Claire M. Ménard

My Teaching Philosophy

 

 

 

Foreign Languages, Culture and Global Networks

 

 

Studying world languages, literature and cinema helps students connect with other cultural and social realities. Regardless of their career choice – whether it is journalism, science, business or art – the ability to be receptive to other ways of thinking, writing or working has become an absolute necessity in the global world in which they live. In this spirit, I believe that teaching French language and culture is all about creating interpersonal contacts and connections. This is why I personally have such a passion for teaching language; it is simply because I have an insatiable thirst for cultural exchanges and networks. Indeed this concept of network represents the key line of thoughts circulating in my entire work both as a teacher and a researcher. As a consequence I truly believe that one of my most valuable qualities as a professor of foreign language and culture rests in my ability to envision this very special environment that is the classroom, as a network: It means that I encourage my students to speak up, get out of their comfort zone and share their ideas and unique experiences with the rest of the group. What I find extremely rewarding about teaching is the fact that the road to knowledge is never a one-way street and I find that I learn as much from my students as they learn from me. For students, communicating and studying in a foreign language is like entering a new sphere of potentialities that is, at first, invisible to them. I think that my job as a professor is to help students become aware of the new international links they can create thanks to the study of French, which is spoken on a global scale. Indeed teaching French fosters knowledge of a large number of cultures, dialects, accents, and arts, which I take care to bring into the classroom. To me, the concept of being global also means that I consider as part of my commitment to teaching excellence, that my courses will always be mindful and respectful of the diversity of my students. I am very much aware of the importance of working on the issue of under/misrepresentation of ethnic and sexual minorities in the material used in classrooms. As an instructor, it is and will remain one of my priorities to be vigilant on these issues.

 

 

I will always remember the first time I taught my own language class. I had to teach a group of French 102 and the students were just paralyzed with anxieties about their inability to articulate their ideas with the same complex expressions they are used to have at their disposition in their native tongue. It was a real challenge, but I decided that it was the moment to tap into their observation capacities and their knowledge of their own language. In order to smooth the cultural/linguistic shock they were experiencing, I decided to use every means at my disposition: cognates, body language, gestures and above all, humor. By the end of the class, their faces had lit up and I felt like I was on the right path because I had succeeded in reprogramming their fears into something pleasurable and engaging. In terms of language teaching, I believe that students not only have to be able to progressively master utterances in the target language, but also need to find their own voices and make their own choices while communicating and studying in French. I find it very important to individually tailor my teaching to the young adults I have in my class. In this matter, I find in-class debates particularly productive: These conversations often deal with American or Francophone social issues, but can also be less serious and more centered on leisure activities. For example, in beginner classes, we might have debates about their favorite dining hall on campus or their much-loved TV shows. Since the students usually take these issues to heart and feel challenged to say what they think, they tend to forget their anxieties and take risks by relying on new vocabulary and expressions they would never have felt the need to use in a more traditional class environment.

 

 

Literature and film studies are without a doubt among the most powerful means learning a language. There is no better way to expand one’s vocabulary beyond the conversational level and master the specificities of a foreign language. I think that content-based courses should be a network organized around the rich and various personalities present in the classroom, which turn the course into a fruitful chain of individual ideas and concepts that each student shares with his or her peers. I often ask students to be discussion leaders on the topics we are studying, so they can experience leadership as they organize the discussion and present their ideas about literary or film extracts, while engaging their peers in a dialogue on what they have discovered. Nevertheless I do believe that there should be flexibility between content and language based-courses, as both topics should always be intertwined. Indeed, it is my understanding that literature and cinema can both be used at any stage of the language learning process, on the condition that the texts and media be chosen so as to fit the students’ abilities. I will always remember the day I taught Chanson d’Automne by Paul Verlaine to my French 102 class. The students were fascinated by the rhyme system of this piece of poetry. It helped them on many levels. They got to practice their pronunciation on phonemes, like nasal vowels, often hard to produce for a non-native, while gaining a better understanding of the sound system of the French language. They got very excited when I told them that this piece of poetry was also connected to one of the most glorious pages of American history: during World War II, the first stanza was broadcast on the BBC British radio network as a code phrase to signal the coming D-Day to the French resistance, so they could prepare for this world-changing event. At a more advanced level, I believe it is important to connect literature to the students’ popular culture so they can draw links between what they already know and what they are currently studying. When I taught L’Illusion Comique by Corneille, for example, the way this play blurs the lines between the fictional and real worlds allowed my students to make useful comparisons between 17th-century France and the art of cinema, but also Sci-Fi contemporary pop culture films and TV shows, like the Matrix Trilogy or certain episodes of the Dr. Who series.

 

 

Compared to the preceding generations, our students spend a considerable amount of time in a connected environment. Whether it is the Internet or their cell-phones, technology is an important part of their world and I strongly believe that our teaching should integrate this new technological turn, if anything because it helps create new links between students and their peers. As we only use French in class, we can also multiply the time students spend speaking the target language by introducing exercises in which they use online applications to speak with each other at home, instead of having them complete written exercises in which they will be isolated. I think that this could be taken to a more global level by creating international online exchanges, so as to connect students with their Francophone peers all over the world. This would be something I would be very interested in developing.