Bien Vu, Bien Dit: Intermediate French

This innovative film-based program is designed to motivate and inspire intermediate French students. Based on the French film Le Chemin du retour, Bien vu, bien dit is a completely integrated program for intermediate French.

Each chapter of Bien vu, bien dit, the textbook, is correlated to an episode of the film. The textbook prepares students for the film-viewing experience through the chapter vocabulary presentations and activities and through additional pre- and post-viewing activities. The vocabulary and grammar presentations, as well as the activities, recycle and expand on the dialogue and structures presented in the film. Pair and small-group activities enable students to talk about the characters in the story and their own lives. The cultural content of the film is also explored in cultural notes and readings in each chapter.

Le Chemin du retour, the film, is an engaging story about a young French journalist, Camille Leclair, and her pursuit of the truth about her grandfather’s past. Through Camille’s quest, students are introduced to many facets of today’s French and Francophone cultures, as well as to important historical events in France. They learn language in the functional context provided by the film, and concepts are reinforced by onscreen activities that help students verify their comprehension. The feature-length film (102 minutes) is divided into twelve episodes, and each episode includes onscreen pre- and post-viewing activities that make the film more accessible to students, on both a linguistic and cultural level. Episodes are approximately fifteen to twenty minutes in length and correspond to the chapters in the textbook. Three and a half hours of viewing allow intermediate students to explore the richness of French language and culture. By hearing French spoken with a variety of accents and at different speeds in the film, students will gain confidence in their ability to understood authentic, spoken French.

Ann Williams received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University and also has a Diplôme d'Études Approfondies from the Université de Lyon II. She is currently professor of French at Metropolitan State College of Denver, where she teaches courses in language, literature, and culture, and she has coauthored three other college-level French textbooks. Dr. Williams received the Chris Wells Memorial Creativity Award in 2008 (Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers).