The course "Teaching French as a Foreign Language" is designed to be in part a forum for the open discussion of the major trends and issues in foreign language pedagogy and in part a workshop that will provide first-time teachers with the opportunity to apply what they have learned from the class, from readings, and from each other to their own lesson preparation and classroom teaching.

Our textbook, Teacher's Handbook: Contextualized Language Instruction (third edition), in conjunction with additional readings to be distributed in class and placed on reserve in the library, will provide students with an overview of the prevailing approaches to the teaching of a foreign language. The book, in addition to presenting analyses of the dominant theoretical approaches to language teaching, includes numerous case studies, both real and hypothetical, so that students can examine "theory in action" and gain further insight into the advantages and complications of applying different approaches to language teaching in different language learning situations.

Since all the students (or at least the majority) will be first-time teachers, a large component of the class will involve the work students will be doing as teachers of French language and francophone cultures during the semester. This includes peer evaluations, the submission and sharing of lesson plans, the creation of classroom activities and exercises to be posted on a shared Blackboard site, the creation and critique of testing materials, the comparison of the textbook in use with others on the market, discussions with textbook representatives, the writing of a "teaching journal," etc.