Teaching francophone audiovisual cultures: What can songs and screens teach language educators and students?

Tue 11 Mar at 6pm
Books & Ideas
Talks

What kinds of spoken French do we find in contemporary song and screen culture? What can the broad range of language varieties evidenced in songs and on screen contribute to the teaching of French?

This conference with Dr David Evans and Dr Pauline Souleau (University of St Andrews) aims to discuss the value of harnessing oral French and new forms of media in the classroom, and how they can help us to reconsider the place of non-standard forms in language teaching and learning, to design new forms of assessment, and to develop students’ transferable skills.

This reflection is born out of two final-year modules taught at the University of St Andrews since 2023: Francophone Vocal Cultures: Song and Identity and Francophone Screen Cultures: Shaping French Identities. These modules, and more generally classes making use of these forms of media, have the scope to harness the immense potential of AV material, displaying many kinds of language use, register, accent or dialect, for our students’ language learning. Such an approach reflects the actual viewing and listening habits of our current generation of students and can help to consolidate and diversify their knowledge of cultures across the French-speaking world. Although the speakers’ experience is in Higher Education, the workshop is open to any language educator with an interest in incorporating audio-visual material and new forms of media in class. 

This event is organized as part of the Mois de la Francophonie 2025

Bookings

Dr David Evans works on French poetry from the 19th century onwards, with a particular interest in questions of rhythm and form. He looks at how aesthetic value is constructed, and how the idea of poetry in France evolves from Romanticism to the present day. He has a twofold interest in music: firstly, how poets use musical metaphors to articulate their poetics, and secondly, how composers respond to those aesthetic reflections when setting the poems to music. He also works on ecocritical approaches to literature, poetic expression from the regions of France, and literary representations of masculinity.


Dr Pauline Souleau joined the University of St Andrews in January 2019 where she teaches French language, literature, and culture and comparative Literature. She completed her PhD in medieval French literature in 2014 at the University of Oxford where she was a lecturer in French language and literature (2013–2018).

Her teaching interests are concerned with translation, comparative stylistics, language and discourse, especially narratology, narrative voices and renewed forms of storytelling: cyclical storytelling (e.g. modern reception and reinterpretation of medieval narratives; francophone bandes dessinées) or collaborative and interactive storytelling (e.g. role-playing games, video-games). She is part of the Creative Writing in French teaching team and is also interested in the relation between language and culture as well as games and languages. She has designed two Honours modules, in collaboration with Dr David Evans - Francophone Vocal Cultures: Song and Identity and Francophone Screen Cultures: Shaping French Identities - and organised two events with Rebecca Sharp and the Centre for Energy Ethics focused on games and sustainability.  

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