Promenades à travers le monde francophone par James G. Mitchell, and Cheryl Tano (review)

Reviews 265 à compléter ou bien l’apprenant doit imaginer quelques commentaires que sa lecture ou l’écoute d’un dialogue a pu susciter. On trouve également des questions ouvertes pour inciter l’apprenant à s’impliquer, créer avec le langage. Cet ouvrage, bien conçu mais exigeant (à cause d’une foison d’expressions idiomatiques difficiles à maîtriser), inclut de nombreuses illustrations en couleurs, sept bilans récapitulatifs, un auto-test d’évaluation, un index thématique, grammatical et lexical. Tous les dialogues sont enregistrés sur un MP3, véritable “photographie sonore” de la réalité du français tel qu’on le parle dans divers milieux sociaux et dans un éventail de circonstances variées. Les corrigés des exercices font l’objet d’un livret séparé offrant à l’apprenant une souplesse d’utilisation et la possibilité de travailler à son rythme. Sept rubriques thématiques majeures—intitulées Situations concrètes, Interactions, Opinions, Comportements et émotions, Raisonnement, Travail, Société, Passage du temps—sont séparées par un onglet de couleur différente pour se repérer plus facilement. On retrouve l’intégralité de ce manuel dans un livre-web disponible en ligne. Grâce à sa souplesse d’utilisation et à l’autonomie de ses chapitres, ce livre constitue un complément utile aux méthodes FLE. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania Sylvie Pascale Dewey Mitchell, James G., and Cheryl Tano. Promenades à travers le monde francophone. Vol. 3. Boston: Vista, 2018. ISBN 978-1-68004-997-8. Pp. 632. This new edition of Promenades builds on the 2014 second edition with innovations familiar to those who have seen or used VHL products before, particularly anyone who is familiar with titles such as D’accord!, the high school-level text with which Promenades has a good bit in common. Specifically, the online component continues to gain in importance, as these VHL texts offer both an online student text and also a Supersite. The Supersite includes not only the vText (or virtual interactive text), but also sections matching those of the print textbook, plus audio files and other supplementary materials.Promenades is clearly distinct from D’accord! in its accelerated presentation for university-level classes and the sections of each unit. It is also designed around proficiency guidelines but does not state them as explicitly as D’accord! The textbook has thirteen units, all divided into two lessons. Each lesson has six sections, some of which look familiar but some of which also clearly show how the authors have thought through the communicative presentation of the material. The units start with three sections intended to immerse the students in comprehensible input and a communicative orientation: Contextes (four pages of vocabulary, conversations, and phonetic information), Roman-photo (two-page spread of conversation with accompanying photos and communicative questions), and Lecture culturelle (two-page spread of readings related to Francophone cultures). Only after all of this material that focuses students on communication and culture do the lessons then present a short section on grammar (Structures)—which is not necessarily as “graphic-intensive” as the textbook claims (xx). But the section is helpful and generally oriented again towards communication. As is still the case with almost any language textbook, some exercises are entirely form-based. The next two sections of each lesson, Synthèse and Le zapping (in Lesson A of each unit) or Écriture (in Lesson B of each unit), provide further exposure to the language and opportunities for comprehensible output. Finally, the section Savoir-faire provides the true promenade of each unit (there is one per unit, not per lesson) with a focus on different Francophone regions. In units 1 through 7, the authors do an excellent job of presenting Francophonie in a global framework, covering first le monde francophone, and then France, Switzerland and Belgium, Québec, the Antilles and French Polynesia, Central and West Africa, and Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. From unit 8 to 13 they return to France and cover the main regions there. Given the title of the book, they could probably spend more time on the entire Francophone world. If the textbook were used over three to four semesters at the university level, students in...