This exploratory case study aims to develop a set of best practices for integrating online discussion forums into the foreign language curriculum, focusing specifically on a group of learners in an advanced French grammar course at a large, public U.S. university. During a period of two months, 26 participants completed a series of tasks designed to provide three different types of data: 1) exploration and analysis of interactional, linguistic, and social features of Web forum discourse; 2) participation in Web forums; and 3) feedback from students. Since the feedback received from two questionnaires was ultimately the most consistent and reliable type of data collected, this study focuses on students' participation patterns and their perceptions of Web forums as a communication space having the potential to provide opportunities for learning French. Although some students indicated that they would neither consider visiting a French-language Web forum nor actually visit one, in both cases, more than half of the participants who completed these questionnaires indicated that they would both consider visiting a French-language Web forum and might actually visit one. Since encouraging students to use French beyond the classroom and to engage in the lifelong use of French for personal enrichment (following the …

The primary purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the most consistent themes in the selected novels are love and happiness. The novels are: Bonjour tristesse, 1954; Un certain sourire, 1956; La chamade, 1965; Les merveilleux nuages, 1961; Un profil perdu, 1974; Aimez-vous Brahms, 1959; Le garde du coeur, 1968; and De guerre lasse, 1985. Sagan challanges her heroines, and her readers, to find happiness. Each of the heroines handles the individual search for love and happiness in her own specific way. Throughout the novels, love represents pain and suffering as Sagan describes the emptiness of life in modern society. Her works show the futility of love in a world preoccupied by superficial things.

This thesis analyzes and demonstrates the similarities and differences between some of the national symbols of France and the United States. This includes the shared and borrowed aspects of each one and the ways in which each culture is reflected through, and built around them. The flags, national anthems, and several national icons such as France's Marianne and Uncle Sam are discussed. This analysis deals with the historical contexts and cultural meanings of the symbols, showing the changes each has undertaken in form and in national and international importance. Through the study of national symbols, this thesis reveals the similarities along with the differences between the two nations, which are often perceived as being highly dissimilar and even opposing in belief systems, cultures, and histories.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of history and culture on the passage of the comic book to the animated film. Although the comic book has both historical and cultural components, the latter often undergoes a cultural shift in the animation process. Using the Smurfs as a case study, this investigation first reviews existing literature pertaining to the comic book as an art form, the influence of history and culture on Smurf story plots, and the translation of the comic book into a moving picture. This study then utilizes authentic documents and interviews to analyze the perceptions of success and failure in the transformation of the Smurf comic book into animation: concluding that original meaning is often altered in the translation to meet the criteria of cultural relevance for the new audiences.

This thesis explores the use of English loanwords in French discourse found on seven France-based corporate websites and the website of one government ministry in France. The following overarching question guided this research project: To what extent are English loanwords used in French for marketing purposes or other reasons? As expected, the results varied greatly from website to website, but it is clear from my analysis of this relatively small corpus that the use of English is widespread in French discourse. In this thesis, I allowed myself to engage in some speculation based on my own background and experiences. I acknowledge that further research is needed in order to provide a more comprehensive analysis of English loanwords in French since this is a very complicated topic that can be approached from many different angles.

This thesis is intended to give a panorama of technology in foreign language pedagogy. Although my field of study is French, the computer applications under scrutiny do not relate solely to the teaching of French. This paper begins with a criticism of the rigid listen-and-repeat language laboratory concept while tracking the rise of communicative language learning theory; follows the microprocessor revolution in language consoles; documents the development of computer-assisted instruction; showcases software evaluations of computer-assisted language learning; explores telecommunications; discusses satellite dishes and other computer peripherals; presents the results of a survey of Texas universities; and concludes with the presentation of the evolving language media center.

This study analyzes students' use of the French second-person pronouns tu (T) and vous (V) in small-group (2-3 students) inter-learner online chat sessions. The influence of internal linguistic factors (i.e., turn type and morphosyntactic environment) on learners' appropriate vs. inappropriate use of these pronouns is considered. The study also investigates the influence of Instructional Level on tu-vous use and the extent to which students from different instructional levels provide various types of peer assistance (e.g., lexical, morphosyntactic, and sociolinguistic/pragmatic) . Pronoun use was extremely unstable for learners of all levels, and a Kruskal-Wallis analysis revealed that Instructional Level did not significantly affect appropriate T/V use overall. Instructional Level and Syntax did, however, significantly affect interrogative T/V use, as shown through multivariate analyses. Peer-assisted performance was limited to lexical retrieval. Pedagogical recommendations are presented for teaching and learning second-person pronouns in French.

The late seventeenth century was a crucial era in establishing territorial claims on the North American continent. In order to strengthen France's hold on the Quebec colony, Louis XIV sent 770 women across the Atlantic at royal expense in order to populate New France. Since that time, these women known as the filles du roi, have often been reduced to a footnote in history books, or else mistakenly slandered as women of questionable morals. This work seeks to clearly identify the filles du roi through a study of their socioeconomic status, educational background, and various demographic factors, and compare the living conditions they had in France with those that awaited them in Canada. The aim of this undertaking is to better understand these pioneer women and their reasons for leaving France, as well as to identify the lasting contributions they made to French-Canadian culture and society.

