Where Do We Begin? Language Learning and Grammar

This fall, I am not only teaching in Paris but temporarily directing a program of study abroad. Among the many other changes this shift has produced in my daily life, I find myself no longer on the sidelines of students’ acquisition of French. I am now in charge of the French classes, or FLE (Français comme langue étrangère), that the students take through a branch of the Sorbonne.

As many Lingua Franca readers know, American programs of study abroad divide into two basic types: those that requi...