French in Action - FREE online video intro course

[FanDeAliFee]

<big><big>Residents of the US and Canada with high-speed Internet access have the opportunity to watch a FREE video course teaching introductory conversational French. There are 52 half-hour episodes, which teach using a contrived visual immersion method, rather than translation.
<table><tr><td><big><big>This video series, filmed in Paris, is called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_in_Action"><i>French in Action</i></a>. Textbooks and workbooks are also available for it.
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The course was developed in 1987 in the United States through a collaboration between WGBH television in Boston, and the venerable New England universities of Wellesley and Yale. Creation was directed by Professor Pierre Capretz, a French native who began teaching at Yale in 1956. By 1990. the course had sold about 70,000 textbooks and was used by more than 1,000 colleges and secondary schools. Read reviews of it and about its awards <a href="http://www.learner.org/catalog/awards/ficomments.html">here</a>.</big></big></td><td><a href="http://www.amazon.com/French-Action-Beginning-Language-Textbook/dp/0300058217"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SCiLOLzBL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg"></a></td></tr></table>

In 2010, Yale hosted a 25th (sic.) anniversary reunion in celebration of the program's success. (Previously at Alizee America, I curated a video lecture on Napoleon by Yale professor of French history John Merriman.)

A nontrivial portion of the course follows the romance between Robert, a <s>lecherous geriatric</s> young American man, and an attractive young French woman named Mireille. Mireille is portrayed as an object for desire that gets young men to learn French, claimed a Yale teaching assistant in 1990 (before it was OK to be a lesbian in America, LOL!) The camera often lingers on Mireille's legs or her chest, for example.

DAMN!!! Why, oh why did I have to mention THAT part? Now I've scared away 90%+ of the visitors to Alizée America!

Access the course videos here.

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