Highlighted in this section are examples of trend setting Web sites pioneered by university professors of French. Their consistently expanding, long-term Internet presence and contributions to the profession reflect the maturation of electronically assisted foreign language learning in the new millennium.

More recently, for the Middlebury Ecole française P@ge des Débutants, Spielmann wrote the Beginner's Guide (which might more accurately be called the "Beginner's Bible"). Although prepared for an intensive summer language immersion program, it could well serve as the basic guide for every novice and intermediate level FL instructor and student. Note the Menu and Program overview.

Spielmann's latest contribution is Projet OPSIS: Spectacle du Siècle (Centre virtuel de ressources sur les arts du spectacle aux XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles). The Menu page for this "Virtual Center of Resources on Theater Arts in the XVI^th, XVII^th and XVIII^th centuries" illustrates the use of the Internet resource center in advanced literature courses. Included in the image map are pointers to resources grouped by category: Bibliography, Dossiers, Links to other related sites, Authors/ composers, Dictionary, Chronology (with principal political, economic and social events juxtaposed with those concerning the "arts du spectacle"), Texts (links to complete online texts), Images, and Documents sonores.

Adept at computer-assisted language learning, he is an active member of the Hubert de Phalèse Group (Université de Paris 3) and moderator of their LITOR language and literature discussion forum.

Rebollar's favorite Internet memories include the moment in 1997 when he first was able to listen to French radio programs online from Japan.  In the intervening years, Rebollar has witnessed the constant improvement of the information technologies, particularly relishing those which permit him to remain in close contact with French politics and culture, and purchase books and recordings online at normal prices.

· January 1997 - the Ph.D. Program in French, CUNY site; and

· October 1998 - île en île, the definitive Francophone Island portal site. The Haïti index page illustrates the expanding wealth of Francophone resources made available through this collaborative project.

Not having begun his first email correspondence until 1992, Spear recalls that even then email messages were still being sent without accents (unfortunately, some still are) and that at that time there was no visual browser interface. When one said “Internet" there was only "gopher" and "lynx" and the connection speed was 1,200 bps.

The Quartier français du Village planétaire educational portal is designed to encourage the learner to go out on the Francophone Web and actively use French language skills to discover the people and culture first hand. To guide faculty and students in their virtual visit to the French-speaking "neighborhood" of the Global Village  there are the various Menu rubrics:  Kiosque à journaux/ Office de tourisme/ Musées/ Forum des Profs/ Bibliothèque/ Café électronique/ Maison des Médias/ École de la Langue française/ École de Commerce/ École primaire/ Terrain des Sports/ Centre pédagogique/ Ressources de la Civilisation française/ Activités pour accompagner l’Histoire CM/ Activités pour accompagner Le Petit Prince/ Activités pour accompagner L'Étranger/ Le Verbe français/ Outils de recherche.  All of these are also explained in English in the Global Village French Quarter Welcome Center Guide.

An annotated selection of quality pedagogical resources and sound instructional applications can be found at the Centre pédagogique du quartier français. Of special interest is the center’s collection of target language tutorials, such as the interactive basic French tutorial Polar FLE, created by the French webmestres Thierry Perrot and Anne Fournier. FLE learners improve their French while helping Inspector Duflair find the criminal.  The User’s Guide, in several languages, explains that all clues are given in the process of completing the vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension exercises (grouped according to level from beginner to advanced). French grammar is fully explained and vocabulary is illustrated. Suspects in the address book (whose profile and activities are discovered while completing the exercises) must then be contacted by email. In the Interrogatoire activity the learner verifies their alibis. Then, in the Arrestation activity the learner must explain how the arrest took place and finally fill out the police report.

The Copernic Summarizer, an electronic Web page text summarizer for Internet information research, provides a quick idea of the content of sites retrieved by search engines. As described in the Tuesday, January 2, 2001 online edition of Liberation, this new Web research software sums up Web page content automatically, thus greatly facilitating Internet information research. The program identifies key words based on the number of times they appear and ponders them according to their position in the text. It then selects the sentences containing the key concepts. Apparently, the "résumé de texte" technology utilized by Copernic is similar to that of the AutoSummarize tool first introduced in Word97.  Like the Word SpellCheck and GrammarCheck tools, it is far from perfect, yet can be of some help to the intelligent user.

