INTERCULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS THROUGH FRANCOPHONE CINEMA

The purpose of this study is to introduce Francophone cinema to students in French and to foster intercultural, linguistic, and communicative competences. Francophone cinema is often unknown by our students, in spite of its quality and cultural expressions. Living in a global world makes it necessary to focus on these representations. Our goal will be to select movie sequences that display everyday culture and prepare activities that focus on intercultural dialogue as well as promoting language acquisition in a communicative way. The selected movie sequences will be available in a podcast so the learner can watch them independently, at his own rhythm, thus promoting the "learning by doing" constructivist learning theory.
These movie sequences are accompanied by vocabulary and grammar activities using the “Structured Input” approach in order to promote language acquisition. The various activities include cyber quests and other components from the web. These activities are based on authentic cultural contexts provided by the selected movie sequences or other multimedia materials that foster cultural awareness. In our presentation we will show examples of sequences and activities and will discuss how this method helps our students to experience and learn about important cultural aspects of the target language. They will also become more autonomous learners in order to successfully interact in the target language and culture.