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users to study content at different depths (“Pour commencer” to “Pour aller plus loin”) make this text valuable to the modern globally-conscious, technologicallycompetent language scholar. Its learner-centered focus gives students the opportunity to seek out more of what they may be looking for in their language learning and allows instructors to teach these students French in a technologically-enhanced manner that corresponds more accurately to their personal and professional lives than the traditional, less high-tech methods of language instruction. University of Nebraska, Omaha Sarah Faltin Osborn MITSCHKE, CHERIE. Imaginez: le français sans frontières. 2nd ed. Boston: Vista, 2012. ISBN 978-1-61767-041-1. Pp. xxxvi + 503. $106.95. Like the first edition of Imaginez, the new edition of this intermediate French textbook features a colorful, magazine-like format and offers a tour of the Frenchspeaking world, each chapter (or leçon) focusing on a particular country or region . In addition to basic presentation of intermediate-level vocabulary and grammar, Imaginez contains a broad array of cultural resources including short films, television clips, reading passages (some authentic, others written for Imaginez), and one literary text per chapter. Imaginez also comes with access to an online “supersite” that provides students with native-speaker recordings of vocabulary lists and readings, practice activities (some of which duplicate activities in the main text), an Oxford French Mini Dictionary, and streaming video of the films and television clips. For about $50 more, students can purchase access to the “Supersite Plus” which adds an online version of the student activities manual (including lab audio) and an application called “Wimba Pronto” that facilitates text, audio, and video chat and conferencing among students in the course and the course instructor. The instructor’s version of the supersite adds an online gradebook, videoscripts and English translations of the short films, a lab audioscript, PowerPoint slides for presentation of grammar (identical to presentation in the main text), basic lesson plans and teaching suggestions, answer keys to the student activities manual, and a variety of quizzes and exams. A virtual version of the student textbook was released in August 2011. The main strength of the Imaginez program is the rich selection of cultural resources . Imaginez contains far more material than could ever be incorporated into an intermediate French sequence, whether taught over two semesters or three quarters. The short films really stand out. They are engaging and varied, and the accompanying activities prepare students well to make the most of them, even when the language proves difficult. Taken together, films and activities promote genuine and substantive classroom discussion. In this second edition, Hitchem Yacoubi’s Bon anniversaire (2007) replaces Arthur de Pins’s compelling but challenging La révolution des crabes (2004), and Yann Kibongui’s Dépendance (2008) replaces Samuel Jadok’s amusing Comment j’ai marché sur la lune (2002). In future editions, replacing Nassim Amaouche’s De l’autre côté (2004) would also be desirable , since this film, though powerful, is too long to be used in the same way as the others. Three cultural readings (on the creator of the Cirque du Soleil, West African independence, and CERN) are new to this edition, as are two literary texts (Dany Laferrière’s “Tout bouge autour de moi” and Marguerite Duras’s “La télé et la mort”). “Le zapping” sections dealing with short television clips replace Reviews 931 “À fond la sono” sections on popular music. The television clips, provided on the supersite via streaming video, are more useful than the previous music sections, and they bring up timely topics such as the evolution of spoken French, new technologies and media, civic and environmental responsibility, and parkour, a method of movement developed in France. The main weakness of Imaginez remains its grammatical content. No one program can do everything, and with the emphasis on culture, sacrifices have been made in terms of grammar. Grammatical explanations (in English) are adequate , but the activities that follow them are thin and do not always correspond well to information presented. Synthèse activities that conclude the portions of the chapters devoted to grammar sometimes seem juvenile or contrived. Ultimately, unless instructors are willing to accept a...

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