The following Web research support materials created by URFIST permit students to stay within the language while sharpening their research skills and availing themselves of the best authentic French resources: 

Likewise, two valuable new research tools have recently been made available by the University of Montreal, Canada:

From the personal collection of Marianne Pernoo-Bécache, Library Curator at l'ENSSIB, one finds these Sites Chercheurs,a rich compendium of sites useful for researchers in French literature.

La Grammaire Interactive Softissimo - This complete online interactive French Language Grammar Reference is recommended by the Délégation générale à la langue française.

Synapse Dévéloppement, the private firm that sold the French language proofing tools to Microsoft, has recently put online 500 pages of French grammar reference materials: Manuels et ouvrages de référence en accès libre à la "Page de la langue française." Patrick Séguéla of Synapse Dévéloppement indicated in his personal email informing the author of the availability of this site, 16 January 2001, that: "This part of the site is 0% commercial…. We here explain all the rules that are quite complicated for anybody writing or trying to write French." The explanations (in French) would appear to be particularly helpful for intermediate level American students of French. See, for example, the page on subordinate clauses.

While no Grand Larousse, the free Atlas French Web Encyclopedia, WebEncyclo, will serve students well as an authentic French reference tool and keep them "within the target language."

Students and faculty can instantly consult Hachette's free online universal Francophone dictionary to verify and/or explore deeper semantic meaning in Le Dictionnaire Universel Francophone En Ligne.

Upper and graduate level French students as well as faculty appreciate the old standby Dictionary of Synonyms, especially since the recent correction and refinement process under the auspices of the French CNRS.

 For definitions, translations, conjugations and terminology research one can even download (or consult online, of course) the new terminology dictionary of the Quebec Office de la langue française, Le Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique. Note here, by way of illustration, the extensive terminology listings for conscience.

In a class by itself is the new digitized version of the INaLF French Language dictionary, Le Nouveau Trésor de la langue française INFORMATISÉ. This "most marvelous of all French dictionaries," the fruit of the long-term ARTFL Franco-American cooperative project, is now freely accessible on the Web and provides a superb research tool for scholars and students in all areas of French studies.

The ARTFL project is the cooperative project established in 1981 by the Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the University of Chicago, which grew out of the French government's project, initiated in 1957, to create a new dictionary of the French language, Le Trésor de la Langue Française.

5.1 New and improved collections of digitized literary classics and pedagogical resources are appearing in Web-wise faculty online course support pages. These instantly available Web offerings enable a broader range of authentic materials and greatly reduce the textbook cost to students. Links to already well-known online collections, as well as literature resources categorized by literary period, can be found at the Bibliothèque du quartier français in Répertoires: Littérature et Civilisation Françaises. Highlighted below are some recent updates or exciting new electronic resources.

At Radio France BIBLIOPOLIS Biblionet: Les Classiques de la Littérature française en texte intégral, a search tool makes it possible to look up a word, an expression, or a sentence in the complete texts of the classics of French literature, or to access the texts themselves by using either the alphabetized list of authors or titles of their works.

JulesFerry.com: Oeuvres/textes littéraires contains a valuable collection of downloadable complete works of French literature.

A recently revised and updated medieval theater treasure is MENESTREL: La page du Théâtre Médiéval du Centre d'études des textes Médiévaux/Rennes2.

Likewise, Le Théâtre de la Foire à Paris contains Barry Russell's growing collection of "textes et documents du théatre sous L'Ancien Régime." The Menu of this respected resource for texts and documents of the theater under the Ancien Régime includes 1.Théâtres 2. Scénographie 3. Administration 4. Relations sociales 5. Troupes 6. Relations artistiques 7. Pièces 8. Biographies 9. Iconographie 10. Glossaire 11. Bibliographie 12. Chronologie 13. Divers. There is also the Calendrier des Spectacles sous L'Ancien Régime and a link to Les Spectacles de la Foire par Émile Compardon.

