group members in the United States and writings in English and French from all parts of the world. The article also discusses some of the specific materials that are available and the reaction of some students who have read these new literatures. The second article, by Priscilla Tyler, discusses teaching approaches to African literature in general, and specifically to "The Road" by Wole Soyinka and "Arrow of God" by Chinua Achebe. The third article, by Vincent Gillespie, discusses Amerindian poetry. The issue also contains a review of "A Question of Power" by Bessie Head, and a description of a law to prevent sex discrimination in educational institutions receiving Federal funds. (TS)