French Seminar: Teaching French in Music
August 3-7, 2009
Carthage College campus, Kenosha, Wis.
This seminar is intended to teach participants how to use music to teach the French language and the cultures of francophone countries. We will use existing songs as a means to develop input and output activities in elementary, intermediate and advanced language classes. The songs studied will be chosen according to their level of difficulty and potential to teach precise structures as well as for their cultural contents. While the majority of this music will originate from France in the 20th and especially 21st Century, there will be considerable attention given to traditional songs from different regions of France and a variety of songs from a selection of francophone countries on all continents. We will use the internet as our main source of material for this music, its lyrics and the videos which we will use to examine and teach culture. While no knowledge of music or special talent to sing or play instruments are necessary to take this class, your instructor will teach you how to use a computer software in order to compose you own songs and to teach your students to do the same, with the object of increasing everyone’s fluency and pronunciation.
The Seminar can be taken for two credits (August 3-6), three credits (August 3-7 with project) or four credits (August 3-7 with independent project due August 14.
Instructor: Pascal Rollet
Professor Rollet specializes in the popular culture of modern France and in nineteenth-century French literature. He has led numerous sessions and workshops at local and national conferences on the topic of integration of French popular culture in communicative activities. He earned his Licence es lettres d'enseignement d'Anglais from the University of Caen, France, his M.A. from the University of Kentucky and his Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Since coming to Carthage in 1993, Rollet has been commited to the pomotion of study abroad and to the development of multi-cultural awareness. E-mail: prollet@carthage.edu