BÉRÉNICE: les écrans DU THÉÂTRE, a new pedagogical initiative of the CNDP (Centre National de Documentation Pédagogique), illustrates how new technology can enhance instruction as well as promote universal appreciation of the cultural heritage of the French civilization. BÉRÉNICE is the Web dossier for the recently televised version of this classic tragedy by Racine. It includes images plus streaming sound and video clips from the film documentary, an instructional manual in PDF, and communication opportunities for students to correspond via email with the actors and producers as well as to share their ideas in the forum. Here are two examples, the first giving access to sound and the second to video clips from the film documentary:

• Les personnages et leurs relations – Evoking the particular role and the interrelationships among the characters of the play, each of the actors of the filmed play discusses the Racinian universe, and
• Bérénice et son décor – Video clips showing stage-settings for the production.

The site of the Société canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle illustrates the valuable repertoires offered by the international literary period societies, in this case the Canadian Society for 18th Century Studies.

This new Académie de Rouen pedagogical site, Le Romantisme: Un mouvement littéraire et culturel du XIX siècle, created by Danielle Girard, provides an excellent argument for Web-enhanced literary study. Featured here is the instructional unit for the well-known La Barricade episode from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. The SOMMAIRE permits access to the lesson plans, online electronic text and image resources, and to the complete instructional sequence. In L'apport de l'informatique dans l'étude d'une oeuvre littéraire, Girard details the valuable contributions that Web-assisted pedagogy brings to the study of a literary work, in particular by enabling the construction of meaning via thematic search of the digitized text.

François Moureau, Professeur à la Sorbonne, Université de Paris IV and Directeur des Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne (PUPS), in a 28 Dec 2000 personal email, called to the author's attention his Centre de Recherche de la Littérature des Voyages (CRLV), a  particularly noteworthy resource in that it contains online QuickTime versions of Littérature des Voyages seminars, as well as 194 conferences in QuickTime.

Christine Genin’s continually expanding Labyrinthe des ressources sur la littérature française contemporaine remains one of the major resource portals for contemporary French literature. Among the many riches is the index of contemporary French writers with links pointing to their Web pages (or pages featuring critiques of their works), as well as their biographies and bibliographies.

Of great interest for studies of contemporary France (and also for cross-cultural studies) are these A-V archived historical documents and the charted results of various contemporary French and American society opinion polls:

The instant accessibility to art treasures also enables culturally authentic art and civilization projects such as the following two Webquests based on the same painting of Delacroix:

News of another French cultural heritage site, with interesting Web-mediated project possibilities, arrived in an email, Fri, 9 Feb 2001, from Raphaëlle and Gilles Debrégeas. Sponsored by the Amboise Renaissance foundation, which supports the Renaissance at Amboise sound and light show, the site, entitled Histoire de France Spectacle, Son et Lumière: Renaissance à Amboise, contains digitized images from the spectacle, and a superb companion collection of dossiers on  L'histoire de la Renaissance en France et en Europe, all accessible from the dossier drop-down menu and on-site search engine. This is certainly one of the best Internet student resource sites available on the Renaissance in France and in Europe. The chronologie is presented in four parts from 1430 - 1603 in five-column table format:

It is easy to envision a collaborative group of intermediate to advanced level students beginning with the authentic resources of this Amboise foundation Web site as guide, and then branching out to additional resources as they research and present this historical period to their peers.

The new French "Multimusic" Web radio portal facilitates online listening to one's choice of 25 French radio music stations featuring all kinds of music (pop, classic, jazz), just as if one were actually in France. The audio quality is superior and listening to the "Chansons de France" is an excellent way to improve one's ear for French.

6.2 The on-going MIT CULTURA Project breaks new ground with the deliberate approach in using Internet-mediated communication in the development of cross-cultural literacy. Originated in 1997 by Gilberte Furstenberg, Sabine Levet, Kathryn English, and Katherine Maillet, CULTURA is the National Endowment for the Humanities funded collaborative project of MIT Foreign Languages and Literatures, the French Institut National des Télécommunications, and the Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching.

