L'Art de Lire: Le Récit (3rd Edition)

L'Art de Lire: Le Récit (3rd Edition)

Designed to help readers develop reading ability in French —especially in preparation for the study of literature (narrative fiction)— L'Art de lire presents nine modern, intriguing, humorous, moving, exciting, well-paced, interesting, and accessible French short stories. Stories include Georges Simenon's La Vieille Dame de Bayeux and L'Auberge aux Noyées, Guy De Maupassant's L'Aventure de Walter Schnaffs, Les Bijoux and Deux Amis, L. Anoma Kaniée's Les Hommes Invisibles, Francois Truffaut, Le Déejeuner de Sylvie, Marcel Pagnol's Au Parc Boréely avec tante Rose, and Colette's Dans la Foule: Aprées L'Affaire de las Rue Ordener. For those interested in developing their reading ability in French. L'Art de Lire introduces advanced beginner and intermediate students of French to nine fictional stories that cover a varied and enticing array of themes. It employs pre- and post-reading activities and vocabulary and grammar reviews to help students develop basic knowledge, strategies, and techniques for reading French. L'Art de Lire, now in its third edition, delivers a winning combination of inviting stories and a proven pedagogical approach that promises to bring students to a higher level of knowledge and enjoyment. L'Art de Lire may be used at any level after the first year of French with students who have had little previous reading experience. Used in a course that focuses on the development of reading skills, or as a secondary text/reader in mufti-skilled course, it provides ample opportunities to learn to read French. The Third Edition retains the student-friendly format of the First and Second Editions and develops further student activities and investigations in and around the stories. We are grateful to our students and to our fellow teachers for their continued comments and suggestions. Many readers have appreciated the stories in L'Art de Lire, finding them to be intriguing or funny, moving or exciting. Stories are graded in difficulty; earlier readings are abridged and edited to make them more accessible. The number of cuts diminishes as the book progresses. Many selections are divided into a series of installments. All chapters are supported by a pedagogical apparatus that is both full and flexible. The Préparation à la lecture starts with a concern for Lexique and highlights words in the context of explicit previews of the action. Through the first nine story segments, lexical categories distinguish Mots apparentés and Faux amis. Afterwards, these categories are presented together with other Vocabulaire. Grammaire sections include demonstrations of Mots-clés, function words that also provide discourse coherence. Grammar is presented to provide a focus of recognition needed for reading comprehension. L'art de lire sections present succinct discussions and contextual illustrations of broad and specific reading knowledge and techniques on matters of vocabulary, grammar, culture, and the coherence of story. The Exercises that conclude each Préparation à la lecture consolidate command of the vocabulary presented. They are intended to help the student prepare for the reading. This work on lexical awareness serves the kind of knowledge that helps students recognize and understand words in different contexts. Marginal questions in French provide a convenient and rapid way of reviewing the reading selection in class and should help students find their way through difficult passages on their own. Following each selection, Activités sur le récit review, and ensure grasp, and recall of details at the levels of action, character, place, and theme. A range of activity types are employed including true/false and sentence-completion exercises; others call for identification of characters, actions, places, or objects from the story. Activities are presented in narrative order and are sufficiently detailed to cover all of the significant action of the reading. While they may look like exam questions, their purpose is to recirculate the narrative material and relevant vocabulary in order to ensure that students are able to remember and deal with the story on their own terms in French. Students should be encouraged to write out answers fully in order to practice perceiving details of the written language. The Sujets de discussion, de composition, de recherche, et de présentation encourage more critical responses. They bring the vocabulary of the story into more active use, invite students to think about meanings, and provide a framework in which they can discuss in French what pleases, bothers, or puzzles them about it—the motivation of the characters, the plausibility of the plot, the relationship to their own lives, and so forth. Here, what students talk about and write is encouraged to become some sort of composition. Many of these exercises encourage role-playing activities, monologues and dialogues, to help students develop dramatic aspects of the story in the classroom. These exercises provide gu