This session will review the goals of the French DLI Commission and explore strategies to support the continued growth of our group. In particular, we will reflect on the recent online training held on April 12 and 13, and examine participants’ feedback, suggestions, and ideas for strengthening our national network of DLI teachers.
The Commission on Colleges and Universities’ annual session will focus on collaboration with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States. In conjunction with the office of Cultural Services, we will give higher education faculty an opportunity to articulate their concerns and learn about opportunities and support provided by the French Embassy.
If you already sponsor a chapter of the Société Honoraire de Français ( SHF ) or Jeunes Amis du Français (JAF) or are considering founding one, please join us. After presenting an overview, including opportunities for awards, materials, and activities, the presenters look forward to hearing about your own experiences. Whether it be to recognize your outstanding students, provide them with service opportunities, or build an esprit de corps through fun activities, this organization can enrich and promote your program.
Explore techniques to promote learning French and your program within your school and community, and discuss connections you can make to share the work and engage new advocates. Participants will also be given the opportunity to put heads together and give thought to resources they would like the commission to produce in the future.
It’s the 21st century! Participants will discuss several inventions introduced at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair including the Ferris Wheel and the zipper and how these inventions still impact our world today. Join us to celebrate the many contributions of francophone inventors of the past, present, and future. Exciting, innovative, engaging inventors…On y va!
Three presentations focus on how to engage students in experiential learning through French for Special Purposes. Dr. Andrea Jonsson shares recent meaningful collaborative activities in France in which students work with community organizations in a popular Serve-Sustain-Learn program. Suzanne Cook describes her university’s evolution of a gen-ed course on Sustainability in the French-speaking world into a sustainability-focused French-International Business study abroad that focuses student sustainability initiatives in the luxury industry. Both model high-impact project-oriented practices. Finally, E. Nicole Meyer contributes fresh interactive exercises that reinforce the importance of cybersecurity to everyday practices and future career possibilities as well as an update on the commission’s activities. All three promote ways that all can include fun, meaningful French for Specific Purposes activities into their programs to increase student interest and learning.
The Middle School Commission is creating a volume of cultural activities that target the Americas! Come preview some of what we have prepared and give us your suggestions for finalizing it for publication!
This presentation will address the "Comparisons" standard from World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (French), which can be found in pages 43-48 of the manual. In two concurrent sections of a university-level course on contemporary Francophone literature, the professors challenge their students to investigate migration patterns from the global South (specifically Senegal, Rwanda/Burundi, Guadeloupe, and Cameroon) to Metropolitan France. The students are then invited to compare these literary crossings - push factors, demographics, modes of travel, safety, success rate, etc. - with similar migration patterns towards the US. The goal of this comparison activity is to understand what motivates people to embark on such transnational crossings in hopes of finding a better quality of life. A selection of students from both sections will be invited to share their findings at the AATF convention in Chicago.