Discussing their methodology, the authors emphasize that it “requires a new pedagogy, …an interactive process that comes about via the exchange of diverse materials -- raw or mediated -- by multiple partners: learners, teachers, other students, other teachers, and experts.” Through the carefully planned five stage cultural learning sequence, and accompanied by the skillful guidance of the teacher, students are enabled “to gradually construct and refine their own understanding of the other culture, in a continuous and never-ending process.”

The new pedagogy features of the program include the culturally oriented syllabus for linguistic and cultural growth, the Web-based cross-cultural communication medium, the authentic materials, the collaborative process-oriented learning environment, the totally engaged students, the teacher as the architect of  "true constructivist teaching" and facilitator of the learning experience, the "guide rope" methodology, the varied evaluation tools, and the positive outcome of student growth toward bi-lingual and bi-cultural literacy.

Convinced that “technology-enhanced course content based on current media output helps students grasp culture as a multifaceted, highly complex construct that influences people's ideals and aspirations, values, beliefs, and especially language,” she proposes that university foreign language departments adopt a curricular sequence which enables global-minded business school students to learn along with the traditional humanities majors.

Rethinking the curriculum within the confines of a traditional language department, explains Hoecherl-Aldan, “entails providing the students with a basis for communication combined with the tools to make sense of authentic materials [both in print and on the Web] at the elementary level," or, in other words, the very type of Web-enhanced, communication-oriented experience detailed in Spielmann's Beginner's Guide, and probably already in effect in most university language departments.

At the intermediate level, however, Hoecherl-Alden adds a content-based, Web-mediated, cultural history component. "Factual, historical, literary, political, and social knowledge of the target culture, alongside the students' ever-evolving linguistic and cultural proficiency," she asserts, "will adequately prepare them to branch out into more specialized course content and to communicate and read for in-depth understanding -- be it in a professional field or in the Humanities."

From her experience, Hoecherl-Aldan grants that without an internship or study abroad, such students might not attain the near-native fluency necessary to negotiate international contracts, but she concludes that "they will be, however, prepared to embark on a life-long learning process ... [and] will have acquired the tools necessary to communicate in culturally appropriate ways in a variety of situations."

The secret for the continuing success of American university language programs lies, as always, in fueling the students’ natural motivation to know another culture and speak another language. Electronic media are enabling the emergence of a new Web-mediated language pedagogy in which students are totally engaged in the construction of knowledge about other peoples, cultures and languages while simultaneously increasing their target language proficiency.

Why is this new Internet-mediated language pedagogy so effective?  Because it is motivating. Why is it motivating? Because it feeds the students’ natural desire and curiosity to learn more about others.

This paper’s overview of the current state of electronically-assisted foreign language learning should make it evident that the ever-improving information and communication technologies are a means of enabling more effective language learning. In turn, effective language learning and increased cross-cultural awareness ensure the survival of foreign language programs as part of the liberal arts mission of the American universities.

Thanks to these new technology trends, university foreign language learning is indeed alive, well, and ready to tackle the challenges of this new millennium.

Hoecherl-Alden, Gisela. (2000). Turning Professional: Content-based Communication and the Evolution of a  Cross-Cultural Language Curriculum. Foreign Language Annals 33.6, November-December 2000. American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages. Allen Press, Inc., Lawrence, KA, pp. 614-621.

Paulsen, J. (1996). Making Foreign Language Study REAL via the WWW Global Village. In Warschauer, Mark, ed. Virtual Connections: Online Activities and Projects for Networking Language Learners. Ed. M. Warschauer.  Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. January,  pp. 318-320.

Paulsen, J. (2000). New Technologies for the 21st Century Foreign Language Classroom, ASCD Curriculum-Technology Quarterly 10.2. Winter 2000, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA, pp. 1-4.

Schneider, Alison. Adios to Language Courses: A University Plans to Promote Languages by Killing Its Language Department. The Chronicle of Higher Education. March 9, 2001. p. A14.