Le participe passé entre accords et désaccords éd. par Fabrice Marsac, Jean-Christophe Pellat (review)

Reviews 243 Marsac, Fabrice, et Jean-Christophe Pellat, éd. Le participe passé entre accords et désaccords. Strasbourg: PU de Strasbourg, 2013. ISBN 978-2-86820-553-7. Pp. 296. 28 a. Past participle agreement in French, with its many rules, exceptions, and complexities , presents a system that is confusing to many and mastered by few, whether native or nonnative speakers. In most cases, the gender marking required in the written language is not phonetically realized; adding to the confusion is a recent trend in the spoken language toward optionality of past participle agreement with a preceding direct object—even in formal contexts and among educated speakers. This volume explores past participle (non)agreement from different perspectives through work by scholars from around the globe. The book is divided into two main parts, grouping together articles that take a linguistic perspective and those that assume a didactic perspective , although many of the articles throughout the volume seem to offer some pedagogical insights. There is a good amount of overlap among many of the chapters, particularly in how the rules are presented and analyzed, which means that the individual contributions can be read as stand-alone articles. In addition, more ambitious readers can gain a profound and thorough understanding of the intricacies of past participle agreement and the difficulties that these intricacies pose for the native speaker as well as the second language learner. Indeed, this repetition is helpful, given that the many rules and exceptions are not always completely clear. Among the chapters written from a linguistic perspective, Pellat’s contribution traces the grammaticalization of past participle agreement throughout the development of the French language. Peeters, Farid, and Le Bellec each consider in their respective chapters how some of the more classical rules could be simplified or revised as the language evolves (a theme also found in Van Raemdonck’s more pedagogically-focused contribution in the second part). Some of these articles examine specific contexts in which the rules may seem particularly murky: Marsac and Marengo consider the case of perception verbs followed by an infinitive, whereas Rodríguez Pedreira and Pino Serrano tested native and nonnative speakers’realization of participle agreement with verbs of measurement (for example, les trente minutes que j’ai couru(es)). A couple of the articles compare the French system with those of other languages: Czech (Honová) and Polish (Pilecka).In the second part,the contributions take a more applied approach to explicit instruction on past participle agreement. Roubaud and Fonvielle tested past participle agreement among middle-school students in spontaneous production and fill-in-theblank tasks, whereas Forakis compares the performance of native, nonnative, and bilingual French speakers on a multiple-choice questionnaire. Makassikis lays out a very clear pedagogical sequence,complete with sample exercises and full-color reproductions from a grammar text. Overall, this book is rich in information that will be of value to linguists interested in the nuances of French past participle agreement and the origins of the rules, to language teachers in search of more effective and palatable ways of presenting these rules to students, and to advanced students themselves. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis A. Kate Miller Methods and Materials edited by Frédérique Grim Alix, Christophe, Dominique Lagorgette, et Ève-Marie Rollinat-Levasseur, éd. Didactique du français langue étrangère par la pratique théâtrale. Chambéry: PU de Savoie, 2013. ISBN 978-2-919732-03-6. Pp. 310. 20 a. This volume explores the role of ‘theatrical’ and dramatic activities and their relationship to foreign language pedagogy from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives. Activities such as plays, skits, role plays, dramatic readings and scripted dialogues have long been part of communicative language teaching to some degree, as a means of promoting language development and creative expression by learners in a variety of contexts. However, as the editors note in the introduction, the focus is placed on the learner and the creative process itself rather than on the many genres potentially represented by the term ‘theater.’ The twenty-four articles thus address a wide range of topics, grouped into four sections: Exploration didactique des pratiques théâtrales, Méthodes et mise en action, Pratiques...