This thesis examines the current system of education in Quebec. Quebec spends as much money on education as Ontario but is not seeing the same results. In this analysis the reasons for Ontario's success and the challenges that Quebec is facing are outlined along with suggestions for reform in order to improve outcomes in Quebec.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of revealing certain liberated female traits that are to be found as early as the seventeenth century in certain plays of Moliere. A study of the major events in Moliere's life and of the social climate and salons of his time, together with a close analysis of the plays themselves, is necessary to understand this important aspect of his works. In essence, this study attempts to show how Moliere's women emerge as independent individuals who refuse the role society usually assigns them. Although these female characters are products of the seventeenth century, their actions and attitudes are used in this thesis to indicate a foreshadowing of the twentieth-century, liberated woman.

The problem dealt with in this discussion is the various aspects of the theme of purity in Le Voyageur sans bagage, Antigone, L'Alouette and Becket ou l'Honneur de Dieu, by the French playwright, Jean Anouilh. The purpose of this discussion is to clarify Anouilh's concept of the search for purity and to shed light upon the various interpretations of the theme of purity in these four plays.

Over the past 25 years, research on the effectiveness of new technologies in teaching has been constantly evolving as teachers try to keep up with educational trends. With the current evolution of technology, it is important to find out how students feel about the use of technologies in both the classroom setting and the non-traditional learning environment. The objective of this project is to determine which applications the students of French 1010 (first semester of college-level French) at the University of North Texas use for language learning to supplement and reinforce the concepts learned in class. Two questions guided this project: (1) what are the new technologies that students in French 1010 use? and (2) if UNT were to implement hybrid classes, would students be interested in taking them? In order to answer these questions, a survey was distributed to 184 students of French 1010 at UNT during the fall 2019 semester. From these surveys, 100 were selected for analysis in the present study, and three students were interviewed as a way to collect additional data. The results of the survey showed that Duolingo was the most used application for language learning purposes, while the interviews showed that the students …

This study offers a partial reduplication of a 2006 study by Williams, which focused primarily on the analysis of the quality of translation produced by online software, namely Yahoo!® Babelfish, Freetranslation.com, and Google Translate. Since the data for the study by Williams were collected in 2004 and the data for present study in 2012, this gives a lapse of eight years for a diachronic analysis of the differences in quality of the translations provided by these online services. At the time of the 2006 study by Williams, all three services used a rule-based translation system, but, in October 2007, however, Google Translate switched to a system that is entirely statistical in nature. Thus, the present study is also able to examine the differences in quality between contemporary statistical and rule-based approaches to machine translation.

The Quebec of the Quiet Revolution invites a fascinating sociocultural study, and this analysis provides an overview of major changes there during the 1960s and 1970s. The author analyzes how artistic, literary, and musical contributions of the era reflected the public's sentiments toward this metamorphosis. References to political cartoons, plays, poetry, songs, and non-fiction works such as essays and manifestos illustrate attitudes toward the shifting role of the Catholic Church, the arrival of a Liberal government following an ultra-conservative administration, the feminist movement, economic and education reform, and the transformation of Quebec's identity through fierce debates over the status of French and English in the province. Policies enacted by Quebec Prime Ministers, especially Maurice Duplessis, Jean Lesage, and René Lévesque were pivotal to the emerging society. Events such as Vatican II, the publication of the Encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, and the efforts of Catholic Action revealed two concurrent strains of Catholicism present in Quebec and the extent to which the Church had become disconnected from society. This study examines major feminist aims within the historical and literary context and considers how collective efforts were critical to advancing their agenda. Ambitious economic measures enabled Quebec's francophone population to catch up to …

The purpose of this thesis is to examine evidences of dramatic technique in Diderot's three major fictional works, "La Reliieuse," "Le Neveu de Rameau," and "Jaccues le fataliste." The management of dialogue, setting, and gesture is of particular concern, along with style and structure and the recurrent theme of the actor. The conclusion reached is that the influence of dramatic technique is everywhere present in the three works under consideration. Diderot enlists the reader's visual and auditory participation by the use of fast-paced dialogue, striking gestures, and dynamic settings. He also borrows certain stylistic and structural devices from the theater and enhances the dramatic impression by presenting many of his main characters as actors playing their own special roles.

This study analyzes specific scenes in the novels dealt with in order to determine the type of women characters Mauriac has created. This study covers Mauriac's early, middle, and late periods as a novelist. The heroines are nearly all examined in relation to each other chronologically. The study shows that Mauriac first portrays a religious and simple heroine. The heroines become agnostic, if not atheistic in several of the subsequent novels. Through Therese, they become progressively more psychologically complex. They then become less complicated and, except for the last heroine, are religious. The last heroine is psychologically portrayed but is the least original of the heroines. The examination of Mauriac's women characters seems to show that the author is deeply sympathetic with the majority of them.

This study examines orthographic variation in synchronous computer-mediated French discourse. All nontraditional variations of selected frequently occuring items are quantified in order to provide an etic (i.e., from an external perspective) analysis. The primary variable of interest is age since this study focuses on providing a comparison of chat participants in their twenties versus those in their fifties. The widespread claim is that younger people communicate using more informal and/or nontraditional forms than older people; however, the results of the present study suggest that this is not always the case. The main finding of the present study is that the twentysomethings and the fiftysomethings produce the nontraditional orthography in a similar fashion in 52.2% of the terms, and in a non-similar fashion in 47.8% of the terms. Following the presentation and discussion of the results, directions for future research are provided.